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

Symbols & Motifs

The Pen

The “pen” (Line 2) in “When I Have Fears that I Will Cease to Be” is a symbol for artistic creation. Books are just the vessels to hold all the speaker’s best ideas. It’s “in charact’ry” (Line 3) for them to do so. The pen gains supreme importance as the tool that brings “high piled books” (Line 3) into existence. The pen represents the moment in the creative process when inspiration strikes. Great writing happens when the writer’s ideas mature into clarity. Taken another way, the pen moves, brings thoughts into physical being, and makes those thoughts clear as the stark difference between shadow and light. The laudable accomplishment of creation is appropriately challenging. If the speaker wants to trace “shadows” (Line 8) with ink, they will do so alongside (or perhaps in spite of) the competing hand of chance and all its powers. It takes the skill to trace and the courage to pick up the pen.

Nature

Imagery from the natural world abounds in the poem. The speaker equates their thoughts with grain. In the extended metaphor, the pen is the gleaning instrument, and books are “rich garners” (Line 4) that store the grain. Good, mature thoughts are grain left to fully ripen, then harvested at the peak.

Abstract images such as shadows at the edge of the known world are rooted in natural landscapes. Shadows for tracing are made from the light cast by the moon and stars. The most unknowable thing, the unseen place at the end of the world, is water deep enough for love and fame to sink in. Supernatural forces are rooted in equally inexplicable but familiar forces. “Magic” is linked with “chance” (Line 8). “Faery power” (Line 11) with its exciting and mischievous implications is made familiar but no less imposing as a descriptor of “love” (Line 12).