Analysis Of When I Have Fears By John Keats

The similarities between the poems lie in their abilities to utilize imagery as a means to enhance the concept of the fleeting nature that life ultimately has and to also help further elaborate the speaker’s opinion towards their own situation. In Keats’ poem, dark and imaginative images are used to help match with the speaker’s belief that both love and death arise from fate itself. Here, Keats describes the beauty and mystery of love with images of “shadows” and “huge cloudy symbols of a high romance” to illustrate his belief that love comes from fate, and that he is sad to miss out on such an opportunity when it comes time for his own death.

By simply reading the title of the poem, one realizes that Yeats is giving out a warning to never love wholeheartedly. In the opening lines of the poem, “Never give all the heart, for love / Will hardly seem worth thinking of”, the speaker continues his warning.

From the first few lines Keats alludes to the great romances of the previous ages as opposed to William Shakespeare's great tragedies. While it could be discerned that Keats is referring to his poem

The speaker believes that love is hard to come by and that he is sad that he may not encounter it, since death is just around the corner. The speaker then also talks of “unreflecting love,” thus depicting that the speaker has never experienced real love and is unlikely to ever experience it, because he is so worried about death’s fast approach. However, at the end of “When I have Fears,” the speaker reflects that his goals for literary prowess and love are “nothingness” in comparison to the grand scope of things. There is hope after death, and Keats’ narrator finds solace in this. Although he has not achieved everything he had wanted, the speaker is still appreciative of what he was able to do. On the other hand, Longfellow’s speaker in “Mezzo Cammin” takes on a much more sorrowful and negative tone. Using diction of “half of my life,” “years slip,” and “not fulfilled,” Longellow shows that the speaker is really dreading and mourning his day to go. It seems that the speaker’s fear of death completely and irresolutely hinders him from accomplishing any of his goals. He is too busy being pessimistic about his life that he is unable to live in the present. He is also unable to dream into the future. Unlike Keats’ speaker, Longfellow’s speaker is completely stunted in from any possible growth. He is too stuck in the Past and its images of “smoking roof, soft bells, and gleaming lights.” This hazy

Keats’ father Benjamin worked as a waiter at a coffee shop in Greenwich Village and was therefore all too familiar with the struggle to make a better life for you and your family. Although he had a great appreciation for Keats’ work, he discouraged him from making it a career for fear that his son would not be able to support himself. On one occasion he went so far ¬¬ to purchase tubes of oil paint and then gave them to Keats under the false pretense that a starving artist had traded them for a bowl of soup. Fortunately for future readers of his works, Jack was not deterred from his passion for art. When Keats graduated from high school he was awarded the senior class medal for excellence in art. In a cruel twist of fate, his father Benjamin died of a heart attack the day before he was set to receive the award. Although his father never saw Jack receive the award, he learned of his support when asked to identify his father’s body. As he checked his father’s wallet after his death he found several preserved article clippings of all of his achievements. His father was proud of Keats and his work and remained a supporter until his last breath.

The similarities in the poem deal with similar topics expressed throughout the poem dealing with Keats’ and Longfellow’s fear of death. Differences between the two include the structure and the different images, metaphors and diction that they give off along with their different train of thoughts while writing the two poems. Their thoughts of the subject of death are able to relate to a variety of people because everyone is just human and cannot last forever. Just as these two poems show similar ideas can branch off into many different ideas and interpretations. The desire to continue to

But, we should first and foremost put this sonnet back in its context. We can easily presume that it is autobiographic, thus that Keats reveals us his own worries. In 1818, he is aware that he has short time left to live due to the fatal illness

“My Fear,” by Lawrence Raab is a haunting poem about fear itself and how no one can escape it. In this particular poem, fear becomes an omnipresent physical being that, “follows us,” and has something in its, “black sack of troubles” for everyone. While fear is often considered to be psychological since fear exists solely in our minds when we have nightmares, the poem concludes with the speaker's encounter with “Mr. Fear” before he slept. Thus, it can be inferred that the speaker has had a potentially traumatic experience with fear and proving that fear finds us all no matter what and it does not lie at our feet but towers above us menacingly.

Keats introduces the summation of the poem early, in the second part of the last line in quatrain four. This choice reflects how great his impending death weighs on his mind. In the final couplet, Keats’s dark views of love leave him to “stand alone” and not experience the love mentioned in the previous quatrain. Of course, “alone” might not necessarily mean devoid of love; he could mean that he’s alone because of his hopeless thoughts on the subject. Or he could mean he is alone because he does not have the emblems “Love” and “Fame.” “Wide world” dwarfs him, making it even sadder that in spite of all the vast opportunities he has had with different cultures,

Although the basic mood and intended idea of these poems may seem to be the same, the two ways in which these two messages are portrayed are different from one another through diction and imagery. Keats’ poem is much more romantic and enchanting, using eloquent symbols containing imagery such as when he says, “When I behold, upon the night’s starr’d face, /Huge cloudy symbols of a high romance,”(5-6). This complex symbol of imagery, complemented by the use of the word “love” twice in the poem, contribute to the poem being characterized as more romantic. On the other hand,”Mezzo

The fourteen-line, sonnet poem breaks into four obvious parts. Lines 1-4 are an exaggerated list of the reasons that Keats is afraid of dying young. In lines 5-6, Keats takes the time to “behold, upon the night's starr'd face” (V) the “huge cloudy symbols of a high romance” (VI). This point in the poem is light-hearted and reveals to the reader that Keats thinks on a different level than most humans. Lines 7-11 bring the reader back to the depressing list of reasons that Keats is so afraid of dying young. The turning point of the poem is in line 12. From line 1-11 Keats focuses almost completely on his own fears, but starting in line 12, he turns to the “wide world” (XIII), which is the key to all romantic

These poems are included because they had a strong feeling of mortality in them and summarize the concept of what Keats believed it to be. They were not the only two other topic that dealt with mortality but seemed to have a strong presence of it in them.

becoming any worse in the future since “a thing of beauty is a joy for

In the second stanza, the speaker beholds a piper joyfully playing under the tress for his lover to find him with song. “Are sweeter; therefore, ye soft pipes, play on; not to the sensual ear, but, more endeared. The use of imagery of the senses is effective here. For I consider poetry to be more musical in nature than literary text. The speaker claims to be hearing melodies emanating from the urn, which for me the sound transmission from the urn correlates to the finite aspects of fleeting love. While the nature of art of the urn seems to me to represent the exquisiteness and infinity of the universe. Indeed, the sounds of silence from art is akin to vastness of space and time. “She cannot fade, though, thou hast not thy bliss,” (line19). Keats is asking the readers to not grieve for him. Because, her beauty will not diminish over time it is everlasting.

Keats was very aware of his own mortality and his poetry reflected the intensity and the passion of a man who didn't have very long to live. His poetry remains some of the densest prose ever penned because, like his brief existence, he had to condense so much life into so little space. The thought of impending death would be enough to make anyone fall into hopeless despair but Keats's incredible talents and commitment to live in the moment perhaps allowed him to three lifetimes.