When I have fears that I may cease to be
    Before my pen has glean’d my teeming brain,
Before high-piled books, in charact’ry,
    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