John Keats Poems

 About John Keats:

John Keats was an English Romantic poet born in London in 1795. After losing both parents at a young
age he went on to study medicine and earned his apothecary license, entitling him to work as a surgeon.
He was determined to write poetry instead. Keats was welcomed into the literary circle of publisher
Leigh Hunt where he became acquainted with Percy Bysshe Shelley and John Reynolds. Hunt published
his sonnets "On First Look into Chapman's Homer and Solitude in The Examiner in 1816. He later
published Keats first collection, Poems, in 1817, which was met with bad reviews. He published
Endymion in 1818. The epic poem was also harshly received, with critic John Wilson Hartgrove writing
"It is a better and a wiser thing to be a starved apothecary than a starved poet, so back to the shop,
Mr John, back to the plasters, pills, and ointment boxes." Some believed he never quite got over the
critical rejection, Lord Byron among them, who later wrote that Keats was "snuffed out by an article."
Later, he moved in with his friend Charles Brown, during which time he met and fell and love with Fanny
Brawne, whose family rented half of the house. It is believed that at some point they were engaged to
be married, but that Keats would not move forward until he could provide properly for her. He fell ill in
1920 and moved to Rome for its warmer climate. The same year, he published his third and final volume
of poetry, Lomλία, isabella. The Eve of St. Agnes, and Other Poems. It was much better received than his
first two collections and is now known as one of the most important works ever published. Though he is
regarded as one of the finest lyric poets in history, would have been as surprised as his early critics to
find himself in the comparry of the other Romantic poets. He died in 1821 at the age of 25 still believing
"I have left no immortal work behind me-nothing to make my friends proud of my memory and insisted
that his friends inscribe on his gravestone "Here lies One Whose Name was writ in Water."

Ode on a Grecian Urn

 Significance of Poem:
Nowadays, we tend to think of urns as fancy things that people keep in their gardens, or as receptacles
for dead people’s ashes after they have been cremated. But in Ancient Greece, urns came in many
different shapes and sizes. Some urns served a household need: to hold stuff, like that 40 gallons of olive
oil that you’re saving for the winter. Other urns, like the one in this poem, were clearly more decorative
and were works of art. By calling it a Grecian urn, Keats assumed his audience would know he was
talking about Ancient, nor modern, Greece. Back in the 19th century, every educated person had read at
least some Greek writing. Ancient Greece was associated with learning and high culture, but also with
noble country living and a slow pace of life. In particular, rebellious poets (like Keats) who didn’t want to
write about the other huge literary subject of Western civilization – Christianity – could write about
classical culture instead and most people wouldn’t think twice about it. The poetic form of the "ode"
was developed in Ancient Greece, so Keats is using a Greek form to talk about the Greek object.
 Keats Purpose for writing Poem:
Urns were used to store the ashes of the dead. From the title, Keats introduces the theme of mortality
as the urn is a tangible symbol of death. Tales of great Greek heroes were often inscribed on pottery,
with images detailing their adventures and bravery. In a letter to Fanny Brawne (his fiancée), dated
February 1820, Keats said 'I have left no immortal work behind me – nothing to make my friends proud
of my memory.' Keats was dying from tuberculosis. He had witnessed his youngest brother die from the
ailment earlier in 1819, at only 19 years old. At the time of writing 'Ode on a Grecian Urn', he was aware
that he also had the disease and his health was rapidly deteriorating. He had studied medicine, before
dropping it to focus on poetry, so he recognised the symptoms of tuberculosis. He died from the illness
just two years later, in 1821. Keats was introduced to the theme of mortality early on in his life, when his
mother died from tuberculosis when he was 14 years old. His father had died in an accident when Keats
was 9 and so he was left orphaned. Ode on a Grecian Urn' was written during the Romantic era and as
such falls under the literary tradition of Romanticism. There were two waves of Romanticism. The first
wave included poets such as William Wordsworth, William Blake, and Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Keats
was part of the second wave of Romantic writers; Lord Byron and his friend Percy Shelley are two other
notable romantics. An urn contains death (in the form of ashes of the deceased) and on its outer
surface, it defies death (with its depiction of people and events immortalised forever). The choice to
write about an urn introduces us to the poem's principal theme of mortality and immortality.
 Historical Background:
“Ode on a Grecian Urn” was written in May of 1819 when Keats was 23 years old and his life was in
emotional turmoil. In the previous six months his brother Tom had died, and he had met and fallen in
love with Fanny Brawne who, at the time the poem was written, lived next door to him in Hamstead. It
was a period of intense creativity during which Keats wrote his great odes; in them, he explored his
emotions by addressing, describing and questioning some idea or symbol that he celebrated. Keats's
odes are a form of meditative poetry. In meditation, a person thinks intensely upon and draws
conclusions from a subject. The subject may be imagined in detail as if it were actually present. During a
time when ancient Greece was being rediscovered through archeological excavations and travel, as well
as books and exhibitions of Greek cultural artifacts, Keats projected his concerns about living fully, love,
art, religion, death and eternity upon an Grecian urn. Because the urn Keats describes has been shown
by scholars including Claude Lee Finney to be a composite of details from various sources, the poem is a
commentary upon an imagined work of art. By writing an ode, originally a Greek poetic form, Keats is
making his own claim to permanence. The “Ode On A Grecian Urn” is Keats's own “silent form” meant to
perform a similar function—“tease us out of thought”—as that of the original Greek urn, that, ironically,
does not exist (unlike Keats's poem about it). “Ode on a Grecian Urn” concludes with the urn saying
“Beauty is truth, truth beauty,” and the poet commenting “—that is all / Ye know on earth, and all ye
need to know.” In themselves, such statements are close to nonsense. Truth and beauty belong to
radically different realms, and there is nothing especially true about, say, a beautiful automobile or dog.
We can test a scientific truth, but there is little to make us agree about the beauty of a car or animal. We
say beauty is in the eye of beholder. Keats is using paradoxical language to make a claim for an
alternative kind of truth. This claim makes sense within the logic of the poem, but it is also meant to
have a wider application to how we view reality. The poem makes claims about the value and uses of art
(and poetry) as represented by the urn, in contrast to other kinds of truth. These other kinds of truth
might be scientific, religious, or philosophical, but the poem says clearly that “on earth” we can not
know anything more true than what we will learn from art. Early 19th century Romanticism,
characterized by passionate attachment to nature’s wild purity, were balanced with Neoclassicism, a
reasoned appreciation of the themes and proportions of traditional Greek and Roman culture. These
two strands were intertwined in the Romantics’ enthusiasm for both ancient and contemporary Greece,
including the freedom fighters. Keats wrote this poem in 1819, soon after one of the most important
developments in the British obsession with Greek art. The Parthenon sculptures were removed from
Athens by Lord Elgin and shipped to London, where he began to display them in his own museum in
1807. After their transfer to the British Museum, they went on view in 1817. The controversy over their
ownership was already underway, and the sight of them inspired lovers of Greece, or Philhellenes, to
support their struggle for independence from the Ottoman Empire. Lord Byron actually joined the fight,
and died in Greece in 1824. Additional attention to Roman traditions came about the same time. After
the French occupied southern Italy under Napoleon, their control of Naples lasted until 1815. During this
period, additional and more systematic excavation of the ruins of Pompeii was conducted, bringing to
light new information about the vanished city. The way Keats writes about the urn itself combines the
Romantic with the Neoclassical. Scholars have concluded that it is not one actual, specific urn, but Keats’
mental composite of several he had likely seen, in images or on display. He is concerned both with the
scenes and beings depicted. He is fascinated by the ancient Greek deities as they assumed mortal form,
wondering if the urn shows real people or gods, and where the action takes place. Not only his
admiration for the skill of the artist in creating such a lovely work of art, but his curiosity about the
content of the scenes is piqued by contemplating this exceptionally fine work. As the lovers do not quite
come together, their imminent love last forever. The frozen beauty of the urn, like that of the ancient
works newly brought to light, in the poet’s mind has eternal life.
 Structure and Form:
Ode on a Grecian Urn" is organized into ten-line stanzas, beginning with an ABAB rhyme scheme and
ending with a Miltonic sestet (1st and 5th stanzas CDEDCE, 2nd stanza CDECED, and 3rd and 4th stanzas
CDECDE).

 Theme of Poem:

o The poem’s central theme is the transient nature of human existence. The scenes on the urn
evoke stories of romantic pursuit and religious ceremony. In reality, such scenes come to pass in
brief moments. The urn provides a space where such stories can be frozen and made essential.
Thus the poem itself is a kind of urn. The poem pulls images, figures, and ideas from the
ceaseless flow of life and distills them for study and reflection.
o One could then say that another of Keats’s themes is the value of art in offering a space for
timeless reflection. As the poem’s final lines claim, pure aesthetic experience is in itself the
source of all truth: “‘Beauty is Truth, Truth Beauty,’—that is all/Ye know on earth and all ye need
to know.’” In life we are subject to ceaseless motion and the endless ticking of the clock. Beauty
can only reveal itself in moments of complete presence, in which the normal flow of time is
suspended. Thus urns and poems invite us to encounter real beauty.

Time: The main thing that captures the speaker’s attention about this urn is that the figures on it are
frozen in time in the middle of what they were doing and will remain there, unchanged, for eternity. The
“bold lover” will never kiss the girl he is pursuing, but then, she will never age either. The boughs will
never lose their leaves. The piper will be “For ever piping songs for ever new,” and the ceremonial
procession will always be on its way to the sacrifice. Of course, these claims are only true in the
imaginary sense, since there are no real lovers, trees, musicians, or procession but only a picture of
them; so it is not that they will always be doing what they are but that they never have. In asking us to
take the leap of imagination that would let us pretend that these pictures have real lives, Keats is
skipping over one of the basic facts about time: time is motion. Another way to say the same thing is to
point out that time is change. Age is not just a product of time, it is time. Time passes for people
because their bodies wear down, but if that did not happen, time would still pass because they have
done different things today than they did yesterday. When Keats presents the figures on the vase as
having had life but being frozen in eternity, he is casually getting the reader to accept a bigger
contradiction than it seems at first, because the figures actually do have some pull of time if they exist at
all. In stanza 4 Keats extends one half of his contradiction by speaking of a little town that is not even
shown on the urn. If the ceremonial procession had moved, it would have come from this place, and if it
could move, it would go home to it. The members of the procession, however, have never really existed
anywhere except right where the poet sees them. By imagining another place in their world, he is
imagining a change of time in their world while also saying that everyone in their world is frozen in
place.

Art and Experience: For almost two hundred years, critics have wondered what to make of this
poem’s last two lines. These lines sound convincing, but the ideas of “truth” and “beauty” do not really
have anything to do with this frozen slice of life. In fact, Keats makes it sound a far cry from beautiful
when he calls it “Cold Pastoral” in the middle of the last stanza. But the poem is not claiming that
“beauty is truth” is all that we know in this world. Throughout the poem—from the very first word—the
speaker is talking to the urn. This form of poetry is known as an apostrophe. There is no reason to
believe that the “ye” of the last line is any different. The crucial phrase is even introduced with “to
whom thou sayest” and is put in quotation marks, indicating that this is all that the urn knows or needs
to know. So “truth is beauty, beauty truth” only applies in the place where all activity is stuck in one
moment. We can certainly see the beauty: the lovers are in love, the music of the pipe is sweet, the
trees are always full, and the people attending the sacrifice have the joy of anticipation. But where is the
truth in all of this? It is a limited truth. The poem draws attention to how many questions this urn cannot
answer, and those answers are therefore not part of these people’s world. The urn has no answer for
questions about the people and place it shows or what the sacrifice is all about. These are facts that will
be no more real a thousand years from now than they were a thousand years before Keats’s time. One
way of looking at the “truth and beauty” statement is to consider that the scene on the urn is true and
beautiful because it is self-contained: it has no need for answers, and so it will always have found its
truth, unlike real life, where new details always rise up and make truth and beauty elusive. This fits with
the usual idea of beauty being at least partly a mystery, but we do not usually think of truth as only
being true within a sealed, narrow context. The common factor to both truth and beauty in this poem is
that they both occur when you know all that you need to know, regardless of what is happening around
you. What Keats does not answer in this poem is whether such fulfillment is possible for a human being
or if it can only happen to an inanimate object.

Love: The vision of love that this poem presents is not one of lovers coming together, as if love is all
anticipation and is only ruined when lovers have a chance to stop anticipating and reach their goal.
According to this poem, then, love is never a happy circumstance: either the lover is struggling to get
what they want or else love is reached and therefore becomes less interesting. It is either untouchable
or unwanted. Neither option seems very desirable, although the poem tells us that, if we were able to
choose one, the eternal chase would be a “happy” state of affairs. The poem’s premise that unrealized
relations are the best is consistent with the idea that “unheard melodies are sweeter,” making the
imagination more responsible for happiness than anything that occurs outside of it. We cannot be
certain, though, that this is what Keats meant or if he was being ironic about the way society
emphasized the pursuit too much. An artist with his extraordinary verbal ability might use a simple word
such as “happy” once to express what is in the lovers’ hearts, but there seems to be a little sarcasm
involved when the same voice that has the agility to say “She cannot fade, though thou hast thy bliss”
goes on to repeat with insipid insistent cheer, “More happy love! more happy, happy love!” Either the
speaker is chanting this way because he is caught up in the joy of the urn-people’s love or he is mocking
the over-simplicity of their situation. If his tone is actually mocking, and if he actually does believe that
happiness and togetherness cannot exist at the same time, then the poem’s message appears to be that
both youth and pursuit are overrated.
 Critical Appreciation of the Poem:
Appraisal of beauty is the most important ingredient of John Keats’ poetry. All his life, he haunted
beauty, praised it and put it in front of his readers. He tried to prove its superiority over other material
things of life. “Ode on Grecian Urn” is a remarkable example of it in which he does a critical analysis of
Grecian Urn” and talks about the superiority of art. He keenly observes sculpture. It fascinates him. As a
result, he writes “Ode on Grecian Urn”. Poet gazes at the sculpture and feels pleasure. He imagines a
story. It seems that an artist from ancient Greek carved the sculpture. Keats escapes from reality and
starts a journey of his imagination. He then makes a comparison between art and life. It is another factor
of Keats’ poetry to compare two opposite things. Keats is famous for it. Nevertheless, he minutely
observes the sculpture, carved on a Grecian urn”, and appreciates the diplomacy of the artist. He
considers art superior to life. Unlike life, art is not bound to miseries. It always has freshness in it.
Realities of life are painful and only imitation can console the soul. It has been proved in “Ode on
Grecian Urn” that analysis of life makes one’s mind critical and tortures it whereas art bestows it peace.
The beauty of art has been glorified and the sad realities of life have been degraded in this poem.
Though the poet talks about the miseries of life yet his mood is not sad nor has the poem been written
in a gloomy atmosphere. Compared to “Ode to Nightingale”, this poem is only about the beauty of art. It
demonstrates one and only thing viz. beauty. John Keats visits British Museum. He sees an antique piece
of Grecian Urn there. An urn is the name of a vase, which is mostly used to put the ashes of the dead.
The poet does not talk about the importance or beauty of the urn but the beauty of art in the shape of
the sculpture carved on it. Hence, the poem is not on the urn but on the sculpture. Poet sees the figure
on the urn and feels its quietness. Though it is silent yet it tells a story. Beauty lies in the eyes of the
beholder; therefore, the story of the sculpture depends on the visitor and watcher. John Keats feels that
sculpture is telling a story. In fact, it is Keats who with his imaginative powers creates a story and tells it
to his readers. Pipers, lovers and trees confuse him yet he is sure that the sculpture is depicting a
pastoral lifestyle. Keats asserts that imagination is better than reality. He realizes the superiority of
imagination. It is unstressed. Life, on the opposite, is harsh. Mostly, people become victims of
circumstances. Their actions actually are reactions to the circumstances. Hence, they do not act but
react. In imagination, one can do anything, whether he is capable or not. For instance, the blind can see,
the deaf can hear and the handicapped can live a normal life in the imagination. It is, therefore,
imagination is superior to reality. The whole poem is imaginative. Poet hears music in his imagination
though it is not being played in reality. He expresses his joyful moment in the following line:-
“Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard are sweeter”.
Keats’ strong imagination helps him to create music and listen to it. Those melodies can also be heard,
which do not exist in reality, therefore, imagination is pleasurable because every wish comes true in it.
On the other hand, the reality is barren and boring and it compels a person to react to a situation.
Rather than action, a reaction is required in real life. Imagination is not bound to logic. It is also limitless.
Furthermore, it enhances the capability of doing the undoing. John Keats also asserts the permanence of
art. Until now, he has affirmed that art is superior but why is it superior? In order to explain the
superiority of art he refers to lovers, painted on the Grecian urn. They are trying to kiss each other. The
poet says that their love is permanent and unending. People may die, old generations will replace new
generations, and time will pass centuries but a passion for love will never fade. Indeed, their love is
permanent and everlasting. Similarly, the musician will permanently blow the pipe and the music will
listen forever. Grecian Urn will continue telling this story to every person, who will visit the museum
even after the death of the poet. The art of the urn was felt by the Grecians; it is being felt by the poet
and it will be felt in future. Likewise, the beautiful girl on the urn will never grow old. If she is happy, she
will remain happy forever. In this way, art is permanent and everlasting as compared to life. However,
John Keats clears that the sculpture is mum. It is steady. It cannot move nor is it changeable, whereas
life is flexible. Change is the law of nature. It is the hotchpotch of pleasures and pains. Sometimes it
gives us joy and sometimes sorrow. The poet then enhances his story when he sees people, who are
going for a sacred purpose. Keats creates a town for them in his imagination. He fancies that perhaps
the town, in which people are living, is empty now. He creates a fancy tale from this imagination and
feels that people are fixed on the urn and no one will return to the streets or town. No one will tell
people of the town about the folks, who are on the urn. These lines are evident that John Keats is
bestowed with God-gifted quality of imagination. Furthermore, his love for Greeks can also be witnessed
here. The last stanza of the poem is about the beauty of art. The poet emphasizes its importance and
advises people to take shelter under it. Art is beautiful in his eyes. Its beauty lies in its eternity. People
may fade and die but art will remain the same. It will forever comfort humanity. He ends the poem with
an explanation of the importance of beauty in life.
“Beauty is truth, truth beauty’, --that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know”
Suffice it to say that “Ode on Grecian Urn” is the best piece of literature. It emphasizes the importance
of beauty and art. Sculpture, carved on the Grecian urn influenced the poet to write this ode. No one
can sum up this poem better than Downer, who minutely observed the philosophical idea in the poem
and wrote: “This verse, the last two lines of which contain its real interest, possesses two
philosophical ideas – (1) The incomprehensibility of the Infinite in Art and Nature and (2) The Ethics of
Beauty.”

Ode on Melancholy
 Significance of Poem:
Melancholy is a topic which obsesses people and especially literature for centuries. It is widely and
contradictorily discussed by all sorts of poets differing in each period. The contradiction reaches till
today. The stereotype is deeply rooted in our minds when we address someone who seems to be sadly
absorbed in thoughts scornfully as “melancholic” or “melodramatic”. In our present culture it is mostly
important to be joyful, funny and smiling all the time. Melancholy is consequently declared as
something negative linked with sadness, misery and even death-wish. Moreover, it is connected with
depression which equals it as a disease. This misunderstanding happened throughout centuries and is
presented in literature as true and false melancholy. The false melancholy corresponds with the
negative picture of it and is linked with the gloomy graveyard-poetry. Keats in contrast to that is a
representative of the true melancholy. Thus he dedicated one of his famous “odes” explicitly to
melancholy. “Keats’ concept of melancholy [...]focuses on the intense experience of life’s beauty”
(Farrel 1989: 76)The picture he evokes is that of true, experienced melancholy. In the following I would
like to show how Keats creates his definition of true melancholy through the images he uses in “Ode on
Melancholy”.
 Keats Purpose for writing Poem:
It was because Keats took such intense delight in all the visual beauty of nature that he was also subject
to melancholy. He had to reflect that he was going have to leave all this beauty when he died, and he
was already suffering from premonitions of death at the time he wrote his “Ode on Melancholy” and the
other great odes of his annus mirabilis, 1819. His brother had recently died of tuberculosis, and Keats
had apparently become infected with the disease while nursing him. Keats was only twenty-five years
old when he died in 1821. During his short career as a poet, he managed to secure a permanent place
among the foremost English poets; however, one of the great tragedies of literary history is the loss of
all the works this genius might have produced if he had been permitted to live out a normal lifespan.
Since Keats was subject to fits of melancholy, he took a strong interest in it. He lived long before the
days of Sigmund Freud, or he would have been fascinated by psychoanalysis. One of Keats’s favorite
books was Robert Burton’s The Anatomy of Melancholy (1621), which might be described as a primitive
study of psychoneurosis. Like Burton, Keats realized that melancholy was a complex state that could be
the source of intellectual as well as artistic inspiration, and that it was an ailment to which artists were
particularly susceptible. As another great Romantic poet, Percy Bysshe Shelley, expressed it: “Our
sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thought.” What Keats is doing in “Ode on Melancholy” is
exactly what twentieth century musical artists such as “Blind Lemon” Jefferson, Huddie (“Leadbelly”)
Ledbetter, Louis Armstrong, Charlie Parker, Eleanor (“Billie”) Holiday, and other jazz greats did with the
blues. Melancholy can be defined as “the blues,” and the word “melancholy” is invariably used in
defining the blues. In his “Ode on Melancholy,” which by definition is a piece written in praise of
melancholy, Keats is saying that the mood is something to be relished rather than something from which
a sensitive person should seek to escape. His thesis is summed up in the following lines of the
concluding stanza: “Ay, in the very temple of Delight/ Veil’d Melancholy has her sovran shrine.”
 Historical Background:
Historically, people believed that melancholy was caused by an excess of black bile in the body. Now we
know that what Keats calls melancholy is probably a depression of some kind, but having no means to
lessen it, he fought it by embracing it instead. This was a man who had been through a lot of suffering,
but persisted in spite of it. Keats is examining the relationship between sadness and happiness, the place
where they cross over, and what they mean in terms of the human condition. He urges us not to ignore
our sadness, but instead to embrace melancholy because it ultimately strengthens our understanding of
what it means to be happy. In short, you can’t have sunshine without a little rain.
 Structure and Form:
Ode on Melancholy" consists of three stanzas with ten lines each.

 Critical Appreciation of the Poem:

The Romantic period has many distinct characteristics, an important one being the speaker’s use of and
connection with nature. John Keats’ “Ode on Melancholy” fits nicely into this period because it uses
nature and ancient Greek references to depict melancholy, pleasure, and pain. At the start of the poem
nature is used to depict symbols of sorrow and grief. Whether it is the poisonous waters of Hades or
poisonous plants, the speaker is warning the reader not to turn to darkness during their time of sadness.
Another aspect of the Romantic period within this poem is the personification of emotions like
melancholy. In lines 29-30 the speaker says, “His soul shall taste the sadness of her might, And be
among her cloudy trophies hung.” This personification makes melancholy more than just an emotion
but a challenge that can fight back. We cannot simply overcome melancholy but instead, like a person, it
can fight and scheme against us. This poem links pleasure and pain through nature, saying this is the
root of melancholy because we cannot have beauty or joy without sadness. At once the connection is
made by an excessive amount of sorrow being unloaded onto the beautiful things in nature. Line 15
says, “Glut thy sorrow on a morning rose.” In lines 21-23 the poem reads, “Beauty that must die; And
Joy, whose hand is ever at his lips bidding adieu; and aching Pleasure nigh.” No matter what beauty
and joy cannot be everlasting, and there is an ache for pleasure with their passing. Even in “delight”
melancholy is sovereign and cannot be escaped (line 25.) The narrative of “Ode on Melancholy” is not
first person but rather a stern voice instructing the reader what to do in times of sorrow. We are first
introduced with the subject of the poem, melancholy, and then the poem develops to command the
reader on how to act. The speaker calls for action on part of the reader and all those facing sorrow. This
is not a poem meant simply to be admired but to provide a lesson that the reader can take away from it,
but what message or lesson Keats was trying to convey? The speaker says not to flee from sadness but,
again, to “glut” it on the pleasure of beauty (line 15.) However, this advice does not seem to promise an
entirely happy ending. Although there is direction not to entirely give into sadness but instead to feed it
with natural beauty, in the end melancholy will win. We cannot separate pleasure and pain but can only
learn how to live with the two entwined. The last two lines read, “His soul shall taste the sadness of her
might, And be among her cloudy trophies hung” (lines 29-30.) Those of us who fight against sorrow
with “strenuous tongue” will still experience sadness and simply be amongst melancholy’s “trophies”
because melancholy cannot be overcome (lines 27 and 30.) Ultimately, this ode provides advice but
perhaps not an ideal solution.
 Stanza Explanation:

Stanza 1: The poem begins with the repetition of ‘[n]o, no,’, which almost feels like they should be
exclamatory sentences because of the repetition itself, but the lack of exclamation suggests a
melancholy atmosphere to Keats’ writing already, alongside the negative connotations of the word ‘no’.
Keats imperatively says ‘go not to Lethe’ after ‘[n]o, no,’.‘Lethe’ is a Greek spirit of forgiveness and
oblivion, but still in Greek mythology, ‘Lethe’ is also a river in Hades that was said to cause forgetfulness,
which bordered on another river, Styx, which was said to have the remains of the dead in it who would
guide the path between life and the afterlife. As the Romantics had great influence from Greek
mythology, Keats appears to have taken the idea of ‘Lethe’, but then demanded ‘not’ to go to ‘Lethe’.
So, we could argue two ideas here: the first is that Keats did not want the recipient of his imperative to
go to the spirit of ‘Lethe’ because perhaps the “something” that they had done was unforgivable. The
second is that he did not want them to go to the river ‘Lethe’ because it would rob them of their
memory, as well as take them near to the passage to your death. The second is probably more plausible
because of the semantic field of death, and the general melancholy theme throughout, that Keats
represents. However, the spirit of ‘Lethe’ could still be hovering in the atmosphere of the river. Keats
goes onto say that ‘neither twist / Wolf’s-bane, tight-rooted, for its poisonous wine:’ and this reinforces
that he was speaking of the river, and not of the spirit, which generally has a more advisable message
behind his imperative, rather than to spite someone. Keats published Ode on Melancholy in 1819, just
two years before he died. Now, the ‘twist’ into ‘poisonous wine’ could be mimetic of Keats’ tuberculosis,
which caused his death – the ‘twist’, being the journey, to the ‘poisonous wine’, being the death. Also,
the ‘poisonous wine’ could be a metaphor for the river Lethe, as Keats may have felt himself going to
the river, and then being entreated to the river Styx for his afterlife. Keats then talks of ‘thy pale
forehead’, and the attributive adjective ‘pale’ is an adjective commonly used when discussing illness and
death. He then says, ‘thy pale forehead to be kissed’ as though he was already dead, as at someone’s
funeral it may be customary to kiss the corpse’s ‘pale forehead’, so Keats may be saying that he already
feels as though he is dead. Keats continues to tell the reader not to do certain things, such as: ‘Make not
your rosary of yew-berries, / Nor let the beetle, nor the death moth be / Your mournful Psyche, nor
the downy owl’. (lines 5-7). The ‘rosary’ links to Catholicism, and the way that Catholics pray. The way
that Keats has used this religious imagery contrasts to the revolt against religion that the Romantics took
at the time (explained more further down) so the way that Keats is telling the reader to ‘make not’ their
rosary of ‘yew-berries’ – which is a toxic and poisonous plant, which Keats is implying will amount to
one’s death if consumed – because he does not want them to praise death. The zoomorphic imagery of
the ‘beetle’, the ‘moth’ and the ‘downy owl’ are all quite melancholic creatures, especially with the
connotations of ‘downy’. A ‘beetle’, having a black exterior, is externally a sad creature, and ‘moths’ are
very fragile insects which links to the fragility of Melancholy, and subsequently that of Keats when on his
deathbed. The way that Keats uses second person narration contrasts with the Romantic ideals of “the
self” and personal stories, and the way he says to not let the beetle or the moth be ‘your mournful
Psyche’ implies that he is trying to disconnect himself with his own death. The way that one’s own
‘psyche’ would be ‘mournful’ of your own death, however, leads the reader to imagine that Keats was
thinking of himself and mourning over the loss of himself, which takes him back to “the self”. The
following quotation suggests Keats’ journey into the Styx river and the loss of himself: ‘your sorrow’s
mysteries; / For shade to shade will come too drowsily, / And drown the wakeful anguish of the soul.’
(lines 8-10). Still Keats is maintaining the second person narration in ‘your sorrow’s mysteries’. But, the
descent into forgetfulness (the Lethe river) and subsequently into the passage to the afterlife is seen in
the diacope ‘shade to shade’, because it shows the descent into ‘shade’: when a diacope has two words
of negative connotations, it shows a descent, and when a diacope has two words of positive
connotations – such as ‘better to better’ – it shows an ascent. Therefore, we can see Keats’ journey into
death from ‘shade to shade’ – the Styx river has the ‘shade’ of dead people. The phonological features
that Keats has used of the repetition of the ‘drow’ sound in ‘drowsily’ and ‘drown’ mimics a whining
sound, somewhat onomatopoeically, to represent the descent to death further. The oxymoron of
‘wakeful anguish’ portrays the idea of the liminal, which Keats uses a lot in his poetry. The liminal is a
state between consciousness and unconsciousness, and the ‘wakeful anguish’ represents being awake in
a time of death.

Stanza 2: This stanza begins with a pivotal disjunction ‘But’, as though Keats is going to completely
contradict himself. He begins to talk of how ‘when the melancholy fit shall fall / Sudden from heaven
like a weeping cloud, / That fosters the droop-headed flowers all, / And hides the green hill in an April
shroud;’ (lines 11-14). The figurative language used here, such as the simile ‘like a weeping cloud’. This
represents so poignantly what melancholy is like, but Keats does not seem all that sorrowful about
melancholy ‘falling Sudden from heaven like a weeping cloud’. Is this because it is falling from ‘heaven’?
The tone changes dramatically on the fifth line of the stanza from going from ‘glut thy sorrow’ to ‘a
morning rose’. The way that Keats has become, so dramatically, ‘sorrowful’ on a ‘morning rose’ shows
that he is, perhaps, finding melancholy in nature, and this is when the Romantic ideal of Nature finds its
cause. Being so close to nature is like a catharsis for Keats, as once he becomes close to nature, his
language use is retuned and more positive: ‘Or on the rainbow of the salt-sand wave, / Or on the
wealth of globèd peonies.’ (lines 16-17). The ‘rainbow’ imagery implies that Keats is fantasising over the
idea of nature, and the melancholy that accompanies it. The ‘wealth’ that ‘peonies’ brings again
reinforces the way that nature makes Keats feel: happy. The repetition of the conjunction ‘or’, which is
used on the following line as well: ‘Or if thy mistress some rich anger shows,’ (line 18). This conjunction
may have been used in order to represent all of the things that makes Keats feel cathartic, and the
oxymoron of ‘rich anger’ shows the idea that Keats is ‘rich’ in the melancholy that he feels, but he likes
it. The ‘mistress’ is spoken of again in the following lines: ‘Emprison her soft hand, and let her race /
And feed deep, deep upon her peerless eyes.’ (lines 19-20). The way that Keats has used the imperative
of ’emprison her soft hand’ takes the authoritative figure of the ‘mistress’ and makes her less superior –
does this have any reflection of women in the Romantic movement? But, due to what is reflected in
stanza 3 (which will be found out further down) we can infer that the ‘mistress’ is foreshadowing the
personification of ‘melancholy’ itself into be a ‘she’. Furthermore, the assonance used of the ‘ee’ sound
in the latter line of the quotation above elongates the idea that the ‘mistress’ is going ‘deeper’ into
inferiority so that Keats’ melancholy can replace the ‘mistress’.
Stanza 3: The final stanza begins with a use of chiasmus: ‘She dwells with Beauty — Beauty that must
die;’ (line 21). The way that Keats has used this chiasmus to represent his perception of beauty in
nature, and the way that the ‘mistress’ ‘dwells’ with beauty implies that she is trying to find an outlook
into the natural world from the ‘deep, deep’. The way that Keats then demands that Beauty ‘must die’
shows Keats turning away from nature in his piteous dying time. Keats creates, throughout the stanza, a
semantic field of abstract nouns such as ‘Beauty’, ‘Joy’, ‘Pleasure’, ‘Delight’ and of course, ‘Melancholy’.
Keats both praises these feelings, and condemns them. But, ironically, Keats does not worship ‘Beauty’,
or ‘Pleasure’, despite their positive connotations. And ‘Joy’ and ‘Melancholy’ are both confused about
whether Keats appreciates them or not, despite them being such adverse ideas. The only abstract noun
that is seen to be definitively praised is ‘Delight’, as Keats says calls it the ‘very temple of Delight’.
However, ‘Delight’ is seen as the outcome of ‘Pleasure’ and the condemnation that comes from this:
‘aching Pleasure nigh, / Turning to poison while the bee-mouth sips: / Ay, in the very temple of
Delight’ (lines 23-25). The way that the oxymoron ‘aching Pleasure’ has been the provocation of
‘Delight’, via being turned to ‘poison’. This implies that ‘Delight’ is actually ‘poison’, seeing as the
‘poison’ is in the ‘temple of Delight’. The subsequent lines shows how melancholy is felt by Keats:
‘Veiled Melancholy has her sovran shrine, / Through seen of none save him whose strenuous tongue /
Can burst Joy’s grape against his palate fine;’ (lines 26-28). The way that ‘melancholy’ is ‘veiled’ gives
the reader the impression that Keats wants to hide his sadness because of a shame that he feels
towards it. On the contrary, ‘veiled’ gives us the idea of a traditional Christian wedding ceremony, where
the bride would wear a veil in order to eventually be revealed to her near-future husband. We could
argue the first perception of ‘veiled’ under the Romantic ideals of religion and the revolt against rules.
The Romantics decided, when they became an “empire”, that they would focus more on nature, and the
beauty that is seen there, over religion, so the way that Keats has given ‘melancholy’ a ‘shrine’, rather
than giving a God the ‘shrine’ implies that Keats has favoured nature and beauty over religion,
conforming to the Romantic ideals. However, earlier in the poem with the contrasting image of the
‘rosary’ implies that Keats is stuck in the middle of religion and atheism, subsequently between Joy and
Melancholy, and subsequently between life and death. The way that Keats is personifying the abstract
nouns – firstly by calling Melancholy ‘her’, and the consequential way of calling Joy ‘him’ gives the poem
more of a structured narrative, as it is almost acting out a conflict between the two enemies
‘Melancholy’ and ‘Joy’ as though they are people. The way that Keats has used the noun ‘grape’ implies
that ‘Joy’ is well-rounded and wholesome, whereas ‘Melancholy’ was simply ‘veiled’, which represents a
transparency and frailty. However, Joy’s ‘grape’ is ‘burst’ which represents Melancholy’s triumph over
Joy, and the way that Keats is, and has been throughout the poem, favouring ‘Melancholy’ portrays his
frail state as he moves into the passage of death. The final couplet reads: ‘His soul shall taste the
sadness of her might, / And be among her cloudy trophies hung.’ (lines 29-30). The way that ‘his’,
meaning ‘Joy’, will ‘taste the sadness’ of ‘Melancholy”s might implies that Keats is allowing his
melancholy to dominate him. There is a strange battle of the genders represented in the final lines of
the poem as though Keats has two fighting spirits in his conscience. The way that the female dominates
the male right at the end of the poem indicates the growth of womanhood, and the sensory imagery of
‘taste’ implies that ‘Joy’ can physically feel the sadness, making ‘him’ even more sad. The way that
‘Melancholy’ has ‘cloudy trophies’ juxtaposes with the transparency and frailty of being ‘veiled’, and it is
as though she has now become so much stronger now that ‘her’ superior has ‘tasted the sadness of her
might’ and become inferior. Melancholy, in this poem, is praised endlessly, despite the few times in the
poem we think that Keats may think otherwise. But, as is predicted from the title of the poem,
melancholy comes out on top with the idea of Joy resting on ‘her’ hallowed shoulders.
 A Thing of Beauty

 Historical Background:
A Thing of Beauty is a Joy Forever is a poem that was based on the Greek mythology of Endymion, a
shepherd, whose beauty was of such joy to the moon Goddess, Selene that she requested Zeus to make
him immortal. John Keats based his 1818 poem, Endymion, on this myth, which featured A Thing of
Beauty is a Joy Forever. The underlying idea of this poem is that a beautiful thing is a source of eternal
joy, its attractiveness grows with the passage of time and its impact never fades away. According to
Beaming Notes, “The effects of the things of beauty permanently charm to our senses, they do not fade
with time and stays in our senses. No time and space can put an end to the effect of the beauty of
objects. Keats defines the sun, the moon, the old trees, the daffodils, the clear streams and the forest
which are rich with good-looking flowers-as the objects of beauty. This objects always appeals to our
minds and nothing neither time nor space can make us unable to summon up them.” Keats describes a
thing of beauty as emanating joy forever. Its beauty only increases and it will never cease. He also
provides a lot of comparisons referring to this ‘Thing of Beauty’ as in ‘a bower quiet for us‘ or a ‘sleep
full of sweet dreams‘. The poet continues to elaborate on this point stating that the earth without the
beautiful things is a despondent, spiteful place that thrives in callous insensitive dearth and is harsh
towards humans. In spite of all, a thing of beauty helps remove the dark cloud that burdens our souls.
 Theme of the poem:

 A thing of beauty is a source of constant joy. Beauty can be found everywhere. It is something
that has the ability to transform lives. It also highlights the fact that beauty has a therapeutic
quality, i.e. the ability to remove negativity. It can be any object, nature, tales or even noble
deeds of our ancestors.
 A Thing of Beauty’ is an excerpt from John Keats poem ‘Endymion: A poetic romance’, which is
based on a Greek legend. Being a romantic poet, John Keats talks about love, beauty and youth
in this poem. In fact, the poem reflects his attitude towards beauty. The poet believes that
beauty is intransient and gives us the same pleasure again and again. It provides us with eternal
joy and never fades away. Beauty plays a very important role in our lives and helps us to remain
happy and joyful in this sad, mundane world.

 Structure and Form:

`A Thing of Beauty’ belongs to the Romantic genre. The poem is written in rhyming couplets and the
rhyme scheme is AABB.

 Summary:
A Greek legend happens to be the basis for A Thing of Beauty summary. In this Greek legend, a young
shepherd by the name of Endymion had a vision of Cynthia, the moon goddess. This youth makes a
resolution to go after her and seek her. In this quest, he wanders through the forest and under the sea.
In the poem, the poet tells us that beautiful things bring immense pleasure and delight. Furthermore,
the poet explains that God’s creations provide happiness as well as energy. The things present all
around provide us with plenty of reasons to feel happy. Moreover, the brave soldiers’ stories bring
inspiration and enthusiasm to the love life. Beauty is a heavenly tonic. Furthermore, it is like an endless
fountain of nectar. Also, beauty can come in various forms. Beauty gives us good health and removes
sadness from our lives, resulting in everlasting joy. The poem A Thing of Beauty by John Keats delivers
the concept that beauty can be discovered anywhere and at any time. The content of this poem is
mostly concentrated on nature and the unexpected beauty that it brings. The topic of this poem is that
beauty may be discovered anywhere and, when appreciated, can be used to lift one’s spirits in times of
adversity. Any beautiful object is always kept in our minds since it brings us permanent and everlasting
happiness. The enjoyment that a beautiful object brings never fades away, but multiplies many times
over anytime it returns to our mind. A Thing of Beauty is by the famous poet John Keats. Furthermore,
the poet says that a beautiful thing can give us extreme happiness and delight. Moreover, a beautiful
thing is eternal that never declines or fades. Also, a beautiful thing resembles a shady shelter which
gives us a comfortable sleep comprising of sweet dreams and relaxation. This will ultimately lead to
good health. The sight of lovely and beautiful things will live on in our memories for the rest of our lives.
Thinking about them makes our bodies and minds healthier, as the ideas give us serenity and mental
calm. The author says that individuals have an attachment to Earthly things. This attachment is such that
it has the resemblance of a flowery wreath. Furthermore, there are traps that keep people connected to
materialistic things. This connection with materialistic things distracts humans from eternal happiness.
This is because the focus of such materialistic people will be on acquiring more and more resources
rather than on attaining eternal happiness. The world has a lot of negativity, hatred, and greed.
According to the poet, the cause of gloom and sadness is this negativity. Moreover, one can fade away
these negative vibes away with the help of beautiful things that surround us. This is because these
beautiful things bring nothing but positivity. Man and nature are strongly intertwined. The beauty of
nature is what keeps us connected to this planet. Every morning, we select beautiful fresh flowers and
make garlands. They lift our spirits and make us forget about our problems for a while. The poet informs
us about some beautiful things that are all around us. Beauty is certainly in the eyes of the one who
beholds. This means one can see the beauty in anything. Furthermore, the poet talks about the
numerous creations of God which we should admire. One such creation is the Sun which provides
energy. Moreover, the poet also talks about the beauty of the moon and the natural beauty of the trees.
There are various animals around that make our world lively. Pretty flowers like daffodils enhance the
liveliness and greenery of the world. Moreover, the flowing streams of water provide a refreshment and
cooling effect to us in the hot summer season. The forests have plenty of pretty musk rose flowers. Such
flowers are a beautiful sight and eyes feel the delight due to them. All such things certainly are things of
beauty. Also, one must not forget the beautiful and inspiring stories of the brave soldiers. These brave
soldiers risked and sacrificed their lives in order to protect others. These beautiful things have a
resemblance to the fountain of immortality bestowed upon us by God as a gift and a blessing. Such
beautiful things are an inspiration for all of us to continue living. They make life worth living. Also, they
also help us in maintaining our faith in goodness. Life without these beautiful things would certainly
become very hard.
 Critical Appreciation of the Poem:
The excerpt, A Thing of Beauty by John Keats, taken from a larger poem, 'Endymion: A Poetic Romance,'
is written in the Romantic style of writing. 'A Thing of Beauty' romanticizes beauty as something that
has the ability to transform lives. Romanticizing is about investing objects with a larger than life
attributes, it is about extolling the virtues of an object - it could be any object, the poet's beloved,
nature, beauty (in the case of this extract) - anything that has impacted the mind of the poet. Often, the
poet might be compelled to write about an actual incident, like for example, in the poem, 'Daffodils',
Wordsworth describes how one incident left a lasting impression on his mind. The sight of Daffodils
dancing in the wind becomes a memory to fall back on when the poet, feels low at heart. The central
theme of the poem revolves around beauty in all its forms - Earthly beauty and Spiritual beauty. The
poet talks about how important beauty is for all of us. He highlights the transformational, therapeutic
and spiritual impact of beauty on our lives. The poet describes how beauty can be found everywhere.
Wordsworth suggests that beauty has a therapeutic quality, the ability to cure and heal troubled minds,
and bodies. The poet’s message is that Beauty has the ability to transform lives, it can dispel negativism
and dark thoughts. Beauty can also remove the sting from grief, it can help one survive even when there
is a ‘dearth of noble natures’ or when one is surrounded by hostile and malicious people. Beauty has a
positive impact on one’s health, it can help steady the breathing, and can give one a sound sleep. John
Keats suggests that beauty can be found everywhere in life; as such he draws a list of beautiful things
which include: the sun, the moon, trees, daffodils, musk rose blooms, simple sheep and beauty can also
be found in the stories of the bravery, courage and sacrifice shown by people who were not afraid to die
for a greater cause. One warning, however, is that one should not get enthralled by earthly beauty lest
one blinded to the Spiritual beauty behind it. Wordsworth expresses the idea of beauty being spiritual in
nature and that the ultimate goal of appreciating beauty should be to appreciate God who created
beautiful things for us. Keats suggests that beauty has a spiritual source when he implies that it flows
from ‘An endless fountain’ in heaven, beauty thus, is a spiritual drink, an ‘immortal drink’ made
especially for all mankind.

When I have Fears that I May Cease

to be
 Historical Background:
A lot of people were dying due to tuberculosis when the poem was written. Keats's own mother also
died of tuberculosis when he was fourteen. Moreover, Keats was a medical student who witnessed
death firsthand. Try to contemplate how his experiences inform the poem's emotional depth and
sincerity. Bio-graphically, we can guess that his brother’s fatal illness probably kept the issue of mortality
in the forefront of Keats’s thoughts. Keats faced the threat of early death due to tuberculosis, which
influenced his exploration of mortality and the transient nature of life in his poetry. Keats’ brother was
always very ill growing up, leaving Keats to nurse him throughout frequent and horrible bouts of
tuberculosis, and he eventually died from the disease. Keats himself died very young – so his
suppositions were not at all incorrect – but by age 24, he had more or less stopped writing his poetry
due to ill-health. Keats’ fears about death are therefore not quite as strange as one would assume, given
his background. Like most tragic heroes, Keats never lived to see the public appreciate his work. In fact,
during his life, pretty much every paper and publication rejected him. It was only after his death that his
poetry collections (including such all-time hits as "Ode to a Nightingale" and Endymion) received the
critical acclaim they were due. He spent most of his youth and adulthood suffering from tuberculosis, a
disease that brought him into frequent contact with the possibility of death.
 Summary of the Poem:
When I have fears written by John Keats a romantic poet who belongs to the second generation. This is a
sonnet in which the poet expressed his fears about his death. He is afraid because he may die before, he
has put his ideas on paper which he had in his mind. He wants to write many books but he did not live
long to complete this task. The heap of books would be like a granary full of ripened grains. He says
when he looks at the starry night full of huge cloudy symbols of high romance, he feels sorry because he
would not live alive to enjoy these charming elements of nature. Keats occupies an eminent position
among romantic poets. Hia poetry is remarkable for its love of Nature, imagination, and rich descriptive
poetry. This sonnet about death. . Three years later, he died, In a way, the sonnet proved prophetic.
Keats also knew that he could not live very long because he had consumption in his family. In this
sonnet, the poet is afraid of his untimely death. He developed a sense of despair at it. He has a lot of
things to write about His brain is teeming with ideas and imaginations and he wants to convey them to
people through his poetry. The poet believes that he has the capacity to become a great poet. The poet
is highly afraid of death. In the case of his early death, the world will be deprived of many lofty and
grand themes. He wants to write his poem with lofty and grand themes. The poet is worried that in case
of his early death, he will be deprived of the fame, which he rightly deserves. In the last stanza, he
moves toward his beloved. He is actively pained to think that with his death, he will be permanently
separated from her. Never again, he will drive the joy of the passionate and heavenly love. The poet
never mentions the word death in all poems. The phrase cease to be is far more effective in its
suggestion of death. The image of harvest is typically Keatsian and original; The pen is compared to the
harvest sickle and the thoughts of the brain to the full ripened grain and laden with grain sheaves. It is a
fanciful image and suggestive of Keats's love for natural objects.
 Critical Appreciation of the Poem:
When I have Fears" is a beautiful poem by John Keats who is one of the most celebrated poets of the
Romantic era. IN this poem, he expresses his fear about his early demise. This fact adds to the charm of
this poem that he actually died at a very young age. In this sense, this poem contains an
autobiographical turn as well as a prophetic element. Keats inherited consumption as a family disease
and he feared lest he should die before he had put all his ideas in his verse he was an ambitious poet
who wanted to write great poems in a large number. But death did not spare him much time and he
took his ambition with him. In this poem, Keats expresses the fear of his early death, At the same time,
he desires to compose as many poems as may fill piles of books. He wants to write poetry on every
aspect of human life and character. He wants his pen to glean every thought from his mind and put it on
the paper in the form of verse. He desires his anthologies to be preserved with as much care as planter
preservers sacks of grain in a granary. He addresses different objects of nature in a sorrowful mood. he
feels sorry that he will not be able to look at night's starred face and cloudy symbols of high romance. he
also addresses his beloved as a fair creature of an hour. he feels grieved when he thinks that he will not
be able to see her and enjoy her loving company after his death. Keats feels as if he were standing at the
shore of the world from where he sees his love and fame sinking it the sea. It shows another side of his
fear. he fears lest his poetic compositions should be forgotten. Actually, he wants to be immortal
through his art of poetry. John Keats’s “When I Have Fears” has often been read as a poem about a poet
and his fear of mortality. Such a fear is not hard to unearth in Keats’s collection of poetry, not to
mention his famous letters to family and friends. However, this sonnet stands out from others of its kind
and those by its author because it paints a more nuanced portrait of death. Keats’s fear is not simply his
fate, but his failure to achieve love and fame within his short span on earth. A different reading of this
poem reveals that, though the root of this anxiety is obviously death, as the speaker gets perspective on
the shore of the world, death is also the problematic cure. While the speaker’s fears spawn from
mortality and the limitations of life, it is this limitation that actually grants him the freedom from
ultimate despair. To provide context, it is important to note that the poem was written by an author
obsessed with death and whose slowly disappearing family was plagued with disease. In fact, his brother
died one year after the poem was written, and Keats died just three years after that (Fay 7). The work
has also been described as being “conscious of itself as the poem of a poet” (Hecht 14). Though its
discussion of artistic angst and poetry is undeniable, it would behoove the reader to go from a more
poetry-centered reading to a death-centered reading. With death at the center, it is easier to really see
the shades of gray Keats paints regarding the popular poetic subject. This concept that it is not merely
just a poem of a poet, but a more relatable and general poem about life and death, would of course be
better explained through an explication of the text In the opening lines, the speaker has clearly
identified one of his fears for the reader. It is not merely the cliché death that worries the poet, but the
very specific and mildly unique fear that he may not achieve his full creative potential (“full ripened
grain”) by the time death arrives (in the form of “high-piled books” he has written). Such anxiety is
relatable to any artist and any human being who is dissatisfied with his or her current state, or those
who fear the limitations of life despite the unlimited nature of their ideas (before his pen has even
“gleaned” his “teeming brain”). The speaker looks up at the sky’s mighty constellations, perhaps
beautiful, and he fears that he will “cease to be” before even tracing their shadows. The artist’s job, of
course, is to trace or represent in his or her respective medium—for that is the definition of art. We
have thus established Keats’s fear of achieving artistic success and fame (as he will identify later).
However, the use of the word romance can also be taken in the more cultural sense relating to romantic
relationships—a vital component of Keats’s fears: The “and” tells the reader that in addition to this fear
of failure in the poetic department, the speaker is also concerned with having never experienced the
majesty of solid love or getting another chance to see this potential lover (who is limited by, and at the
mercy of, time as she is but a “creature of an hour”). This can be read that the fear exists during the
present—not that he will “never look upon [her] more” or “never have relish in the fairy power”
because he will be dead but because of the fact that he will never succeed in doing so in life (nor will he
have unlimited time to do so). This establishes the second and final components that make up the
speaker’s fears: failure in the realm of love. These two aspects make up the overall truth that can be
better generalized by saying that, “The speaker simultaneously faces the opportunities life holds for him
and the threat of his own untimely death” (Fay 7). These last two lines sound even more nihilistic than
existential, as the reader might envision Keats himself standing alone on the edge of the universe, trying
to get perspective and reflect on these fears. Keats thinks that such woe seems hard to despair because
in the end, these desires he feels so panicked to attain despite time’s “cruel hand,” as Shakespeare
wrote in Sonnet 60, sink to nothingness, lost in the cleansing and eternal waves of the water to which he
looks. In fact, Sonnet 60 opens with: "Likes as the waves make towards the pebbl'd shore, So do our
minutes hasten to their end;" This image of the waves and the shore representing the limitations of
Time (capitalized and personified as a man for Shakespeare) are significant to keep in mind when
contrasting the ending and messages of both sonnets. Shakespeare’s 60th ends with: "And yet to times
in hope my verse shall stand, Praising thy worth, despite his cruel hand." Despite how many scholars
have overlooked the differences, the sonnets present radically different views on poetry, art, and
mortality. Keats makes no proud mention of his verse, of his poetry’s ability to withstand the grim
reaper—but it is that very fact that makes his fears of failure so irrelevant to begin with. These
differences are actually precisely the same, and even more fitting, when one compares Shakespeare’s
107th sonnet to Keats’s “When I Have Fears.” Sonnet 107 is one of Shakespeare’s familiar odes to the
poet’s ability to cheat death through his song: And the sad augurs mock their own presage;" Both
sonnets also discuss love and death (“My love looks fresh, and death to me subscribes”) but it is their
separation that truly defines Keats’s response. The idea that “tyrants’ crests” and “tombs of brass” are
“spent” while “this poor rhyme” grants a lover “thy monument,” one must be reminded of
Shakespeare’s Sonnet 55, where “Not marble, not the gilded monuments / Of princes, shall outlive this
powerful rhyme” (1-2). Keats offers a humbler discussion of his poetry—so humbling it is depressing—
and reflects a sort of Marvellian perspective on immortality and art: “Nor, in thy marble vault, shall
sound / My echoing song” (5-6). Even though the sonnet is commonly known as a poet’s poem about
poetry, which has its clear merits, the speaker seems uninterested in art and its ability to last for
eternity. In fact, the idea that fame sinks to nothingness challenges the very notion—for what is fame
(which would be achieved for Keats through the success of his books of poetry) if not a human’s chance
at immortality? Nothing seems immortal in the cyclical sea the speaker gazes upon, but it is the lack of
immortality that tells Keats not to worry because all the things he wishes to accomplish before death
will literally be rendered nothing by death. Whether or not this satisfies the speaker is unknown. It is
nevertheless a truthful, maybe depressing, but ultimately freeing response to the woe. William Flesch
describes this best as “a kind of negative freedom…from ‘love and fame,’ or from ‘love of fame,’ as he
calls it in a letter to Sarah Jeffrey” (Flesch 18). On the cue of Keats’s letters, a month before writing the
poem, Keats wrote “To J.H. Reynolds” (Luke 664). Part of an included verse in the letter describes how
Keats “saw / Too far into the sea” and “I saw too distinct into the core / Of an eternal fierce
destruction, And so from Happiness I far was gone” (Gittings 413). This may unfortunately suggest, if
one recalls the shore from “When I Have Fears” that such a sight of his own mortality (and that of his art
and all of art’s rewards) is depressing overall. This is not meant to undermine the idea of death as a cure
for the fears, as its (subjectively) depressing nature is precisely why it is a problematic cure. On an
objective level, Keats’s conclusion is truthful, and it was Keats himself who famously wrote that, “Truth
is beauty.” While many poems and sonnets present death as an evil clock driving the artist and human
insane, Keats acknowledges and responds to this phenomenon. “When I Have Fears” presents death as
less of the clichéd limit and more of a freedom from anxiety. The fear is therefore not just about death,
but about failing during the limited time alive. In the poem, death turns everything into nothing, making
such high hopes for fame and love not worth such intense stress, and making the art apparently not
even worth discussing in terms of (im)mortality. This somewhat nihilistic and existential perspective that
unlimited values are rendered meaningless by a limited life actually calm the speaker’s angst and
despair. This can be applied not only to the life of an artist or a poet but of every mortal, as death is both
the cause and solution of our problems, the fear and the remedy.