Keats
When I have fears
When I have fears that I may cease to be
Before my pen has glean'd my teeming brain,
Before high-piled books, in charact'ry
Hold like rich garners the full-ripen'd grain;
When I behold, upon the night's starr'd 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;
And when I feel, fair creature of an hour!
That I shall never look upon three more, 10
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.
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Written towards the end of January 1818, this is Keats's first sonnet in the Shakesperian form. Though regarded as a prophecy of his early death, the thought is a commonplace with him.
l. 3. - "charact'ry" - handwriting.
l. 9. - "fair creature of an hour" - Keats alludes to a chance meeting with an unknown lady in Vauxhall Gardens some years before. On 4 February 1818 he wrote another sonnet to her memory.
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