Nothingness (Entropy?)

When I have fears that I may cease to be
Before my pen has gleaned my teeming brain,
Before high grav'd 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.

 



 

Poe might have imparted some personal experience in which I personally as a person could identify with that person he wrote so elegantly about, Keats here brings an ideal I find rather interesting and worth investigation, if for entropic reasons. While this does cross into the forbidden area of Romance apparently, I take the love more in the ideal sense than the highly probably literal sense Keats uses by refering to someone he looks at with love (I extend it as a metaphor to ride beyond simple romance in this case).

 

 

It begins in a seeming state of regret towards things he may not do, as if dying or soon to gone, he or the object he adorns. It would appear he directly references the many ideas he will be unable to explore as they melt alongside his form, a notion particularly horrifying to he and one I find to be quite disturbingly true when thought about.This failing vision imparts a highhorse, later seeming to be fame (presumably Keats and/or ego), from which the night imparts a loving face in the stars (romantic in itself I suppose). From here on it describes the typical concealed commonality that I prefer to take metaphorically: He knows that he will lose that lover's face (apparently the most endearing quality, rather dumb if you ask me) and is remorse that he will be unable to trace that lover with his hand (presumably in a sensual manor) before he returns to the pity of the lost face and its "magic." I prefer to think of it pieced as him looking wistfully at the sky with continued remorse and love lost (not necessarily a lover). This spans that he can no longer feel the magic it brings and that its power in merely seeing it is very alluring even during this presumed fall of some sort. Then of course that pose must end, and once again very alone like, much like "Alone," the narrator must face their lonesomeness, only here it goes on to say that they previously mention aspect of love, and notoreity, are inevitable also doomed to become nothing as he appears to be doing as well by the intial remorse. It could simply be a final farewell as he drifts into the abyss away from that he dears most (clearly detachment has not occurred i.e. very not good dying health if that is what is occurring), but it could also more profoundly refer further to say that even the great seemingly immortal aspects of Love and Fame, are but to eventually become nothing, a rather depressing footnote to his plight.

 

Sadly as I said before I cannot relate personally, however this light-is-fading swoon is something I have observed and thought about in amusement of it. Much like my own endings, this ends with the notion that in continuation there is eternity and futility, common aspects to see when thinking of one's own demise, or even death itself. However, even I do not wish to dwell long in such despair and say that if such a horror were to occur it would be of perspective, and over a long period we cannot yet fully comprehend as the living, and only with possiblity as the long and gone like so many before us.