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Eric Pedersen
English B1b
Bradley Stiles
13 Nov 2013
Keats’ Pathway to Acceptance
There are three things in life that are sure: death, taxes, and how much it taxes humanity
to avoid death. Of all the monolithic themes across the various media, life and death have been
carved deep into the human culture. Musicians have long sung to both the bright, cheerful life
and the cold, foreboding death. Writers have extolled the virtues and beauties of living and
bemoaned the woes of a dark or mysterious death. John Keats was no exception. In his poetry,
especially “When I Have Fears That I May Cease To Be,” “La Belle Dame sans Merci,” and “To
Autumn,” Keats establishes a persona that steadily progresses in its acceptance of mortality.
“When I have fears that I may cease to be” was likely influenced by the circumstances
surrounding Keats at the time. He had by 1818 lost both his father and his mother, both of which
were taken before their time. His father died due to a horse riding accident when he was age 8
and his mother died to tuberculosis 6 years later. Having been subject to these two experiences
and being the caretaker of his younger brother, Tom, who is also afflicted with tuberculosis, it
leaves little to wonder why Keats would be writing about “[ceasing] to be before [his] pen [had]
gleaned [his] teeming brain” (Keats 490, 1-2). The words rightly paint a fear that, while out of
place for most people in their prime, corresponds directly with Keats’ life. One writer, Stanley
Plumly, suggests that Tom was effectively Keats’ soul and, having lost this soul, his emotions
became “a melancholy mixture of fatalism, ambition, and profound affection” (169; 170). While
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it may not have been a direct result, Keats’ poetry certainly increases in intensity of emotion and
darkness.
This growing intensity is seen the following year with the writing of “La Belle Dame
sans Merci.” Perhaps noticing in himself the beginnings of tuberculosis or simply comparing the
loss of a love, Keats wrote of the pale Knight and the Lady in the Meads. The love and desire
that the knight has consumes him to the point of apparent death. However, the illness itself bears
some resemblance to the symptoms of consumption itself:
I see a lily on they brow
With anguish moist and fever dew,
And on they cheeks a fading rose
Fast witherith too (Keats 491).
Should the knight truly be suffering from consumptive illness, it can be viewed in another and
almost prophetic light, especially when compared with letters Keats wrote to his lover, Fanny
Brawne. He wrote, “I have two luxuries to brood over in my walks, your Loveliness and the hour
of my death” (qtd. in Chowdhury 7). The knight loitered, thinking only of the Lady and the dark
words of the “Kings and Princes.” Keats walked, thinking only of his love he would soon be
forced to leave and his impending death. Rather than avoidance, as so often felt in “When I have
fears that I may cease to be,” the feeling is more neutral. The knight waits for one or the other, be
it the return of his elfin romance or the merciless march of time. In place of a forgetting, there is
a remembering.
That remembering seems to steadily change to an accepting in his “To Autumn.” It opens
up with themes of abundance in harvest, telling of the “mellow fruitfulness” and honey that has
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“over-brimm’d” (Keats 493). Summer has ended and autumn has begun. It is a time for fruit to
be gathered and stored against the winter. The poem characterizes autumn as something to be
found “on a half-reap’d furrow sound asleep” and watching the apple press for hours (Keats
493). Keats by this time had begun his own battle with tuberculosis which he had already seen
take his mother and brother. He knew how the disease will progress and that there was little time
for him. Yet, he persisted in using words of plenty. The poem feels warm. It bemoans the passing
of a season but fully welcomes the harvest that summer has provided. Perhaps this sense of
security is overlooked. The choice of farming metaphors is not accidental. The first four lines of
“When I have fears […]” read:
When I have fears that I may cease to be
Before my pen has gleaned my teeming brain,
Before high piled books, in charactry,
Hold like rich garners the full ripened grain (Keats 490).
In this, “To Autumn” falls into a form of succession, superseding “When I have fears […].” This
new poem gives closure to the original line of thought. Perhaps there was some resentment or
some feeling that the season came early as evidenced by the “mellow fruitfulness” or the
“conspiring” of the sun (Keats 493) However, like the year, his life was coming to an end.
Fall arrived and Keats had begun to put up his fruits against the winter. It may never be
known if, at his final moments, he considered his harvest sufficient to last. He may have ceased
to be, as he feared, but he has most certainly achieved his goals of love and fame. They simply
came in a later season.
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Works Cited
Chowdhury, Soma. “My Fair Love.” Pegasus 1.3 (1999): 6-7. PDF. 13 Nov 2013.
Keats, John. "La Belle Damme sans Merci." Literature: A portable Anthology. Ed. Gardner,
Lawn, Ridl, and Schakel. Boston: Bedford/St. Martins, 2013. 491-492. Print.
---. "To Autumn." Literature: A portable Anthology. Ed. Gardner, Lawn, Ridl, and Schakel.
Boston: Bedford/St. Martins, 2013. 493-494. Print.
---. "When I have fears that I may cease to be." Literature: A portable Anthology. Ed. Gardner,
Lawn, Ridl, and Schakel. Boston: Bedford/St. Martins, 2013. 490. Print.
Plumly, Stanley. "This Mortal Body." Kenyon Review 29.3 (2007): 164. MasterFILE Premier.
Web. 13 Nov. 2013.