John Keats When I Have Fears

Death was introduced to Keats at an early age after the loss of his father, mother, and then eventually his brother Tom. Experiences were a major influence in the creation of his philosophy and concept of life, death, and mortality. Although it happens to be one of Keats’s shorter poems, “When I Have Fears” from 1818 has the most depth compared to others regarding his fear of death. Knowing the veracity that death could take his existence away, he meditated on how he may never “relish in the fairy power of reflecting love—then on the shore” and how he could pass “before high-piled books, in charactery, hold like rich garners the full ripened grain” (Text L. 11-12 & 3-4). All of these fears in the poem that derive from death would be correct when comparing it to that of his own life. Keats himself

was afraid of death taking him before fame reached him and love touched him, especially after his own experience of watching the “death of his younger brother Tom, by the same consumption that was to ravage Keats himself” which monumentalized his fear of mortality (McFarland 64). His understanding of life and death would only derive from his own personal knowledge and experience such as this one. The last lines of the poem suggest that he will “stand alone, and think till love and fame to nothingness do sink” (Text L. 13-14). In these lines, the reader can see that he eventually encompases the fact that these things are insignificant because man cannot escape the firm grasp of death when his time comes. The poem is evidence that his interest in the philosophy of death “forced upon him the necessity of probing the mystery of existence” and of life (Alexander W. Crawford, The Genius of Keats, 107). Due to the experiences he faced with death, this theme can be seen throughout most of his poems. While he searches for mysteries and ideals of life through his work, he starts reaching for death even when death is not the direct theme. One of Keats’s most popular poems, written in 1819, “Ode to a Nightingale” introduces the spirit of death in the midsts of nature and imagination.

While his heart is in pain for man “where youth grows pale, and spectre-thin, and dies”, his happiness is abundant knowing that “thou wast not born for death, immortal Bird!” (Text L. 26 & 61). While knowledge leads to the understanding of life and death, it does not result in happiness. Keats searched for an answer to complete his philosophy on the mysteries of death but also realized that because “man knows that he is born to die, knows ‘the weariness, the fever, and the fret’ of the world of mortality” which “overshadows man's life and all his songs” (Cleanth Brooks and Robert Penn Warren, The Ode to a Nightingale, 47). The nightingale lives in harmony with his world yet man is in competition with his. Keats makes the sense in which the nightingale is immortal, yet man is not, more understandable for the reader. Man knows that as time steals the youth of humans, they get closer and closer to death and because of this knowledge they cannot experience life as beautifully as the bird does. Rather than dreading the surcease of death he expresses that “now more than ever seems it rich to die” (Text L. 55). Man cannot experience the feelings death evokes after he himself

dies. To the reader's surprise, the speaker wishes for death but he does this “to end the dyingness” of living and to escape the troubles of human life (McFarland 209). Keats fear of death motivated him to better understand it and obtain more knowledge about it. Yet as he continued to learn more he figured out that knowledge is in fact not the answer. The lack of knowledge results in the happiness of the nightingale. He would not find consolation after knowing the meaning of death if he ever found one. John Keats in the end realized that man cannot escape mortality with knowledge or a lack of. With joy comes pain, with happiness comes melancholy, and with life comes death. Thus, being an inescapable concept that Keats learned to live with while it suffocated his life from youth until the day death took him away.