When I Have Fears

Rachel Botts

Mrs. Boggs

A.P. Literature 12

14 Oct. 2008

A Well-Known Personal Battle

During the sonnet “When I Have Fears,” John Keats addresses the common fear of dying before one’s life is complete; however, he takes it a step further by making it personal to himself through his different illustrations in each quatrain. Each quatrain represents a part of his life he defines himself by. He unifies the three quatrains and parts of his life by using the Shakespearean sonnet structure. Different people define themselves through different elements of their life; in Keats’ case he uses his writing, inspiration, and romance to determine his success. “The fear of premature death is universal” (When I Have Fears 1), because everyone desires to feel as those they have completed or done their best in life. The sad truth of this desire though is that the human race typically desires more, so most, no matter what age, die feeling as though their life was not fulfilled. Keats connects to this craving in “When I Have Fears” and portrays how the longing desire affects him personally.

Keats begins the poem with probably the most important part of his life: his writing. While comparing his works of writing to crops and harvesting, “Hold like rich garners the full ripen’d grain” (????????), he demonstrates how vital his writing is to himself and the rest of the world. As Jamey Hetchet explains, “The brain is teeming, there is no shortage of tools or material, but the difficulty is simply to live long enough to have sufficient time to exhaust the abundance that the poet already latently possesses” (7). For a farmer they can have all the tractors and shovels in the world, but if they never have time to use them then their crops are sitting in field and hold no purpose. By putting it in terms of farming, Keats demonstrates the necessity of his writing. If crops are sitting in a field then someone is going hungry; Keats feels as though without his work someone will...