Few poets ascend to the level of John Keats, and even fewer ascend to that level at such an early age. John Keats was only 26 years old when he died, however, he was considered, along with Wordsworth, to be the Romantic poet of the 19th century.
John Keats was born in 1795 in Moorfields, England, the son of a stableman who married the owner's daughter and eventually inherited the stable for himself. The elder Mr. Keats died when John was eight, leaving the family tied up in legal matters that would last the rest of John's life. He was fourteen when his mother died of tuberculosis, and fifteen when his guardian apprenticed him to an apothecary-surgeon. Soon after, John left the medical field to focus primarily on poetry.
In July 1820, John left England for Italy. Keats had been experiencing ill health and it was thought that the warmer air of Italy would help cure him. John and a friend took up residence in a home next to the famed Spanish Steps in Rome. He died of tuberculosis on February 23, 1821, at the age of twenty-six.
"When I have fears that I may cease to be" is an expression of Keats's melancholy. When he wrote this poem, he was still quite sick and it was obvious that his ill-health was not improving. As a consequence, he developed a negative outlook on life. He expressed himself with the following poem, one I consider to be among his finest.
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 unrelenting love:--then on the shore
Of the wide world I stand alone, and think
Till Love and Fame to nothingness do sink.
