National Poetry Month: John Keats
Keats’ work is impressive in its scope and in its ability to bravely confront Death. This astonishing sonnet was written in 1818, Keats would be dead just 2 years later. This tragic loss is still felt today, I think he could’ve come up with ever greater works, had God seen fit to delay his Deadline.
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When I have fears that I may cease to be
by John Keats
When I have fears that I may cease to be
Before my pen has glean’d my teeming brain,
Before high piled books, in charact’ry,
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.
John Keats Details: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Keats