The Anxiety of Life’s Intrusive Influence

When Romantic poet John Keats wrote the below sonnet, he captured something virtually every poet and writer has felt at some point, especially during times when life is particularly intrusive and leaves one with little or no time to write. As little writing time as I have these days, I know exactly how Keats felt when he penned these lines:

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.

---