4.30: Poem: When I Have Fears That I May Cease To Be

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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 fairy 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.

When I Have Fears That I May Cease To Be. Authored by: John Keats. Provided by: Wikisource. Located at: https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/When_I_have_fears_that_I_may_cease_to_be. License: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike