On Poetry

When I Have Fears That I May Cease To Be
- By JOHN KEATS


 

"Poetry is Greek and Latin to me," said one of my friends once. He did not open a single page of the book I presented to him. As adults, we sometimes abandon this talent and enter the spirit of playing games, designing software, searching money stocks, assuming that poetry is irrelevant. We enter into a temporary world, where we jump with joy at a match of cricket, or get carried away by a friend's funny experience. According to Psychologist and scholar, James Hillman, each of us is born with an 'accorn' or image of our calling and we spend our lives unfolding towards it and driven by it.              JAMBEYANG class="tip"> Hillman says, that a daimon (described in Plato's Republic) comes to earth with each of us, assigned to see that we fulfill our purpose and  live our pattern. But sometimes, there exists a conflict between living  sensible and living for the moment. The following poem is a Shakespearean sonnet, by John Keats and is based on such a theme. John Keats (1795-1821), was an English lyric poet, who was regarded as the epitome of the Romantic writer.
Keats was born in London on October 31, 1795 as the son of a livery-stable manager. His first book, Poems, was published in 1817. Some of his greatest works were written in the late 1810s, like "Lamia", "The Eve of St. Agnes", the great odes including "Ode to a Nightingale", Ode To Autumn" and "Ode on a Grecian Urn".


Lets now take a look at the Shakespearean sonnet in context.


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 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 reflecting love --- then on the shore
Of the wide world I stand alone, and think
Till Love and Fame to nothingness do sink.


In this poem, Keats lists the things that he believes gives life meaning. He lists things that he would regret having not done of he had died. The poem describes the fear that the author holds inside himself, and as it progresses, the poem gets difficult for the speaker as it gets tougher to justify the fear to a universal situation, and finally he ends it on a note of defeat. Keats almost stands all alone, stranded at the end of the world, before death has even made such isolation necessary.

In Lines 1-4, Keats describes his fear of dying young, much before his chance of "harvesting" the fruits of his labor for poetry.

In Lines 5-8, Keats describes philosophically, his romance for learning the riddle of his own existence. Although whether or not he lives "to trace their shadows", or to realize the "truth", he knows, he would not be able to uncover the mystery if he dies, and he will then die in sheer ignorance.

In Lines 9-12, Keats speaks of the love of his beloved, which he fears he will never experience after his death. He suggests that love has to have a "faery power", ie., the power of fairies who are immortal. He fears he would lose it all.

In Lines 13-14, his fear of death leads to the ultimate question of Keats? very own existence. He finds himself standing at the edge of the big, wide world, and the two things that he holds very important in life, "LOVE? and ?FAME", dissolve into a space of vacuum or  "nothingness"

It is interesting that Keats, who also died at a young age of 26 in the year 1821, spoke about the fear that he would cease to be.

Reading this poem was a way of filling myself with the sounds of contemplation about life and death. Depressing as it was towards the end, where his sense of words communicated heightened experiences of the world, the thought sifted into another perspective of looking at things we like to do, or do with complete satisfaction, before one dies. And for poets, it would rather be, to write another poem. Why not write poetry, to create a world where we hear our voices sing tunes of a melody of words? Why not celebrate life and poetry, to experience depth, more than death? Why not just write poetry?

 

- by Suma V S