A poem meaning by John Keats?

Question

I have a poem by John Keats, it's called "when I have fears that i may cease to be." Can anyone tell me what it means?------------------------------------

"When I have fears that I may cease to be
Before my pen has glean'd my teeming brain,
Before high pil`d books, in charact'ry,
Hold like rich garners the full-ripen'd grain;
When I behold, upon the night's starr'd face, 5
Huge cloudy symbols of a high romance,
And feel 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, 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."

Answer 1

John Keats, one of the most brilliant young poets ever to have discovered his talent and commit himself to the life of a poet, must have known from his youth that he might die young.

His father had been killed in a freak accident riding a horse when John was only eight or nine years old. His mother died of tuberculosis when he was a young teenager. His younger brother Tom was obviously suffering from tuberculosis also.

Early in 1818, which turns out to be a fateful year for him, he wrote this sonnet, which begins, "When I have fears that I may cease to be / Before my pen has glean'd my teeming brain . . . ."

Knowing this about his life, I think you can figure out what he's saying in this sonnet. Though his own health still seems good, there is that memory of his mother's death and his awareness of his brother Tom's failing health.

He knows that the poetry he has written up to this point in his life--though better than the critics gave him credit for--is not the high romance that he hopes to write, that he knows he can eventually write.

He knows that he can reap poetry just as the farmers he sees as he walks in the countryside will harvest grain. He knows that stories which are still "cloudy symbols" in his mind like the clouds he sees in the sky on a starry night will one day become "high romance" if he can but live to write them down.

In 1818, Keats was in love with a young woman named Fanny Brawne. Eventually, they would become engaged, but because of his financial circumstances, they would keep their engagement a secret. It would not be revealed until more 75 years after his death.

In a letter written to Fanny on May 3, John had said this of his love for her:

"I have vex'd you too much. But for Love! Can I help it? You are always new. The last of your kisses was ever the gracefullest. When you pass'd my window home yesterday, I was filled with as much admiration as if I had then seen you for the first time. You uttered a half complaint once that I only lov'd your Beauty. Have I nothing else then to love in you but that? Do not I see a heart naturally furnish'd with wings imprison itself with me? No ill prospect has been able to turn your thoughts a moment from me."

But already he knows that death just might claim him before he and she are join in "unreflecting love." In his letter, he goes on to say that his love for her may be as much a subject of sorrow as joy, but he insists "I will not talk of that."

But in this sonnet young Keats pictures himself "on the shore / Of the wide world," standing alone and thinking "Till Love and Fame to nothingness do sink."

In 1818, he took a long walking tour with a friend in northern England, but John was forced to return early because of a persistent cough, an early sign (as he must have realized) of oncoming tuberculosis. Upon his return, he found his brother Tom in worsened condition, and John nursed him until his death in December.

In 1818, his second work of poetry was published. It was a long poem of fantasy called Endymion, but it received bad reviews from the stiff critics of the day and was not widely sold or read.

The poet John Keats lived only a little over two more years and never realized how famous his poetry would make him over all the world for centuries to come. In 1819 he wrote a series of odes, including "Ode on a Grecian Urn," "Ode to a Nightingale," and "To Autumn," that are all listed among the best poems in the English language. His romance "Lamia" and his unfinished "Hyperion" are among the best British narrative poems ever written. One can only wonder whether he might have written THE Great British Epic if he had lived but another few years.

But his love for Fanny was never consummated in marriage. She kept his letters until her death. She did not marry for another twelve years after his death. She wrote a letter to his younger sister, also named Fanny, regretting that his doctors took him away from her in England with the false hope that he might suffer less in the warmer climate of Italy: "he might have died here with so many friends to soothe him and me me with him. All we have to console ourselves with [she writes his sister] is the great joy he felt that all his misfortunes were at an end."

As John and his friend were sailing to Italy, where he knew he would almost certainly die, he copied one of his poems in his friend's copy of Shakespeare's poetry. It is often called his last poem; it is certainly a last statement of his love for Fanny. Here's the way the poem begins and ends:

Bright star! would I were steadfast as thou art—
Not in lone splendour hung aloft the night,

* * * * * * * * * *

No—yet still steadfast, still unchangeable,
Pillow’d upon my fair love’s ripening breast,
To feel for ever its soft fall and swell,
Awake for ever in a sweet unrest,
Still, still to hear her tender-taken breath,
And so live ever—or else swoon to death.

So in this life the young John Keats and his beloved Fanny Brawne never did get to "relish in the faery power / Of unreflecting love." But in his imagination and in his poetry, "Pillow’d upon [his] fair love’s ripening breast," he will live forever.

Answer 2

This poem is a typical Keats story of folklore. There are stories where "elfin" women lure men away from the world because they are lonely, but mortals arent meant to dwell with faery beings, so she kills them through ignorance, as they waste away as they dont eat or anything, hence teh 'pale kings' who were lured from the world, theior souls still enslaved. Even though the protagonist escapes, he still longs for the 'belle dame', as she truly did love him. Th epoem is typically Keats bacause one of the major themes of teh Romantic period of literature was rediscovery of traditional ballads and such, and Coleridge once said that he uses fantasy poems to show people the truth in nature, an dhow wonderful teh magic of nature is (all of this being a reaction against industrialisation and teeming cities, as teh poets feared teh end of country life)

Answer 3

This poem is about how the poet is afraid he will die before he does stuff like express all he wants to say and write books and how he may never fall in love that he will never see his loved ones faces again and never feel the power of unconditional love. when he thinks about all this he feels like he is standing on the shore of the sea and looking at the whole world and he is alone till time has changed so much there is no one famous or familiar he knows.

Answer 4

As a life long writer and one who enjoys Keats, I can only offer what is pretty obvious to me. I'll analogize it, and truly mean no offense to you, or him.

Have you ever made up a list? , such as one for groceries, or Christmas?

That's what John alludes to,,,But more, he is musing over the same things we all do, in that Mortality also controls "The List" and many "Fear" not having time enough to "Get it all done."

Steven Wolf

Answer 5

I believe it is talking about writers block and the feelings of going thru such an event