John Keats When I Have Fears That I May Cease To Be

John Keats’s poem, When I Have Fears that I May Cease to Be, conveys the equivocal and elusive state of our futures. Yet in the poem, Keats provides, in a traditional Romantic fashion, a brutal, but incredibly honest depiction of the world. Keats offers a reminder of the state we exist in, leaving us with a lesson in perspective and also in a state of discomfort.
Keats’ poem begins with a dominantly apprehensive tone mitigated by an underlying hopeful voice. The first line of the poem exactly mirrors the title suggesting a sense of worry. However, despite being a work centered on the fact of death, Keats employs the phrases “fears” and “may cease to be” indicating uncertainty as opposed to an affirmation of his knowledge of death. His word choice subtly indicates a difference between to
Just as Keats initially fears he will die before he writes “high pil’d books”, he also fears that he “may never live to trace” the “shadows” of “huge cloudy symbols of a high romance” nor “relish in the faery power of unreflecting love”. However, where these subsequent fears differ from the initial fears is that Keats cannot find hope in them for an escape from “[ceasing] to be”. Rather, the mysterious, covered, and magical imagery that these later fears connote communicate to Keats his insignificance. As Keats becomes hidden beneath “huge cloudy symbols” he adopts a tone of disappointed acceptance of his position as evidenced by the line “I shall never look upon thee more”. This comprehension of his inconsequentiality allows Keats to let his own love die and recognize that neither love can be saved from death, nor can an existing or unfulfilled love suspend his own death. Keats concludes that “till love and fame to nothingness do sink” by relating his thoughts on love to his original hope in fame and realizing that neither can stop his