Summary and Analysis "When I Have Fears"

Summary
1. When Keats experiences feelings of fear that he may die before he has written the volumes
of poetry that he is convinced he is capable of writing,
2. That he may never write a long metrical romance, fragments of which float through his
mind.
3. That he may never again see a certain woman and so never experience the raptures of
passionate love — then he feels that he is alone in the world and that love and fame are
worthless.
Analysis
 In "When I Have Fears," Keats ( Shakespearean sonnet) abab, cdcd, efef, gg rhyme
 3 quatrains and a concluding couplet
 written after Keats made a close study of Shakespeare's songs and sonnets.
 The three quatrains are subordinate clauses dependent on the word "when"; the concluding
couplet is introduced by the word "then."
 The sonnet is distinguished by Keats' characteristic melodiousness.
 The first line, "When I have fears that I may cease to be," appeals at once to the ear and is a
compelling invitation to the reader to go on with the poem.
 When I Have Fears" is a very personal confession of an emotion that intruded itself into the
fabric of Keats' existence from at least 1816 on, the fear of an early death.
 The fact that both his parents were short-lived may account for the fear.
 In the poem, the existence of this fear annihilates both the poet's fame, which Keats ardently
longed for, and the love that is so important in his poetry and in his life.
 Keats was cheated by death of enjoying the fame that his poetry eventually gained for him and
of marrying Fanny Brawne, the woman he loved so passionately.
 The "fair creature of an hour" that Keats addresses in the poem was probably a beautiful
woman Keats had seen in Vauxhall Gardens, an amusement park, in 1814.
 Keats makes her into an archetype of feminine loveliness, an embodiment of Venus, and she
remained in his memory for several years; in 1818, he addressed to her the sonnet "To a Lady
Seen for a Few Moments at Vauxhall."
 "When I Have Fears" was written the same year. One of his earliest poems.
Analysis of When I have Fears that I may Cease to Be (Line by line)
Lines 1-4
When I have fears that I may cease to be
Before my pen has gleaned my teeming brain,
Before high-pilèd books, in charactery,
Hold like rich garners the full ripened grain;

 Keats’ first worry is this: what if I should die before I have written to the best of my

ability?

 It is not merely death, therefore, that worries Keats, but death in infamy – ironic, as

he is now one of the most renowned names of English poetry.

 In fact, Keats was so sure that he would die without creating a ripple in the world of

English poetry that his tombstone was made out to the one ‘whose name was writ in

water’, thus showing the transience of Keats’ fame.

 He also feared that he would not be able to achieve his full capacity in terms of writing.

 He feared the limitations of his life.

 The use of fertility words – ‘gleaned, ‘garners’, ‘full ripen’d grain’ – subtly reinforces

the idea of the artist’s creation and his mind as a fertile landscape.

 Keats views his imagination as a field of grain, wherein he is both the man

harvesting, and the product is harvested.

 Lines 5-8

When I behold, upon the night’s starred face,

Huge cloudy symbols of a high romance,

And think that I may never live to trace

Their shadows with the magic hand of chance;

 The second quatrain shows Keats viewing the beauty of the natural world.
 This natural world, full of miracles, is what Keats decides he can transform into poetry;
 ‘when I behold, upon the night’s starred face,
 huge cloudy symbols of a high romance,and think that I may never live to trace / their
shadows with the magic hand of chance;’
 shows the nature of Keats’ fleeting beauty and contrasts the immortality of nature
with the transience of Keats’ verse.
 As an artist, he is terrified that he will die before doing justice to the beauty of
nature,
 However, paradoxically, he is also terrified of not achieving the artistry that he has
dreamed of, of not doing justice to the beauty of nature, even should the opportunity to
write about them present itself.
 The further reference to ‘high romance’ could also show Keats’ terrors about not
finding the right person to fall in love with.
 Keats feared being lonely, as well, and the woman that he met and fell in love with –
Fanny Brawne – was never consummated in a formal marriage, as her mother
wouldn’t give him consent to marry.
 He died betrothed to Fanny, in Italy, though it was clear from their discovered
correspondence that neither Fanny nor Keats believed they would meet each other
again in Keats’ final year alive.
 From a letter from Franny Brawne to Frances Keats, “All I do is to persuade myself, I
shall never see him again.”
 Lines 9-14
 And when I feel, fair creature of an hour,
That I shall never look upon thee more,
Never have relish in the faery power
Of unreflecting love—then on the shore
Of the wide world I stand alone, and think
Till love and fame to nothingness do sink.

 Final stanza of ‘When I have Fears that I may Cease to Be’, he turns to the idea of love.

 The use of the phrase ‘fair creature of an hour’ shows even his love is not immortal;

 The crux of this poem is the short nature of love, of creativity, of everything that had

given Keats a glimmering view on life.

 The opening of the quatrain with the word ‘and’ shows that it is an additional fear of

Keats’, to not only have never achieved artistic mastery but also to never see his

potential lover again (which, as history shows, turns out to be true; he never did see

Fanny Brawne alive again).

 Thus, we get to the dual terrors that haunt Keats’ life – the opportunities provided by life

and his inability to live up to them.

 Keats is terrified of failure, more than death, almost; to have achieved love and then to

lose it seems to Keats to be the biggest terror.

 The final two lines give ‘When I have Fears that I may Cease to Be’ an overarching

feeling of misery and despair – Keats finds himself standing alone, trying to

understand these fears, and not managing.

 Thus, no matter if he attains these fears, or if he doesn’t, Keats will still be anxious and
worried that life will still be scary.