When I Have Fears That I May Cease to Be

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1848

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Summary

Background

Poem Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Literary Devices

Form and Meter

A sonnet is usually a poem about love. Both types of English language sonnets are composed of a single stanza, 14 lines long. Shakespearean sonnets, so named for the English writer who made the form famous, are written in iambic pentameter. A Shakespearean sonnet is subdivided into three quatrains (grouping of four lines) and a final couplet (pair of two lines). The lines follow an ABAB CDCD EFEF GG rhyme scheme.

“When I Have Fears that I May Cease to Be” by Keats makes perfect use of the form and meter of a Shakespearean sonnet. Each line is exactly five iambs (one unstressed syllable followed by one stressed syllable) long. For example, Line 2:

“Before | my pen | has glean’d | my teem | -ing brain”

Keats marks the beginning of each quatrain with the repeated word “when.” Line 1, the first quatrain, begins: “When I have….” Line 5, the second quatrain, begins: “When I behold….” Line 9, the third quatrain, adjusts the refrain: “And when I feel….” The word “and” functions as a small pickup into the last quatrain. It adds mounting tension to the refrain and prepares the reader to encounter something new at the end of Line 12. That new thing leading into the final couplet is to complete the three-times begun “when I” phrase with the conclusion of the sentence: “then…” (Line 12).

Roughly half of the lines in the poem are slightly indented. These indentations visually mark the rhyme scheme. For example, the rhyming pair “face” (Line 5) and “trace” (Line 7) are not indented. The other pair in the same quatrain, “romance” (Line 6) and “chance” (Line 8), are both indented. The indented lines alternate through most of the poem because the rhyme scheme alternates lines. The last couplet is the exception to the alternating rhyme scheme, so it is naturally the exception to the indentation scheme: neither “think” (Line 13) nor “sink” (Line 14) are indented.

Diction

“When I Have Fears that I May Cease to Be” is full of lush and romantic descriptions. The grandiosity of the language matches the high-stakes subject matter, even if it is sometimes indulgent.

Keats makes liberal use of modifiers throughout the poem. The speaker’s brain is “teeming” (Line 2). The “symbols” in the night sky are both “huge” and “cloudy” (Line 6). The night has a face, and not just any face, but a “starr’d” (Line 5) one. The “high piled” (Line 3) books hold “full-ripen’d” (Line 4) grain. The poet emphasizes this, “in charact’ry” (Line 3), in its own discrete phrase. The speaker loves a “fair creature” (Line 9), and that love—“unreflecting” (Line 12) love, to be precise—has “faery power” (Line 11). All of these modifiers serve a practical purpose by filling out the lines to full iambic pentameter. At the same time, “fair” and “faery” appearing in such quick succession is a strong stylistic choice, and therefore isn’t one that caters to every taste.

Punctuation

Throughout the poem, apostrophes appear in place of letters to clarify the rhyme scheme. The apostrophe in “charact’ry” (Line 3) makes it crystal clear to the reader that the word is three syllables long. Omitting the letter “e” from “Glean’d” (Line 2) and “starr’d” (Line 5) slims both down to one syllable. Following this convention, the reader knows when they reach “high piled” in Line 3 that “piled” is certainly two syllables.

Exclamation points highlight places in the poem where the intensity mounts. Both exclamation points appear in the third quatrain. This being the last quatrain in the sonnet, it’s the poet’s last chance to build on the previous quatrain. The exclamation points appear on the first line (Line 9) and the last line (Line 12), functioning as bookends for the romance section of the sonnet.

Semicolons throughout the sonnet mark the end of discrete sections. Lines 4 and 8 coincide with the ends of the first and second quatrains and the beginning of the next. They also signal the beginning of a new parallel thought, since both semicolons are followed by a repeated “when” (Lines 5, 9). The em-dash in the middle of Line 12 serves a similar purpose. While the em-dash separates the idea of the third quatrain from the subject of the final couplet, it is a visually distinct piece of punctuation from the semicolon. As a result, the reader does not have to investigate far to understand that a thought is ending once again, but something altogether new is happening on the other end. The period at the conclusion of the poem is the only period in the whole poem. Punctuated as such, the poem functions as one single sentence, or one entire thought.