John Keats - When I Have Fears that I May Cease to Be | Poetry reading with text

A recitation of one of the most famous poems by English Romantic poet John Keats (1795-1821).

The poem is an Elizabethan sonnet often referred to simply as "When I Have Fears". Written when Keats was 22, it expresses the author's fear of an early death preventing him from reaching his full potential as a poet and tearing him away from his woman's love and the world's beauty. The end of the sonnet expresses a coming to terms with these fears through acceptance of the ultimately transient nature of love and fame.

The poem was written in 1818 and first published in 1848.

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"When I Have Fears" by John Keats

When I have fears that I may cease to be
Before my pen has glean'd my teeming brain,
Before high piled books, in charactry,
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 thee more,
Never have relish in the fairy 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.