‘When I have fears that I may cease to be’ is a Shakespearean sonnet which consists of three quatrains followed by a rhyming couplet. It is written in iambic pentameter and follows the traditional rhyming scheme abab cdcd efef gg. Each quatrain contains a new idea, with the second and third quatrains also building on the ideas of the previous quatrain. The rhyming couplet then brings the poem to a conclusion in a powerful and epigrammatic (concise) way. This eloquent sonnet has a particular poignancy because it is about dying before achieving your full potential, and Keats himself died tragically young, aged just twenty-five. He wrote this poem in January 1818, just three years before his untimely death. When you consider all that he achieved in his short life, we can only imagine what he could have gone on to realise.
The first line of the sonnet emphasises the central idea of the poem – what if you die before achieving your potential? The phrase ‘cease to be’ is a gentle euphemism for death. The sibilance and assonance in this line give it a soft quality, yet the sentiment it expresses is not an easy thing to contemplate, as no one wants to die before their time. Keats worries that he might die ‘Before my pen has glean’d my teeming brain’, meaning that his mind is bursting with ideas, and he does not want to die before his pen has harvested all this creativity. Keats wants to fill ‘high-piled books’ with his ‘charactery’, a process that cannot be rushed any more than grain can be forced to ripen before its time: ‘Hold like rich garners the full ripen’d grain’. In short, Keats knows that he needs time to mature and come into his own as a poet, but he fears that he may not have this luxury.
In the second quatrain the poet reveals the subjects that he would like to fill his books with, including the stars in the night sky, which he sees as symbols of and inspiration for great
