When I have Fears That I May Cease to Be
When I have fears that I may cease to be
Before my pen has gleaned my teeming brain,
Before high-pilèd books, in charactery,
Hold like rich garners the full ripened grain;
When I behold, upon the night’s starred 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.
Notes
Where Atwood stripped the cliché of love to reveal an ancient, demanding hunger, John Keats faces the terrifying threshold of an unfinished life, surveying his unharvested intellect like grain left ungathered in vast garners before mortality can sever the line. The speaking subject stands isolated on the wide shore of the world, tracing how his creative longings, the desire to trace the cloudy symbols of high romance and drink unreflecting love are mirrored back to him against the overwhelming, indifferent abyss of cosmic night. It anchors September’s theme of Echo in the acoustic void of mortal panic, where the soul casts its urgent voice across the edge of existence only to watch desire and earthly fame dissolve into absolute stillness until love and fame to nothingness do sink. #September #GracePale #Echo #fall #Poetry