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[hinterland.livejournal.com]

When I have fears that I may cease to be
~John Keats


Before my pen has glean'd my teeming brain,
Before high-piled books, in charactery,
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.

Comments

[kvschwartz.livejournal.com]

much as I love it that poem has a very strange emotional balance; we have Keats' very real and reasonable "fears" from line 1
"When I have fears that I may cease to be"
constantly to line 12
"Of unreflecting love"

then we end with

"Till love and fame to nothingness do sink"

implying that Keats has found some peace of mind; but how? by realizing what, or doing what? well, not by doing much at all:

"then on the shore
Of the wide world I stand alone, and think"

that is the solution to the fear of death, of oblivion, of failure in life? to stand on the shore and think? think about what?

c'mon, Keats, you owe us more than that

[hinterland.livejournal.com]

"Of the wide world I stand alone, and think
Till love and fame to nothingness do sink."

I guess nothing doesn't really matter in the end,
when we are gone, we are... gone. Definitively.
To another place or no where at all, we are gone from here.
So why fear the inevitable?
Live with the now. And be glad for the time we have here.
If love and fame should come to you after your death,
so be it.
Perhaps he had a vision? A dream to linger in our hearts.

[kvschwartz.livejournal.com]

it reminds me of the book "Darkness Visible", in which Styron spends the entire book describing his descent into depression and madness, then in the last chapter brushes right past his recovery with a tossaway "the great thing about depression is that it is temporary"

maybe it was for YOU, Sty; not much help for the rest of us