When I Have Fears That I May Cease To Be - The Text

The Text

When I have fears that I may cease to be
Before my pen has gleaned my teeming brain,
Before high grav'd 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 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.

John Keats
Bibliography
  • John Keats bibliography
  • List of poems by John Keats
Poetry collections
  • 1819 odes (1819)
Short poems
  • "On First Looking into Chapman's Homer" (1816)
  • "Sleep and Poetry" (1817)
  • "When I have Fears that I may Cease to Be" (1818)
  • "Ode to a Nightingale" (1819)
  • "La Belle Dame sans Merci" (1820)
  • "Ode on a Grecian Urn" (1820)
  • "Ode on Melancholy" (1820)
  • "Ode to Psyche" (1820)
  • "To Autumn" (1820)
  • "Bright star, would I were steadfast as thou art" (published posthumously, 1838)
  • "Ode on Indolence" (published posthumously, 1848)
  • "When I have Fears that I may Cease to Be" (published posthumously, 1848)
  • "You say you love; but with a voice" (published posthumously, 1914)
Long poems
  • Endymion (1818)
  • Isabella, or the Pot of Basil (1820)
  • Hyperion (1820)
  • Lamia (1820)
  • The Eve of St. Agnes (1820)
  • The Fall of Hyperion: A Dream (published posthumously, 1856-7)
Places
  • Keats House
  • Keats-Shelley Memorial House
People
  • Fanny Brawne
  • Charles Armitage Brown
  • Charles Cowden Clarke
  • Leigh Hunt
  • John Hamilton Reynolds
  • Joseph Severn
  • Percy Bysshe Shelley (see his poem on Keats: Adonaïs)

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