When I Have Fears
(JOHN KEATS)
John Keats was born in London. He attended Clarke's School, in Enfield where he gave early evidence of a sensitivity to literature. It was his headmaster who introduced him to Spenser's Faerie Queeene. His father died when John was 16, and his guardian apprenticed John to a chemist. He undertook studies in surgery, but abandoned medicine altoghter in 1817, to devote himself to writing. His first book of poems was published in that year, but went unnoticed. By now, he had made the acquaintance of William Hazlitt, Shelly, and Leigh Hunt, who gave him encouragement to write Endymion (1819) with its famous opening line: 'A thing of beauty is a joy for ever'.
In 1818 John nursed his brother, Tom, in the last stages of tuberculosis (then callled 'consumption'). In 1820, it became clear that John himself had tuberculosis. Yet in that year, his greatest poems were published ('Lamia', 'Isabella','The Eve of St Agnes' under the influence of his beloved Fanny Brawne ). In September, 1820, he left for Rome, where he hoped to recover his health, but he died there in 1821, at the age of 26.
In this poem the poet fears that he will die before he has written down all that is in his mind; when he sees stars in the sky that excite him to romantic ideas that he may not live to express; and when he feels that he will not be permitted to love- then there is nothing of value for him in the world.
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