"When I Have Fears" is an Elizabethan sonnet by the

English English usually refers to: * English language * English people English may also refer to: Culture, language and peoples * ''English'', an adjective for something of, from, or related to England * ''English'', an Amish ter ...

Romantic

poet A poet is a person who studies and creates poetry. Poets may describe themselves as such or be described as such by others. A poet may simply be the creator (thought, thinker, songwriter, writer, or author) who creates (composes) poems (oral t ...

John Keats John Keats (31 October 1795 – 23 February 1821) was an English poet of the second generation of Romantic poets, along with Lord Byron and Percy Bysshe Shelley. His poems had been in publication for less than four years when he died of tub ...

. The 14-line poem is written in

iambic pentameter Iambic pentameter ( ) is a type of metric line used in traditional English poetry and verse drama. The term describes the rhythm, or meter, established by the words in each line. Meter is measured in small groups of syllables called feet. "Iambi ...

and consists of three

quatrain A quatrain is a type of stanza, or a complete poem, consisting of four Line (poetry), lines. Existing in a variety of forms, the quatrain appears in poems from the poetic traditions of various ancient civilizations including Persia, Ancient India ...

s and a

couplet In poetry, a couplet ( ) or distich ( ) is a pair of successive lines that rhyme and have the same metre. A couplet may be formal (closed) or run-on (open). In a formal (closed) couplet, each of the two lines is end-stopped, implying that there ...

. Keats wrote the poem between 22 and 31 January

1818 Events January–March * January 1 ** Battle of Koregaon: Troops of the British East India Company score a decisive victory over the Maratha Confederacy, Maratha Empire. ** English author Mary Shelley publishes the novel ''Frankenstein ...

.Keats, John. The Complete Poems. Penguin UK, 2003. It was published (posthumously) in

1848 1848 is historically famous for the wave of revolutions, a series of widespread struggles for more liberal governments, which broke out from Brazil to Hungary; although most failed in their immediate aims, they significantly altered the polit ...

in ''Life, Letters, and Literary Remains, of John Keats'' by

Richard Monckton Milnes Richard Monckton Milnes, 1st Baron Houghton, FRS (19 June 1809 – 11 August 1885) was an English poet, patron of literature and a politician who strongly supported social justice. Background and education Milnes was born in London, the son ...

The poem

Themes and language

"When I Have Fears" primarily explores death, the fear of it, and what it prevents Keats from doing. Using the phrase "cease to be" shows an emphasis on the life Keats will miss out on rather than simply death itself. The repetition of "before" represents the anxieties Keats has about what he cannot achieve before death. He fears he will no longer be able to write, witness the beauty of the world, or experience love or fame once he dies. While the poem ends with a slight resolution, with "Love and Fame" no longer mattering to Keats, it is a resolution found in isolation and excessive thought. The two do not matter to Keats because death is inevitable and will prevent him from making those achievements, so they sink away from Keats. References to nature also appear throughout the poem, including harvesting grain, the night sky, clouds, and the shore. Nature is a common theme in

Romantic poetry Romantic poetry is the poetry of the Romantic era, an artistic, literary, musical and intellectual movement that originated in Europe towards the end of the 18th century. It involved a reaction against prevailing Neoclassical ideas of the 18th c ...

, but in Keats' poem it demonstrates how essential and natural writing is to his being.“When I Have Fears: Imagery, Symbolism and Themes." Selected Poems Study Guide from Crossref-It.Info.” Accessed February 9, 2018. http://crossref-it.info/textguide/john-keats-selected-poems/40/3041. The shore and water that love and fame sink within represent an expanse of fears that sit before Keats, giving the natural world a darker theme in those lines. The theme of creating coincides with references to nature and beauty. The first quatrain equates writing to harvesting grain. Thoughts are tangible items to be grown into "high-piled books," as Keats feels he can allow his ideas to flourish if he only had a long enough life.“When I Have Fears: Language, Tone and Structure » John Keats, Selected Poems Study Guide from Crossref-It.Info.” Accessed February 11, 2018. http://crossref-it.info/textguide/john-keats-selected-poems/40/3040. The second quatrain contains more abstract concepts. Stars, cloudy symbols, shadows, reflect the intangible beauty of the world which Keats can also not attempt to understand because of a life cut short. The couplet shows abstract concepts of Love and Fame becoming tangible, though they sink to nothingness as Keats realizes he has no time to achieve them.

Analysis

The first four lines express Keats' fear that he will die before he has written all the works he hopes to, "before ispen has glean'd isteeming brain."Learning, Gale, Cengage. A Study Guide for John Keats’s “When I Have Fears That I May Cease to Be.” Gale, Cengage Learning, 2016. The symbols of the night sky and clouds that Keats "may never live to trace" can represent many things. The first is simply Keats' desire for literary expression and interpretation of the world around him. Another, though, is more philosophical. Keats' use of "shadows" can connect to Plato's Allegory of the Cave, which then represents his desire to understand life itself. The "magic hand of chance" may further represent fate as a function of life. Keats is condemned to a short life by chance, and because of that he will remain unable to trace or understand how fate functions. The "fair creature of an hour," according to Richard Woodhouse, the man who advised Keats' publishers on legal and literary matters, refers to a woman Keats encountered at

Vauxhall Gardens Vauxhall Gardens is a public park in Kennington in the London Borough of Lambeth, England, on the south bank of the River Thames. Originally known as New Spring Gardens, it is believed to have opened before the Restoration of 1660, being me ...

. Keats' reflection on this woman may represent his preoccupation with beauty and his fear of no longer witnessing beauty, in the form of a woman or nature, once he dies. She also represents Keats' fear of loss and being unable to experience love once he dies. The final three lines where Keats stands alone and contemplates the end of life may represent a passive acceptance that life must end.Bari, Shahidha Kazi. Keats and Philosophy: The Life of Sensations. 1 edition. New York: Routledge, 2012. Love and fame do not matter and cannot be achieved anyway once Keats dies.

Rhyme scheme

"When I Have Fears" follows a

rhyme scheme A rhyme scheme is the pattern of rhymes at the end of each line of a poem or song. It is usually referred to by using letters to indicate which lines rhyme; lines designated with the same letter all rhyme with each other. An example of the ABAB rh ...

of ABAB CDCD EFEF GG (Shakespeare Sonnet).

Shahidha Bari Shahidha Bari (born 1980) is a British academic, critic and broadcaster in the fields of literature, philosophy and art. She is a professor at the University of the Arts London based at London College of Fashion. She is a host of the topical arts ...

notes the rhyme scheme may reflect expectation. Readers expect the lines to rhyme with each other, as Keats anticipates the end of his life. The couplet and rhyme signals the end of the poem, as death signals the end of life.

Biographical connections

Keats, who died of

tuberculosis Tuberculosis (TB), also known colloquially as the "white death", or historically as consumption, is a contagious disease usually caused by ''Mycobacterium tuberculosis'' (MTB) bacteria. Tuberculosis generally affects the lungs, but it can al ...

at the age of 25, is often cited as fearing his own death. The fear may come from Keats' work as a medical student, where his sympathy for patients, as his friend Charles Brown believed, hindered his work. Keats was aware of the harm that could come to patients if he made any mistakes. Keats' fear of death is also present for his own life, not just his patients. This fear is evident on his gravestone, with the words "Here lies one whose name was writ in water." The epitaph, which Keats requested on his deathbed, reflects Keats' fears of death and anger with fate, as "When I Have Fears" does. The last three lines of the poem which describe "the shore" and state, "Till Love and Fame to nothingness do sink" may relate to the reference to water in Keats' epitaph. His name will sink in water as the fame of writing will.

Similarities to Shakespeare

William Flesch notes the poem's echoes of

Shakespeare William Shakespeare ( 23 April 1564 – 23 April 1616) was an English playwright, poet and actor. He is widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's natio ...

's ''

Antony and Cleopatra ''Antony and Cleopatra'' is a tragedy by William Shakespeare. The play was first performed around 1607, by the King's Men at either the Blackfriars Theatre or the Globe Theatre. Its first appearance in print was in the First Folio published ...

''. Comparisons have also been made to Shakespeare's

Sonnet 60 Sonnet 60 is one of 154 sonnets written by the English playwright and poet William Shakespeare. It's a member of the Fair Youth sequence, in which the poet expresses his love towards a young beloved. Synopsis Sonnet 60 focuses upon the theme o ...

for references to time, endings, and the sea and to

Sonnet 64 Sonnet 64 is one of 154 sonnets written by the English playwright and poet William Shakespeare. It is a member of the Fair Youth sequence, in which the poet expresses his love towards a young man. Synopsis The opening quatrain begins with the ...

for references to time destroying man-made creations. The ideas of ‘shadows’ and ‘cloudy symbols’ also echo Shakespearean ideas of darkness referring to magic and the unknown. According to G.L. Kittridge, in Sonnets of Shakespeare, "Shadow, often in Shakespeare is contrasted with substance to express the particular sort of unreality while 'substance' expresses the reality."

References

External links

* * {{John Keats Sonnets Poetry by John Keats