when I have fears

Question 1

what type of poem is it

Answer 1

shakespearian.

Question 2

what is poem about

Answer 2

one of Keats’s most intimate, anxious reflections on the effect of his untimely death. His fears are twofold: that he will die before he has realised his poetic potential; and that when he dies he will leave behind the woman he loves.

Question 3

first line

Answer 3

‘fears’ the plural suggests his dread is multifarious.
‘I’ links to the romantic imagination that themselves are the centre.
‘may cease to be’ shows the inevitability of death in real life. also emphasises the lack of control out of the outcome of death

Question 4

extended metaphor of farming and harvesting

Answer 4

‘before my pen has gleaned my teeming brain’- gleaned is a euphemism. personification of pen to intimately go through his brain and literally pick out the amazing things there before he dies.

‘hold like rich garners the full ripened grain’ -link to the quality of his work-his too good to die early and let this go to waste so he has to get it out before he dies of TB.

Question 5

‘never have relish in the faery power of unreflecting love!-‘

Answer 5

exclamative and medial caesura emphasise the passion he feels for his love.
faery power- link to supernatural. ;love makes him feel supernatural?he can live through love?

‘unreflecting love’ incomprehensible love, hyperbolic nothing can come between them .two souls intertwined with each other.

Question 6

geographical imagery

Answer 6

shore
wide world
both are hyperbolic
sense og imperminance - recognising that there’s nothing he can do about it, just got to live in the moment.

Question 7

of the wide world , I stand alone, and think till love and fame to nothingness do sink.

Answer 7

rhyming couplet-heroic couplet
there is no solution, going to die eventually.
just need to recognise that and live and accept it.