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 (865).

Keats wrote this poem around the same time that he was nursing his dying brother, so, it speaks on his fears of dying to soon. This is ironic, because, Keats actually dies three years later. This poem seems like the perfect example of leaving with unfinished business.

Keats worries that he may pass on before he has time to see his own success. He also worries about the things he may never be able to do again:

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 (865).

It’s funny how you never think about the little things until their gone, or in this case when they can be gone. Something as simple as counting the stars in the sky, can be gone in a second. We never do realize the small luxuries we have in life. And the things we spend the most time striving for mean nothing at all in the end.