When I have fears that I may cease to be

Even without reading past the title of John Keats's "When I have fears that I may cease to be," it is obvious that he is talking about his own trepidations, specifically those involving death. But while this is accurate in a broad sense, Keats actually focuses less on actual loss of life than on running out of time before he is able to accomplish two life goals that are important to him. Simply put, Keats, through the speaker of the poem, wants to put to paper all of the thoughts and poems still in his head, as well as fulfill a romance with the unnamed woman to whom the poem is addressed. While this is a relatively simple basis for a poem, the idea of dying before meeting one’s goals is an incredibly frightening notion, and Keats’s (tragically founded) fears of death create an atmosphere of inevitability and regret that permeate the poem.
Perhaps the saddest element of Keats’s “Fears” is that it turned out to be an eerily timely piece of foreshadowing. Keats wrote the poem in 1818, at the ripe age of 23. He died less than three years later. While there is no evidence that Keats was suffering from tuberculosis, the disease that eventually ended his life, in 1818, he had certainly seen plenty of death around him before this point. Tuberculosis, it seemed, ran in the family as both his mother and brother fell victim to the disease before Keats. For this reason, he would certainly have reason to be curious about having one’s life ended prematurely. The lines about the unnamed woman in the poem also seem to fit, as in 1818 Keats moved next door to a woman named Fanny Brawne, who he quickly fell in love with. Brawne did not immediately reciprocate Keats’s affection, and he was understandably anxious about her not returning his feelings for her. While there is an important distinction between speaker and poet, there are too many parallels between the attitude expressed by the speaker and events in Keats’s own life for the two to be entirely separate.
At the beginning of the poem, the reader is exposed Keats’s desire to write prolifically, as is evidenced by the fact that first reason for not wanting to die is that he wants to put to paper all of the ideas in his “teeming brain.” He refers to his brain as a storehouse of grain, a storehouse that needs to be emptied before it is too late. This creates the idea that not only does Keats enjoy writing, but also that he must write, to the point that one of his greatest fears is not being able to finish writing. There are several reasons why this may be so. Maybe he actually does enjoy the process of writing poetry this much, but the language in the first few lines suggests an entirely different motive for not wanting to stop writing. The notion that he wishes to write “high-piled books” worth of poetry seems to indicate a desire to publish, rather than just a desire to write. And this, in turn, may suggest that what Keats is truly searching for is the “fame” that he mentions in the final line of the poem, a desire to be remembered long after his mortal death. One can certainly understand how, to someone obsessed with being remembered for their work, the idea of dying before doing enough to be immortalized is a frightening one.
Keats’s next fear is equally complex, as he then turns his attention to his anxiety about losing his chance to fulfill unrealized love. The cloud metaphor creates the image that love is billowing on the horizon, within reach if only he survives to grasp them. Keats, as an English Romantic poet, seems to be as fond as some of his peers of idealizing love, and he desperately wishes to experience love before he dies. This is especially important to him because Brawne, the person that one could infer that poem is written to, did not return Keats’s affection until later.
The prevailing themes of the poem involve the inevitability of death as well as the regret that the speaker would feel if his life ended today. This stays true in the final couplet, where the speaker comments that death eventually conquers love and fame, causing them to sink “to nothingness.” The prevailing image at the end of the poem is a metaphor comparing death to the shores of an ocean, a place where all life eventually washes up. Keats’s poem demonstrates the power of death to take, to take away his writing, his fame, his love and, inevitably, his life. However, it also shows the importance of life, short and transitory as it is, by demonstrating the importance of making the most of it while one is still able. Keats was able to do this, assuaging both of the fears he sets forth in the poem, his love as well as his everlasting fame, before his untimely death.