Sonnet: When I Have Fears That I May Cease To Be

When I have fears that I may cease to be

      Before my pen has glean'd my teeming brain,

    Before high piled 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 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.

'This sonnet, if which there is a fair manuscript dated 1817 in Sir Charles Dilke's copy of Endymion, was printed among the Literary Remains in the second volume of the Life, Letters &c. (1848). The text as given above accords entirely with the manuscript.' ~ Poetical Works of John Keats, ed. H. Buxton Forman, Crowell publ. 1895.