When I Have Fears That I May Cease to Be

The speaker in “When I Have Fears that I May Cease to Be” is consumed by their fear of Death. The speaker’s fear is multifaceted. They’re afraid of leaving work unfinished (Lines 1-4), of not living life to the fullest (Lines 5-8), and of being separated from the one they love (Lines 9-12). The word “when” (Lines 1, 5, 9) clarifies that the fear is something they feel intermittently, and not just the moment in which the poem is written. This fear creeps up at regular, predictable times, like when they look up at the night sky’s “starr’d face” (Line 5). No matter what caused the fear or when they’re caught in the feeling, the speaker has just one solution: they sit and think in their isolation until “Love and Fame” (Line 14) become meaningless concepts. In one sense, this is a liberating experience. The concepts of love and fame lose their power over the speaker. On the other hand, this solution is tragically ironic. The speaker is terrified of losing love and fame, but by sitting in their fear, they have already surrendered exactly what death threatens to take.

While death is one of the major themes, the poem’s form and imagery reveal that the speaker has other, deeper fears. Skipping over the first word, the first line of the poem, “I have fears that I may cease to be” (Line 1), is a complete sentence. The subject, the speaker, is afraid of their life ending. Enjambing the sentence across the words “to be / Before my pen […]” (Lines 1-2) creates this first level of meaning. Crucially, the speaker continues. They are afraid of death because they are truly afraid of other things. In the first quatrain, the speaker is afraid of something wrecking their artistic practice, permanently barring them from realizing their dream of writing a big stack of books. In the second quatrain, the speaker is afraid of never living life to the fullest. The “cloudy symbols” (Line 6) are galaxies clustered in the sky. The “high romance” (Line 6) those clouds symbolizes any experience that excites the speaker or makes them swoon. In this interpretation, the speaker really fears missing out on that experience. Interpreted another way, the speaker really fears the all-powerful hand of fate. “The magic hand of chance” (Line 8) is fickle. The speaker might “live to trace” (Line 7) the imagistic shadows of stars, or they might not, and there’s nothing they can do about it either way. Finally, the speaker fears the end of their time with their mortal love, whom they call a “fair creature” of only “an hour” (Line 9). Permanent separation by death is painful because they want to “relish” (Line 11) in that “unreflecting love” (Line 12). If death looms, then the love is no longer unreflecting. The lovers have to savor each moment as something that can’t be retrieved, which turns each moment bittersweet. Death may be the uniting theme of these fears, but the speaker truly fears other, more terrifying prospects.