When I Have Fears That I May Cease To Be By John Keats

Poets are artists who earn their living through words, and their imagination. It is their own craft, as much as woodcarving is a carpenter 's craft. We always take it for granted that artists who make their living with their own craft do it because they like doing what they’re doing; but it is not the only reason one might choose to exercise their own craft. In the three poems, we each see contrasting perspectives on their relationship with the same craft as shown in the poems primarily through tone and imagery. In “When I have Fears That I May Cease to Be” by John Keats, he paints an image of the beautiful nature. Throughout the poem, especially in lines 5-11 he describes the magnificence of the view. The tone of the poem starts off as having

magic, fair, faery power, unreflecting love, etc.) all convey to us just how brilliant the view is. Keats feels the irresistible urge to write this beauty down in “high-piléd books, in charactery,” (line 3), before he dies. The need to describe in words what one cannot hold on is clear, for in lines 12-14 it is written “then on the shore Of the wide world I stand alone, and think Till love and fame and nothingness do sink.”. Connect this to the other lines 1-12 in this poem, it is evident that unless he can write the magnificence of nature down before he dies, which may be anytime, love and fame in the world means nothing to him. The tone in the last 2-3 lines shifts compared to the other lines. It becomes uncommitted to matters, such as high aspirations. His relationship with his craft exists solely due to nature and its unchallenged beauty, and Keats’s craft’s purpose is to write on nature’s charm. It is a necessary link on the poet’s part. Pablo Neruda’s “The Poet’s Obligation” has a big difference from Keats’s poem from the beginning. Conversely to Keats, who writes of nature, Neruda writes for humans, to anyone who is a prisoner of a situation. This can be inferred to from lines 1-4

Already he describes his craft as being a “sullen art”. Keats describes his poems as a result of watching nature, and Neruda portrays his similarly. However Thomas expresses his craft as being sullen. In the first stanza of the poem there is a juxtaposition in the raging moon (line 3) and the singing light (line 6). The still night (line 2) when the moon rages (line 3) is when the poet’s craft is exercised, and this is when Thomas is active as a poet; when the moon is active as well. Contrary to this, as the poet works, the lovers are already in bed, asleep and inactive. Nobly, he states that he works not for fame or to make a living, not for entertainment (inferred to from line 9 “the ivory stages”) nor for money, but for the lovers and their common grief (interpreted from line 5 & 10, 11) that they might die before the other; it is for the lovers’ secret world that only they know. He goes on in the second stanza to list the things he doesn’t work his craft for. This is another distinction from the other two poems, as they write about what exactly they write their poems for, whilst in Thomas’s poem it gets to the conclusion only at the end. His tone seems to be a touch pompous as he claims that he is not doing his work for his own gain at all. He sketches images of grandeur, such as images of grand entertainment in the first stanza, or writing for active politicians like