When I Have Fears, by John Keats and Holy Sonnet 1, by John Donnes

Mortality is a moving and compelling subject. This end is a confirmation of one’s humanity and the end of one’s substance. Perhaps that is why so many writers and poets muse about their own death in their writings. Keats and John Donne are two such examples of musing poets who share the human condition experience in When I Have Fears and Holy Sonnet 1.

Keats begins each quatrain of the Shakespearean sonnet with a modifier, and each modifier indexes the subject of that quatrain. The modifier therefore gives his sonnet a three part structure. The first quatrain is what he fears; the second quatrain is what he beholds; the third quatrain is what he feels; and the ending couplet sums up all of the quatrains. However, the structure could also be considered to divide the poem in half: into his concern about intellectual pursuits and his concern about love.

The first quatrain begins with “”When I have fears,” and confirms the theme of the first quatrain. He then uses a field of grain metaphor (in which each grain represents an idea) to show how many literary ideas he generates. He has so many he is “teeming” with them, and that word gives urgency to his need to put them someplace; he is so overflowing, he needs to get them out of his brain to accommodate more over-growing. However, the metaphor is also paradoxical. “Gleaned” in line two refers to the process of “gathering and picking up (ears of corn or other produce) after the reapers;” and so he compares his mind to a field of produce that needs to be reaped (OED). However, in the next line he compares writing the “high-piled books” to a silo, holding his “full-ripened grain.” That would make him the reaper because he has written the books and put the “grains” on the page...

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...wo). His faith allows him to “prevent” Satan’s “art,” which means that he can avoid temptation and even prevent other sin, doing good deeds. Donne ends with a metaphor, comparing God to adamant, which is a very hard stone; so hard it is impenetrable. Adamant also means unyielding. The solidness of God’s rock “draws” Donne’s “iron heart,” he is experiencing some sort of magnetic force that over comes the “iron-ness” of how he is set in his sinful ways.

Donne uses a Petrarchan sonnet to express his opinions on death, humbleness, and sin. The poem has different ways it could be structured, but it is certainly structured in two parts. One interpretation could be that the first segment of the poem focuses on the physical whereas the second part focuses on the metaphysical. Or it could be structured as a two part poem where Donne has moved from fearful to hopeful.