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Home  »  The Book of Georgian Verse  »  John Keats (1795–1821)

William Stanley Braithwaite, ed. The Book of Georgian Verse. 1909.

When I Have Fears That I May Cease to Be

John Keats (1795–1821)

WHEN I have fears that I may cease to be

Before my pen has glean’d my teeming brain,

Before high pilèd 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.