The touchstone for Romance Poetry: When I have fears

John Keats's justly famous sonnet "When I Have Fears (that I may cease to be)" is s touchstone of romance poetry, establishing in a succinct, dramatic, yet classical form (Shakespearean sonnet) all the tenets of the movement: focus on the unique voice and inner feelings and emotions of the individual poet (interior passion rather than the cool reflection of classical 18th-century poetry, an opposition put forth memorably by MH Abrams, The Mirror and the Lamp) and the ascribing to the exterior world - nature - the interior emotions of the poet. Keats states the themes of the sonnet in the last line - love and fame - and all builds up to that point. The first quatrain establishes his fear of an early death (and of course he did die very young, a year or two after writing this poem - the biographical facts make this poem more plaintive and haunting), especially a fear that he will die unrecognized as an artist (before my pen has gleaned my teeming brain - this would be extraordinary hubris, except that Keats had the talent to make such a statement; happily - his work is still known and beloved; sadly, there is so little of it); the 2nd quatrain takes this theme in a slightly different direction - not about producing a massive volume of works but about writing something of extraordinary beauty - will come back to that point in a moment. 3rd quatrain shifts to love: Keats in despair that he will never "look upon" his beloved and will never "take relish" in the power of "unreflecting love" - is he saying here that he has never had sex with his beloved (Fanny)? Seems unlikely, but possibly so; I am always struck by his apostrophe to her, in which he calls her "fair creature of an hour": what is that supposed to mean? Why "of an hour"? It almost seems as if he is addressing not a woman but a bird, a butterfly, or a delicate flower. The final lines, which brilliantly spill from the end of the 3rd quatrain, are the plainest and simplest in the poem - after some very elaborate and difficult imagery, the closing couplet is straightforward: Then on the shore/of the wide world, I stand alone and think/till love and fame to nothingness to sink" - everyone can understand that emotion - alone, on a shore, pondering the enormousness of the land, the ocean, the sky, and realizing the insignificance of our thoughts and cares against such greatness - and the poet alone on the shore is a strikingly beautiful image with a bit of sad foreshadowing of Keats's (and Shelley's) death. The 2nd quatrain is to me the most odd and interesting: When I behold, across the night's starr'd face/huge cloudy figures of a high romance." I have puzzled over the meaning of this: a high romance - I think this is not his love for a single woman but the entire sense of his place in the cosmos - again, the romantic notion that our interior thoughts are expressed by nature, or in this case by the vast heavens. His goal as an artist is to "trace their shadows" - that is to find meaning in this vastness, to put the exterior world into context by capturing, at least its outlines, through art. Just some thoughts - could think about this poem forever and not solve all of its mysteries, which is part of its power and allure.