by Keats · Cluster: Unrequited Frustrated Love · Unattainable Beloved · Petrarchan Sonnet
Abstract
A Shakespearean sonnet on the fear of dying before fulfilling poetic ambition or knowing love, ending alone on the shore of the wide world; mortality, fame, love and transience.
Connections
Topoi: Immortality Through Verse Motifs: Letters and Writing, Stars Themes & Concepts: Mortality, Transience, Ambition, Romantic Love Forms & Genres: Shakespearean Sonnet, Sonnet
Testo integrale / Full text
When I have fears that I may cease to be
Before my pen has glean’d my teeming brain,
Before high-piled books, in charactery,’
Hold like rich gamers 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, 10
Never have relish in the faery power
Of unreflecting love; - then on the shore
Of the wide world I stand alone, and think
Till love and fame to nothingness do sink.