This poem was sent in a letter to John Hamilton Reynolds, dated 31 January 1818. It was first published in Richard Monckton Milnes’s 1848 biography of Keats. It has since become one of the poet’s most famous compositions.<\/p>\n
The ‘fair creature of an hour’ is believed to be the same unidentified woman addressed in ‘Fill for me a brimming bowl’ and ‘Time’s sea hath been’.<\/p>\n
When I have fears that I may cease to be
\nBefore my pen has glean’d my teeming brain,
\nBefore high-piled books, in charactery,
\nHold like rich garners the full ripen’d grain;
\nWhen I behold, upon the night’s starr’d face,
\nHuge cloudy symbols of a high romance,
\nAnd think that I may never live to trace
\nTheir shadows, with the magic hand of chance;
\nAnd when I feel, fair creature of an hour,
\nThat I shall never look upon thee more,
\nNever have relish in the faery power
\nOf unreflecting love;–then on the shore
\nOf the wide world I stand alone, and think
\nTill love and fame to nothingness do sink.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
This poem was sent in a letter to John Hamilton Reynolds, dated 31 January 1818. It was first published in Richard Monckton Milnes’s 1848 biography of Keats. It has since become one of the poet’s most famous compositions. The ‘fair creature of an hour’ is believed to be the same unidentified woman addressed in ‘Fill […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/englishhistory.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/259"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/englishhistory.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/englishhistory.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/englishhistory.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/englishhistory.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=259"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/englishhistory.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/259\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/englishhistory.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=259"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/englishhistory.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=259"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/englishhistory.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=259"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}