When I Have Fears That I May Cease to Be

The word “death” is conspicuously absent from this poem. The speaker avoids using the specific term and instead focuses on death’s opposite: life. As a result, “When I Have Fears that I May Cease to Be” is a poem about death that centers a well-lived life.

This pattern begins in the first line. The speaker fears that they will “cease to be” (Line 1). This phrasing emphasizes being, putting the focus on existence rather than oblivion. The phrase “never live” (Line 7) has a similar effect. Despite the word “never,” the last word, the word with real substance, is life. “Never” repeats through the poem in Lines 7, 10, and 11. By creating a rhythm, the poet makes it an expected feature of the poem’s form, de-emphasizing it further. When “never” disappears, the phrases become affirmative: “live to trace” (Line 7), “look upon thee more” (Line 10), and “relish in the faery power” (Line 11). The last negative word in the poem, “nothingness” (Line 14), appears in the middle of the last line due to a syntactical inversion. The most straightforward syntax in this line would be the following: “Love and Fame sink to nothingness.” Nothingness gains a degree of power when it’s the last word in the whole poem.