SpokenVerse | When I have Fears That I May Cease To Be by John Keats (read by Tom O'Bedlam) @SpokenVerse | Uploaded December 2012 | Updated October 2024, 4 hours ago.
This sonnet was published after Keats' death.

There is a version in which the line "And think that I may never live to trace.." is given as "And feel that I may never live to trace..." "Think" is more common than "feel", it was in Palgrave's Golden Treasury and Keats' Collected Poems.

Stars and Constellations in silver and gold pen and ink, from this site:
http://ioana.fioot.eu/SubPages/Portfolio.htm

WHEN I have fears that I may cease to be
Before my pen has glean'd my teeming brain,
Before high piled books, in charact'ry,
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.