When I have fears that I may cease to be

As a year full of so much activity, accomplishment, loss, and production comes to a close, I can't help thinking about it all, and about where things will go next, and later on. O'levels and the days in which we used to read John Keats's poetry seem so long ago and so far away. Has real life begun now? Does it ever begin? Anyway, I like this poem.

When I have fears that I may cease to be
     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.

-John Keats