Stephen Donner
L202
9/18/2004
Fear as an Inhibitor
In John Keats’ “When I Have Fears”, he reflects on his own impending mortality and the resulting fears of being unable to tend to the important things in his life. Keats uses Shakespearean sonnet to introduce and then talk about three of them; one in each quatrain, followed by a mere mention of the fourth and final one in the last line of the couplet.
Each quatrain begins by reiterating a variation on the title “When I Have Fears”, and in each first line continues by referring to or directly addressing the goal or object he fears leaving in an incomplete state. The major turn begins with the last line in the final quatrain, and culminates with his final realization in the couplet regarding the significance of his concerns.
Setting up the poem through the first quatrain, Keats introduces us to the origin and nature of his fears – his own mortality – and then begins to flesh out the specifics of the first fear he has: not being able to capture all of his prose before he dies. Vividly, he describes his brain as “teeming” in the second line, and compares the process of capturing his poetry on paper to garnering grain, thus conveying he feels his mind is highly active and full of future great works.
The second quatrain draws focus to his second fear, which I believe could be interpreted as either the loss of ability to explore the wonders of nature upon death, or, in a slightly more esoteric gesture, referring to his unending quest for knowledge and fascination with learning. In the first two lines of this second quatrain, he writes of the “night’s starred face” (5), giving it personification, and further mentions “Huge cloudy symbols of a high romance” (6). He continues, “And think that I may never live to trace / Their shadows, with the magic hand of chance;” (7-8). He’s referring to the stars in the sky, and since stars don’t have shadows, I interpret this as a metaphor to describe his delight in acquiring new knowledge.
In his third quatrain, Keats breaks away from his usual pattern of passing reference to an object or idea; instead he directly addresses someone, (I’m assuming a lover), who he terms “...fair creature of an hour” (9), suggesting transience. By calling it “unreflecting love” (12), he limits the relationship to something less than total and abounding, but perhaps this constraint is due to time, and were he to have more time to cultivate it, it could transform into a deeper relationship.
In his couplet, Keats’ turn:
“... —then on the shore
Of the wide world I stand alone, and think
Till Love and Fame to nothingness do sink.” (13-14).
expresses that his ideals – Love and Fame (which is introduced directly for the first and only time in the text here), so noted by their proper noun treatment – have been devalued, because he’s worried about them so. I believe this serves as a caution to us not to live our lives with fear; rather live each day anew, with its potential and live life to the fullest, lest we spend all of our time worrying, and not enough time spending energy on what we should, because death is inevitable anyway.
Posted by stephend at September 26, 2004 02:22 PM