Dear Lauren Friedman,
I have too many favorite poems! But since this is for a good cause I will choose one. This sonnet by Mr. Keats has many things in it: fear, desire, ambition, poetic urges, love, despair and much more. Keats was as pure a poet as there was. When I read his words I feel the dead leaves inside me being stirred up; this is what good poetry does.
With hopes for your successs--
Yours,
Susan Minot
WHEN I HAVE FEARS THAT I MAY CEASE TO BE
When I have fears that I may cease to be
Before my pen has glean’d my teeming brain,
Before high-piled books, in charactry,
Hold like rich garners the full-ripen’d grain;
When I behold, upon the night’s starr’d face,
Huge cloudy symbols of 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.
—John Keats
