Title: When I have fears
Starter
• In pairs, discuss what you might
expect from a poem that starts
‘When I have fears’ written by a
young, talented poet.
L. Daly
T.W.I.S.T. – Listen + Note
Eng 2018 C Muire Cobh
Background
Influences
• Written in January 1818.
• Re-reading Shakespeare’s plays and
poems.
• Sonnet 60
• ‘Like as the waves make toward the
pebbled shore/So do our minutes hasten
to their end’
• Sonnet 64
• ‘When I have seen by Time’s feel hand
defaced/The rich proud cost of outworn
buried age’
• Time = Enemy (human
happiness/hope)
L. Daly
Eng 2018 C Muire Cobh
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,
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.
Quatrain 1
SUBJECT: Keats instantly
announces his concerns with the
transient nature of his own life. He
fears that he may die before he has
written all the poems he wants too.
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*,
Hold like rich garners the full-ripen'd grain;
IMAGERY: Keats employs the imagery of
farming corn to describe the act of writing.
He is comparing it to reaping a rich harvest.
charact’ry* - writing
- Quatrain 2 -
REPETITION: Throughout the poem, the words
“When” and “And” are repeated in the
quatrains linking each section of the poem and
giving the sonnet a sense of continuity.
SUBJECT: In the second
quatrain, Keats expands
upon these fears with a
specific reference that he
may never trace all the
“high romance” he sees
symbolised in the heavens.
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;
STRUCTURE: Keats’s use of the sonnet structure is very traditional in this
poem. Each line is clearly end-stopped as it coincides with the end of an idea.
- Quatrain 3 -
SUBJECT: In the third quatrain he addresses a woman
whom he met in a brief encounter to consider what he
may also be prevented from ever experiencing love.
TONE: is light.
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
REPETITION: of “And” clearly links
this quatrain to the one before.
IMAGERY: helps to create the final
central image, and leads into the
couplet.
Final Rhyming Couplet
Of the wide world I stand alone, and think
TONE: of these last two
lines is much heavier
then the lightness
suggested by the “faery
creature” earlier on.
Till love and fame to nothingness do sink.
SUBJECT: “The poet presents
an image of himself standing
alone on the shore of the wide
world with a all personal
ambitions and concerns erased
from his mind by the immensity
of what he contemplates.”
(Byron, p. 18)
KEY IDEAS: Keats is
questioning the permanency
of his own existence and
whether his death will deny
him fulfilment.
Shakespearean Sonnet – First Attempt
Structure
3 statements + Conclusion
• Three quatrains
• Two rhyming lines
• Not complex
• Single sentence – two main
verbs
• ‘When I have fears…’
• ‘stand’
• ‘think’ (ln 13)
L. Daly
• Stated in lines 1-4
• ‘When I behold…’
• Described in lines 5-8
• ‘And when I feel..’
• Lns 9-12
• ‘Then on the shore…I stand…and
think’
• What the speaker thinks is suggested
in line 14
Eng 2018 C Muire Cobh
•Keats regards immortality with
wonderment and admiration.
•He appreciates literature and art b/c they
endure.
•His own mortality is a source of worry
and sorrow.
•He is fearful he will not live long enough
to write everything he wants to write.
•Leaving behind great works may be his
only change at immortality.
Key Quotes
Lines 3-4:
Lines 7-8:
• “high-piled books . . . / Hold
like rich garners the full
ripened grain”
• “I may never live to trace /
Their shadows, with the
magic hand of chance.”
• Meaning? This image
symbolizes his completed
poems
• Meaning? I may never live to
write about all of the thoughts
and ideas I have.
Key Quotes
Lines 9-10:
• “And when I feel, fair creature of
an hour, / That I shall never look
upon thee more…”
• Meaning? And when I think that I’ll
never see you again, beautiful
creature…
• There is a contrast between
Keats’s isolated thoughts and the
world outside.
Themes
• Poetic ambition (lns 1-8)
• Love (lns 9-12)
• Passage of time
• The thoughts that he will never
again see the ‘fair creature’
causes the speaker to reflect on
the nature of time and its power
to destroy love.
L. Daly
Eng 2018 C Muire Cobh
Language
• In the first quatrain, there is a rich
combination of metaphor and
simile. (far more memorable than
literal expression)
• The imagery expresses the
speaker’s sense of the fertility of
his imagination and his hopes for
the ripening of his powers as a
poet.
• His brain is ‘teeming’ with creative
ideas which he fears he may not be
able to get written before he dies.
L. Daly
Eng 2018 C Muire Cobh