The elegant quatrains describe, in considerable detail, Keats’ fear of a premature death (Keats 1-12). These lines act as subordinate clauses, precipitating a conclusion in which Keats responds to his dread, allowing his passions and vanity (“love and fame”) to recede to “nothingness” (Keats 12-14). Keats establishes a consistent rhythm, albeit one that permits a degree of flexibility, by writing in iambic pentameter and applying the Shakespearean sonnet’s usual rhyme scheme: a b a b, c d c d, e f e f, g g (Mason and Nims 312). The variance inherent to this rhyme scheme allows Keats to fully illustrate the elements of his fear. While lines 1-8 discuss the poet’s regret for works uncompleted, lines 9-12 reflect his dread that death will separate him from his beloved. Furthermore, the rhyming couplet allows Keats to provide a concise and firm response to his fear, a quality notably absent from Longfellow’s poem. “I stand alone, and think / Till love and fame to nothingness do sink,” writes the poet (Keats 13-14). By allowing his fears, and perhaps their origins in passion and vanity, to recede into the subconscious, Keats liberates his mind from their …show more content…
Also reflecting standard practice within Petrarchan poetry, Longfellow’s octave utilizes an a b b a, a b b a rhyme scheme and his sestet adopts a c d c, d c d pattern (Mason and Nims 312). The octave’s unified structure and rhyme scheme strike a contrast with Keats’s introductory quatrains. While Keats frames these quatrains as subordinate clauses, preempting a resolution to the fears they discuss, Longfellow’s octave does no such thing. Instead, Longfellow crafts a unified, emotional monologue. The American poet wallows in depression, dissatisfied with his artistry and alarmed that death, later described as “thundering from the heights,” will claim him before he can achieve his long-neglected goals (12). Tonally, Longfellow’s gloominess distinguishes his sonnet from “When I Have Fears,” which explores an unnerving fate but which concludes in an expression of solemn confidence. In his sestet, Longfellow merely replaces the octave’s melancholy with a sense of fearful exhaustion. “Half-way up the hill” of life, the aging poet risks an encounter with “the cataract of Death,” a meeting which will ensure that Longfellow’s artistic visions remain