When I have fears that I may cease to be 

by John Keats 
 
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, 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  
Never have relish in the fairy 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.  
 
 
When I have fears that I may cease to be — Although Keats wrote this poem in January of 1818, before learning he had contracted consumption, the death of his mother in 1810 and the sickness of his brother Tom, who would die of the disease while under Keats’s care in December of 1818, made thoughts of his mortality natural.
glean’d — To glean means to gather grain that has been left in the fields after the harvest. Cf. the ode “To Autumn.”
charactry — or charactery, symbols or letters used to convey meaning
 
garners — an old word for granaries, storehouses for grain after it has been harvested
romance — Keats uses the word in the literary sense, which does not necessarily mean a story about romantic love.
fair creature of an hour — We do not know what woman Keats was addressing by this title, though he told a friend she was the same woman to whom he had addressed two other poems. She was not Fanny Brawne, the great love of Keats’s life, whom he met toward the end of 1818.