A poem written by 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 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.

"When I Have Fears" is a very personal confession of an emotion that intruded itself into the fabric of Keats’ existence from at least 1816 on, the fear of an early death. The fact that both his parents were short-lived may account for the presence of this disturbing fear. In the poem, the existence of this fear annihilates both the poet’s fame, which Keats ardently longed for, and the love that is so important in his poetry and in his life. As it happened, Keats was cheated by death of enjoying the fame that his poetry eventually gained for him and of marrying Fanny Brawne, the woman he loved so passionately. This fact gives the poem a pathos that helps to single it out from among the more than sixty sonnets Keats wrote. The "fair creature of an hour" that Keats addresses in the poem was probably a beautiful woman Keats had seen in Vauxhall Gardens, an amusement park, in 1814. Keats makes her into an archetype of feminine loveliness, an embodiment of Venus, and she remained in his memory for several years ; in 1818, he addressed to her the sonnet "To a Lady Seen for a Few Moments at Vauxhall." "When I Have Fears" was written the same year. One of his earliest poems, "Fill for Me a Brimming Bowl," written in 1814, also concerns this lovely lady. In the poem, he promises that "even so for ever shall she be / The Halo of my Memory."

You can visit this site to understand the poem and the poet : http://www.shmoop.com/when-i-have-fears/

Here is an interesting site to read about the major facts of Keats’ life, romanticism and poetry : http://romanticlitjohnkeats.weebly....