Keats's “When I Have Fears” and Longfellow's “Half Walk” feature contemplative speakers who reflect on the topic about the inevitability of their deaths and whether their lives have been fully realized. Both poets show a similar structure and use similes and metaphors to represent their lives in order to explore their views on their deaths; however, their attitudes towards the topic differ significantly. These first-person poems explore the theme of death on a figurative level by using metaphors and similes to express one's fears or regrets. Through this figurative device, both authors exalt a parallel fear: dying without satisfying one's poetic abilities. Such contempt for this fear can be seen through Keats's expression that his life may cease "before my pen has gleaned my teeming brain, / Before books tall, in character, / Be held as rich barns in fully ripe wheat". .” (3-5) Similarly, Longfellow states his fear of seeing “the years slip away from me and not having fulfilled / The aspirations of my youth, to build / Some high-parapeted singing tower...