When I Have Fears That I May Cease to Be

A sonnet is usually a poem about love. Both types of English language sonnets are composed of a single stanza, 14 lines long. Shakespearean sonnets, so named for the English writer who made the form famous, are written in iambic pentameter. A Shakespearean sonnet is subdivided into three quatrains (grouping of four lines) and a final couplet (pair of two lines). The lines follow an ABAB CDCD EFEF GG rhyme scheme.

“When I Have Fears that I May Cease to Be” by Keats makes perfect use of the form and meter of a Shakespearean sonnet. Each line is exactly five iambs (one unstressed syllable followed by one stressed syllable) long. For example, Line 2:

“Before | my pen | has glean’d | my teem | -ing brain”

Keats marks the beginning of each quatrain with the repeated word “when.” Line 1, the first quatrain, begins: “When I have….” Line 5, the second quatrain, begins: “When I behold….” Line 9, the third quatrain, adjusts the refrain: “And when I feel….” The word “and” functions as a small pickup into the last quatrain. It adds mounting tension to the