When I have fears that I may cease to be, by John Keats

When I have fears that I may cease to be, by John Keats

When I have fears that I may cease to be

  Before my pen has glean’d my teeming brain,

Before high piled books, in charact’ry,

  Hold like rich garners the full-ripen’d 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.

---

Alice