| William Stanley Braithwaite, ed. The Book of Georgian Verse. 1909. | | | | When I Have Fears That I May Cease to Be | | By John Keats (1795–1821) |
| | | WHEN I have fears that I may cease to be | |
| Before my pen has glean’d my teeming brain, | |
| Before high pilèd books, in charact’ry, | |
| Hold like rich garners the full-ripen’d grain; | |
| When I behold, upon the night’s starr’d face, | 5 |
| 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, | 10 |
| 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. | | | | |
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