The poem, “When I Have Fears that I May Cease to Be”, by John Keats, uses metaphor, romantic imagery, and figurative language to reflect the speaker’s fear of dying without accomplishing what he aspires for in life which is success and fame in his writing and the love of one who will never love him back. In his writings, I think he is also saying to live you life to the fullest. To try to experience every little thing in life and to take advantage of it because we only live once. John Keats died at a young age from tuberculosis.
The speaker, aware of his approaching death, expresses his fear that he will deprived of the three things he most greatly values: to write poetry of his many ideas, to experience the wondrous mystery of nature and gain inspiration from it, and to experience the magical power of passionate love: When I have fears I may cease to be Before my pen has gleaned my teeming brain, Before high-piled books, in charact’ry, Hold like rich garners the full-ripened grain; (Keats 1-4) In the first quatrain, the speaker fears he will die before he will be able to fill his books with all his thoughts in his mind.
He feels as if his brain is overflowing with these thoughts and has to get them on paper. He uses a metaphor to compare writing his books to harvesting ripened grain. In line 3, he uses a metaphor, he writes about his “high piled” books which represent his life accumulation of poetry; fearing that he will not succeed and be forgotten. In the first quatrain it also starts with the question “What if I died today? ” If he dies before he has written lots of books, which hold his words like a grain silo holds ripe grain.
The speaker considers his fear of death and its relation to the lack of time necessary for completing his mission which, as he states in Sleep and Poetry, he has undertaken himself (Infomotions, Incorporated). The speaker feels that he will die before he has his many great ideas written in poetry. ‘Pen’ suggests that his ideas will be used to write. ‘Teeming’ suggests that the speaker is still full of life and ideas, which contrasts with his approaching death. Emotion is stirred by the potential greatness of the speaker being cut short by his death.
The speaker’s potential written works would fill up many books. That the books are piled up like a tower mirrors the shape of a grain silo. The use of old-fashioned word ‘charactery’ suggests that the speaker’s works are timeless and unique. The books are again compared to silos (‘garners’), which will hold all of his written work. The speaker’s work is compared to ‘full ripened grain’. That they are ripened suggests the time it took to write them and that his writing is mature in content: 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; (Keats 5-8) In the second quatrain, there is a metaphor. He restates his fear that he will never live long enough to get his thoughts on paper. John Keats uses romantic aspects such as the image of the night sky and the shadows of huge clouds to create this metaphor. It also shows the speaker looking into the clouds as the symbols of high romance. And that any sort of love is dependent on good luck or chance. Imagery is also shown in lines 6-7, tracing the face of love with the hand of chance. Night’ suggests mystery and reminds us of the speaker’s approaching death. The night is personified as having a face. The speaker wishes to unravel the mysteries of nature which are masked in mystery (‘cloudy’).
These mysteries all point to a hidden spiritual dimension, which is suggested by ‘high’. ‘Romance’ suggests that the speakers is a romanticist which, characteristically, put great emphasis on the power of imagination and emotion. The speaker feels that he will not get the opportunity to define or make sense of nature’s mysteries (‘shadows’). Magic’ suggests something unexplainable or divine. ‘Chance’ has the dual meaning of luck/coincidence or opportunity: And when I feel, fair creature of an hour, That I shall never look upon thee more, Never have relish in the fairy power Of unreflecting love;– then on the shore” (Keats 9-12) In the third quatrain, Keats uses romantic imagery of a fair creature who is representative of a woman who he cares for but who doesn’t love him back. He wants to “relish in [her] fairy power” but he knows that she will never love him because her love is “unreflecting”.
The speaker now mentions his encounter with a beautiful stranger. ‘Creature’ suggests that the women was almost inhuman and a product of nature, and hence mysterious. ‘Hour’ may suggest that beauty is temporary or it may refer to the speaker only seeing the women briefly. The speaker fears that he may never see her again. ‘Thee’ is old-fashioned which may suggest that the women is unordinary. The speaker also fears that he may never experience passionate love. ‘Fairy’ suggests the magical and unexplainable quality of love, it is also an old-fashioned word, suggesting that love is timeless. Unreflecting’ suggests that the speaker’s love is either not returned by the women or is extremely shallow, being based purely on her physical appearance. ‘-’ suggests that his fantasies and hopes for the future are now cut off by his approaching death.
It may also mean that he has accepted these things are now unachievable and that he now looks to his death instead of the things that could have been. The shore is often representative of a boundary or cross roads: Of the wide world I stand alone, and think Till love and fame to nothingness do sink. Keats 13-14) In the couplet, the speaker is the romantic hero, all alone, worrying about the world surrounding him. The world is evidently to him so huge and the speaker is just one person standing alone thinking about life and his worth. The speaker also shows fear leading to thoughts of nothingness. The repetition of the ‘w’ in ‘wide world’ suggests the vastness of the world and the many things he will never live to experience. The speaker will reflect on his short life until his ability to love and his short lived fame as a poet end in nothingness (he dies).
The image of the speaker pulling away from the world to stand on its shore is another one of the huge gestures. It allows him to imagine love and fame as both the most important things in the world and as absolutely unimportant. (Keats 12-14) The repetition of ‘when’ and ‘before’ suggests the passing of time and makes us aware that the speaker is aware of his own lack of time (his threatening death). In almost every line in Keats poem offers up a new form of figurative language. In addition to the aspects already analyzed there were more concepts of figurative language embedded in the poem.
Keats uses personification to great effect; he portrays love and fame as actual human begins when he is talking about them throughout the whole poem as they are recurring and were given traits such as the ability to run from Keats and to imply that eventually love and fame will be his demise and they will push him towards death. There is also symbolism in this poem. The symbol that is present is of death and how it is significant in how a person will view life. Death can cause an individual to try and fulfill all his desires or it could cause him/her to re-evaluate life and to determine what is important to them in the long run.
Also the way death is presented in this poem may also cause someone to realize that they do not wish to live in a world where they are constantly reminded of their failures in the world. John Keats also uses a certain dialect to make his point well known. He uses Shakespearean dialect because some of the ideas that he uses also one that were discussed by Shakespeare in many of his poems. Also it could help the audience get better acquainted with the poem if they could familiarize this work with another from a writer such as Shakespeare.