"Sonnet: "When I Have Fears . . ."" by John Keats.

Sonnet: "When I Have Fears . . ."

WHEN I have fears that I may cease to be
Before my pen has gleaned my teeming brain,
Before high-priced books, in charactry,
Hold like rich garners the full-ripen'd grain;
When I behold, upon the night's starr'd face,
Huge cloudy symbols of a high romance,
And think that I may never live to trace
Their shadows, with the magic hand of chance;
And when I feel, fair creature of an hour!
That I shall never look upon thee more,
Never have relish in the fairy power
of unrelenting love;—then on the shore
of the wide world I stand alone and think
Till Love and Fame to nothingness do sink.

1817[.]

- "Poems of Byron, Keats and Shelley" selected and edited by Elliot Coleman & illustrations by Barnett I. Plotkin. -