John Keats, “When I have fears that I may cease to be”

When I have fears that I may cease to be
     Before my pen has gleaned my teeming brain,
Before high-pilèd books, in charactery,
     Hold like rich garners the full ripened grain;
When I behold, upon the night’s starred 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.

John Keats, 1795-1821 – “When I have fears that I may cease to be” from Complete Poems

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#209 – Being a Jew in 1900, Being a Jew Now – Human Voices Wake Us

An episode from 12/15/25: Tonight, I read from Irving Howe’s World of Our Fathers: The Journey of the East European Jews to America and the Life They Found and Made. In light of the events in Australia yesterday, I take the time not just to talk about what it meant to be a Jewish immigrant to America around the year 1900, but what it means to me to be a Jew right now.The best way to support the podcast is by leaving a review on Apple or Spotify, sharing it with others, or sending me a note on what you think. You can also order any of my books: Time and the River: From Columbine to the Invention of Fire, due out next year, is now available for preorder. Other books include Notes from the Grid, To the House of the Sun, The Lonely Young & the Lonely Old, and Bone Antler Stone. I've also edited a handful of books in the S4N Pocket Poems series.Email me at humanvoiceswakeus1@gmail.com.
  1. #209 – Being a Jew in 1900, Being a Jew Now
  2. #208: Bach & God
  3. #207 – Death, the Gods, and Endless Life in Ancient Egypt
  4. #206 – The Discovery of Indo-European Languages – 1876
  5. #205: Learning to Read, c. 2000 BCE
  6. #204: Walt Whitman's "Crossing Brooklyn Ferry," 1856
  7. #203: Bruce Springsteen Talks About "Nebraska" – 1984
  8. #202 – A Death at Sea, 1834
  9. #201 – Gillian Anderson, & What Women Want, 2024
  10. #200: The Last Days of Walter Benjamin, 1940

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