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ASPECTS OF CLASSICISM IN JOHN KEATS'S POETRY

"ENDYMION" TO "THE FALL OF HYPERION"

by

HENDRIK J. J. SCHMIDT

submitted in fulfilment of
the requirements for the degree of

MASTER OF ARTS

in the

. DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH
;' .
.. at the

RAND· . AFRIKAANS UNIVERSITY

SUPERVISOR; DR E. T. LICKINDORF

MAY 1992
 "

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I should like to express my sincere appreciation to my

supervisor, Dr. E. T. Lickindorf, for her enthusiasm, patience,
and encouragement in this project. Her scholarship and
professionalism inspired me to continue even when the odds were
against me.

The staff of the Depart~~nt of English at the Rand Afrikaans

University supported me with enquir~es and friendly
encouragement. The assistance from Miss Ron~l Smitof the
reference unit, RAU library services, has been inestimable.

A special "factor" in my studies is my family. I wish to thank

the four men in my life - my husband, Hans, and my three sons,
Reinhold, Hermann, and Roland - for granting me the space and
time to do what I had to do. This is for you.
 CONTENTS

"

INTRODUCTION 1

· Chapter 1 APOLLONIAN INSPIRATION:

CLASSICAL ELEMENTS BEFORE ENDYMION: A POETIC 6
ROMANCE

Chapter 2 ENDYMION: A POETIC ROMANCE:

IN PURSUIT OF ARTISTIC PERFECTION 26

Chapter 3 TRANSITION:
AXIOM AND FORM 57

Chapter 4 HYPERION. A FRAGMENT:

.AN END AND A BEGINNING 72

Chapter 5 THE ODES OF 1819 99

Chapter 6 THE FALL OF HYPERION. A DREAM:

THE PRIEST OF APOLLO 120

BIBLIOGRAPHY 137
 -1-

INTRODUCTION

John Keats (31 October.1795 - 23 February 1821) is prominent

among the younger generation of poets of the Romantic period.
From the early admiration of his contemporaries to the present
much attention has been paid to the nature of Romanticism in his
work. A member of the "Keats circle," Joseph Ritchie, as early
as November 1817 wrote to a friend that he thought Keats "might
well prove to be the great poetical luminary of the age to
come."l In an essay entitled "On the Development of
Keats' (sic) Reputation," (1968), J. R. MacGillivray discusses
this ongoing admiration of Keats as central to the embodiment of .
Romanticism, and refers also to the veneration of the poet by
members of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. 2 MacGillivray
states that they had a natural affinity for the poet's work
because of the "romantic medievalism" in some of his poems, and
because of the sensuous richness of some of his description:

1 Walter Jackson Bate, John Keats, p. 269.

2 "'Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood,' a group of young artists
and men of letters who, about the year 1850, united to
resist existing conventions in art and literature by a
return to art forms as they supposed them to exist in
European art before the time of Raphael."
(See: Sir Paul Harvey (ed.), The Oxford Companion to
English Literature, p. 635).
 -2-

The Pre-Raphaelite admiration for Keats is not

surprising. The romantic medievalism of La
Belle Dame sans Merci, The Eve of st. Agnes,
and, in their lesser degree, of Isabella and The
Eve of st. Mark'seemed enchanting; these poems
led;~he imagination from Victorian England to
the Pre-Raphaelite land of heart's desire.
Indeed all the more mature poems could appeal,
by reason of thjir rich colouring and pictorial
suggestiveness.

Aspects of Romanticism iike "enchant (ment) .•. the imagination

.~. heart's desire ... rich colouring ... and pictorial
suggestiveness" contributed sUbstantially to Keats's
popularity. His reputation as a poet takes into account the
sensuousness of his verse, his appreciation of nature, and the
elaborateness of some of his descriptive passages, for instance
the "hymn to Pan" in Endymion: A Poetic Romance (completed 28
November 1817).

While recognizing aspects of classicism in Keats's work,4

critics of our time continue to admire Keats as, essentially, a
poet whose work embodies the precepts of poetic creation usually
associated with Romanticism. For instance, while argueing that
Keats's greatness "is a matter of promise and potentiality

3 J. R. MacGillivray, "On the Development of Keats' (sic)

Reputation," in Keats: A Bibliography and Reference Guide
with an essay on Keats' Reputation, p. 1x.
41 See, for instance, Walter Jackson Bate, John Keats,
chapter xix, for a detailed discussion of classical
references in the odes of April and May, 1819.
 -3-

rather than achievement,"5 F. R. Leavis (March 1936) concedes

that " ••. Keats has become a symbolic figure, the type of
genius, a ~ero, and martyr of poetry ••• " (Leavis, p. 312).
"

However, beneath Keats's overt accommodation of all the chief

characteristics of Romanticism, which turned against the
strictures of the Augustansto accommodate the exuberance of
expression of nature, lurks a firm continuation of classical
disciplines and classical form.

When Keats first started writing (Imitation of Spenser is dated

'c. early 1814'), Romanticism was established as a revolutionary
counter-action to neoclassicism. Amongst the older generation
Romantics, Wordsworth's opinion that " .•• all good poetry is the
spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings •.. ,,6 had
established a new starting point for poetic craftsmanship.
Keats subscribed to the precepts of Romanticism; however, as a
newcomer to the movement, he also re-emphasized the special
importance of form and reason in the creative process and he
regretted that Romanticism seemed to have discarded classical
constructs in its enthusiasm for speaking from the

5 F. R. Leavis, Keats (first published in Scrutiny, IV

March 1936), in D.J. Enright and Ernst De Chickera (eds) ,
English Critical Texts, p. 312.
William Wordsworth, Preface to Lyrical Ballads, in
D. J. Enright and Ernst De Chickera (eds) , English
Critical Texts, p. 165.
 -4-

heart.

;.

This dissertation examines aspects of classicism in Keats's work

which illustrate his development as a Romantic poet of both
heart and mind. He drew freely on Lempriere's Classical
Dictionary of Proper Names mentioned in Ancient Authors for his
allusions to figures in Greek myths and legends, and the first
among the ancient deities was, for Keats, Apollo, the god of
poetry.

In the poems that Keats wrote before Endymion he expressed his

longing for Apollonian inspiration. He saw the manifold
qualities of all poetry in the diverse nature of Apolloi and he
aimed at a closer relationship with this god of poetry who
represented for him the divine infusion of creative imagination
and the mastery of technique to immortalize experienced and
observed beauty.

Endymion is an example of Keats's experimentation with a

traditional form - here, the romance - and it draws heavily on
classical analogy to illustrate some of the poet's Romantic
principles regarding poetry and the role of the poet. He
believed firmly that he could master his craft only if he were
prepared to commit himself utterly to the god of poetry, just as
Endymion found happiness with his beloved, the moon, after much
SUffering and after he had foresworn all temptations of other
 -5-

loves.

While working on Endymion, Keats formulated principles of

;.
creative composition and of the poet's role. He systematically
applied these concepts to his creative endeavours, and explained
himself in letters to his brothers and friends. A key concept
of creative art that preoccupied Keats was truth and its nature
as well as the link between truth and beauty. Once more Keats
turned to classicism and discovered in the timeless beauty of a
Greek vase the truth that was, for him, reality.

Apart from his major experiments with the classical ode, Keats
also turned his hand to the epic. Hyperion. A Fragment, may be
regarded his most ambitious composition. In this epic and in
the restructured The Fall of Hyperion. A Dream, Keats not only
used the vast scale of the classical model for sUbject matter
that encompasses the universe, but he also expresses in these
two poems his most mature ideas on poetry and on the role of the
poet.

In turning to classicism to explore and convey his Romantic

views about nature, poetry, and the poet as priest of true
inspiration, Keats fused the great traditions of the past with
the revolutionary movement of which he was one of the leading
exponents.
 - 6 -
Chapter 1

APOLLONIAN INSPIRATION:
CLASSICAL ELEMENTS BEFORE "ENDYMION"
:.

In February 1815, at the age of twenty, Keats wrote Ode to

Apollo, which is an early example of his special admiration for
poets of the past who had been inspired by Apollo. Keats saw in
Apollo the many-faceted qualities representative of the elements
of poetry.
)
Ode to Aopollo firmly establishes Keats's desire for
'Apollonian' inspiration, and also places Apollo securely in the
centre of the classical allusions in his poetry, so that the
figure of Apollo becomes a continuum in his work.

As a scholar, Keats had access to a number of classical

references. Cowden Clarke, Keats's contemporary, informs us
that: "The books that were his ... recurrent sources of
attraction were Tooke's Pantheon, Lempriere's Classical
Dictionary which he appeared to learn, and Spence's Polymetis.
This was the store from which he acquired his intimacy with the
Greek mythology."?

7 Miriam Allott (ed.), quoting Cowden Clarke in the head-

I note to Endymion, in Keats: The Complete Poems, p. 116.
 - 7 -
According to Lempriere, Apollo was

••• the god of all the fine arts, of medicine, music,

poetry, and eloquence, of all which he was deemed the
inventor. He had received from Jupiter the power of
knowing futurity, ·and he was the only one of the gods
whose ~racles were in general repute over the
world. .

For Keats, Apollo showed attributes that he himself associated

with the fine arts, that is, rhythm, harmony, and gracefulness of
expression.

Apollo was also the god of shepherds. Disguised as a shepherd,

he had assisted Admetus, king of Thessaly, during the latter's
exile from heaven. Apollo is, further, reputed to have assisted
Poseidon in building the walls of Troy, and this activity might
represent the image-building capacity of poetry, Troy having been
traditionally associated with images of beauty, power, deceit,
and destruction.

Paintings and sculptures represented the symbolic physical

attributes of the god, and he was often depicted as an image of
the Roman ideal of· a man:

Apollo is generally represented with long hair,

and the Romans were fond of imitating his
figure •..• He is always represented as a tall

B F. A. Wright (ed.), Lempri~re's Classical Dictionary of

Proper Names mentioned in Ancient Authors. 3rd ed., p.61.
 - 8 -

beardless young man, with a handsome shape, hold-

ing in his hand a bow, and sometimes a lyre; his
head is generally surrounded with beams of light.
(Wright, p. 61)

The lyre that is so closely associated with Apollo, and that is

generally Believed to have been his invention, had been given to
Apollo by Mercury, the "Roman god of commerce, identified with
the Greek Hermes, the messenger of the gods." 9 Coming from a
divine messenger, the lyre might represent the prophetic quality
of verse as well as rational, calculating thought. Something of
Mercury's volatility and fickleness seems to have tainted his
gift because poetic inspiration is elusive and transient, yet
utterly desired by the poet.

In a verse-letter to his brother George (August 1816), Keats

expressed his intense longing to be imbued with divine
inspiration~ At that time, aged twenty, he felt that "though I
to dimness gaze" or "strive to think divinely" Apollo's song
would ever elude him:

Full many a dreary hour have I passed,

My brain bewildered and my mind o'ercast
with heaviness, in seasons when I've thought
No sphery strains by me could e'er be caught
From the blue dome, though I to dimness gaze
On the far depth where sheeted lightning plays,
Or, on the wavy grass outstretched supinely,
Pry 'mong the stars, to strive to think divinely;
That I should never hear Apollo's song, ,

,i 9 .
Peter F1nch (ed.), The New Elizabethan Reference
Dictionary, p. 913.
 - 9 -

Though feathery clouds were floating all along

The purple west and, two bright streaks between,
The golden lyre itself were dimly seen;
(Allott, p. 49)

Keats longs to be drawn closer to Apollo, to be allowed to hear

the music of the spheres, Apollo's song, so that he might learn
"
to play the "golden lyre" which, as yet, is only "dimly
seen.,,10

Ode to Apollo expresses Keats's admiration for those poets of

earlier generations who had indeed experienced Apollonian
inspiration - Homer, Virgil, Milton, Shakespeare, Spenser, and
Tasso. Apollo/as the originator of song, is at the centre of
the ode. He has joined the nine muses at the foot of Mount
Helicon to inspire the works of the masters of poetry:

But when thou joinest with the Nine

And all the powers of song combine,
We listen here on earth.
The dying tones that fill the air
And charm the ear of evening fair,
From thee, great God of Bards, receive their
heavenly birth.
(Allott, p. 17)

Keats recognises heavenly inspiration in the composition 'of

verse. Poetic "inspiration'l'implies the infusion of ideas and
feelings into the poet by supernatural agency. Such infusion
enables the poet to compose verse, often in praise of the deity
of inspiration. In this way, the "twanging" harp of Homer, the
"majestic" tone of Virgil's lyre, the thunder of Milton, the
magic'of Shakespeare, Spenser's "silver trumpet," and Tasso's

---------------------~--
10 On significance of Apollo to Keats, cf Ian Jack,
Keats and the Mirror of Art, pp. 176-190.
 - 10 -
passionate verse become symbols of probabilities for Keats. He
has carefully selected those qualities that he wishes to emulate
in 'the poets he venerates. Their verse becomes, for him, an
instrument by means of which he, too, hopes to view more clearly
the "golden lyre," to hear more vividly "Apollo's song. 'I

.'

fruitful year, 1819, brought the triumph of the great odes,

while Hyperion. A Fragment is cast in the epic form, which is
considered the most difficult and most sought after of the
classical modes.

Keats's philosophy of poetry and his vision of the role,of the

poet are explained, partly, in the traditional attributes of
Apollo. This god of inspiration was "deemed the inventor"

11 Abrams, A Glossary of Literary Terms, p. 124.

 - 11 -
(Lempriere, p.61) of poetry, music, and eloquence; he was the
Roman ideal of perfected man, and he was a prophet. As the god
of shepherds he moved in the kingdom of natural beauty which
emphasized one of the many aspects of his diverse being.
Poetry, for Keats, must initiate a description or representation
;.

of beauty as perceived in Nature: II • • • if Poetry comes not as

naturally as the leaves to a tree it had better not come at
all.,,12 The poet becomes the instrument for creation; he is
the "lyre" that sings through the mediation of Apollo. The need
for Apollonian inspiration remained with Keats throughout his
brief life.

Keats's attitude towards great poets of the past and towards

their allegiance to Apollo is consolidated in the sonnet liOn
First Looking into chapman's,Homer," written in October
1816. 13 The sonnet was inspired by a reading of: "A
beautiful copy of the folio edition of Chapman's translation of
Homer ..• and to work we went, turning to some of the
"famousest ll (sic) passages, as we had scrappily known them in
Pope's version .•. 1114

12 w. J. Bate, John Keats, p. 234.

13 Apart from the poems discussed in this chapter, the
following poems written before Endymion also mention
Apollo as the great god of poetry and inspiration:
liTo George Felton Mathew" (Nov. 1815); "To Charles
Cowden Clarke" (Sept. 1816); "To Georgiana Augusta
Wylie" (Dec. 1816); liTo Apolloll (Spring 1817).
14 Allott, quoting Charles Cowden Clarke; headnote, p. 60.
 - 12 -
Keats was overwhelmed by the power and scope of Homer's Iliad.
In the sonnet he wrote after they had read through the night,
Keats confirms that he has read widely, and that he has come
across remarkable work before:
;.

Much have I travelled in the realms of gold,

And many goodly states and kingdoms seen;
Round many western islands have I been
Which bards in fealty to Apollo hold.
(Allott, p , 61)

The classical 'territory' held by Horner is, however, superior to

anything the poet has ever experienced: "Oft of one wide expanse
had I been tOld / That deep-brow'd Homer ruled as his demesne" (11.
5-6) •

Keats's metaphorical reference to "states •.• kingdoms ... demesne"

that poets 'rule' or 'possess' extends his philosophy of the role
of the poet. Homer, especially, has created for himself an
inalienable kingdom by capturing in verse the story of an entire
people. Keats confirmed this role of the poet to 'capture' and
'possess' realms in a letter to John Reynolds (3 February 1818):

Poetry should be great and unobtrusive, a thing

which enters into one's soul, and does not
startle it or amaze it with itself, but with its
sUbject.- How beautiful are the retired flowers!
how would they lose their beauty were they to
throng into the highway crying out, "admire me I
am a violet!- dote upon me I am a primrose!"
Modern poets differ from the Elizabethans in
this. Each of the moderns like an Elector of
Hanover governs his petty state, and knows how
:many straws are swept daily from the Causeways in
all his dominions •.. : the antients. (sic) were
Emperors of
 - 13 -

vast Provinces, they had only heard of the remote

ones and scarcely cared to visit them. 15

Keats's admiration for the vast-scale works of certain masters -

"

Homer, Virgil, Milton, Shakespeare - encouraged him in his wish to

write poems of substantial length. Endymion and the two Hyperions
resulted from this desire. By the time he wrote the letter to Rey-
nolds cited above, he had also become impatient with what he thought
were limitations in the form of unnecessary embellishments and an
absence of simplic~ty in the work of some of his contemporaries:

I don't mean to deny Wordsworth's grandeur and

Hunt's merit, but I mean to say we need not be
tea zed (sic) with grandeur and merit when we can
have them uncontaminated and unobtrusive. Let us
have the old Poets, and robin Hood.
(Forman, p. 97)

Keats found security in "the old Poets." He drew on their

experience in his search for perfection and gained confidence
from their special affinity with Apollo.

Both extracts quoted from the letter to Reynolds express Keats's

criticism of the work of his contemporaries. They govern their
"petty states," and they only "teaze (sic) with grandeur and
merit" but are unable to attain these qualities in their verse.
As a Romantic of the younger generation Keats was

M. B. Forman (ed.), The Letters of John Keats. p. 96.

 - 14 -
aware of shortcomings in this school. 16

In his preface to the second edition of Lyrical Ballads (1802),

Coleridge gefined his view of Romantic poetry. He referred to
the "two cardinal points" of poetry as being truth and
imagination, stating that poetry has: ,,~ .. the power of exciting
the sympathy of the reader by a faithful adherence to the truth
of nature, and the power of giving the interest of novelty by
the modifying colours of imagination.,,17 Keats's work mirrors
Coleridge's views on the nature of poetry, and emphasizes that
the truth perceived in nature does not preclude the order of
form and the rationality of classicism.

The Romantic poet is central'to his creation. He captures his

sUbjective experience of Nature: he wants to "re-activate the
world by discovering in himself the creative perceptiveness
which will allow him to draw aside the veils which men have laid
across their senses" (Fowler, p. 164).

Keats, too, searched within himself for 'creative ..

perceptiveness.' However, as a poet nurtured on the classics,
he

16 T. S. Eliot warns: "We do not mean quite the same thing

when we speak of a writer as romantic, as we do when we
speak of a literary period as romantic." This seems to
allow for the individuation of a poet, like Keats for
instance, within the specific literary period.
(T. S. Eliot, "Romantic" and "Classic," in Selected Prose,
p.31). .
17 S. T. Coleridge, Biographia Literaria, in D. J. Enright
and Ernst De Chickera (eds) , English critical Texts, p. 190.
 - 15 -

recognized the importance of the role of the god of inspiration

and felt it had been a serious mistake for his older
contemporaries to reject the classics in their dislike of the
"
sterility they allegedly found in the work of the neoclassicists
of the first half of the eighteenth century. The neoclassicist
(or Augustan) author, such as Addison or Pope or Swift or Dryden,
considered literature to be the product of careful study. In his
Essay on criticism Pope exhorts the poet to frame his jUdgement
by Nature's "just standard" (1. 69):

Those RULES of old discovered, not devis'd,

Are Nature still, but Nature methodiz'di
Nature, like liberty, is but restrain'd
By the same laws which first herself ordaiy'd.
. (11. 88-91) 8

The early Romantics were generally critical of the neoclassical

'methodization' of Nature, as was Keats. According to Henry
Stephens, a fellow student of Keats's at GUy's Hospital, Keats
was "a great admirer of Spencer(sic).His Fairy Queen was a
great favorite(sic) with him, Byron was also in favor (~ic), Pope
he maintained was no poet, only a versifier" (Bate, p. 49). The
Romantics drew upon themselves: in Wordsworth's formula, they
regarded art as "the spontaneous overflow of powerful
feelings.,,19 Keats, however,

_____ l _
I
18 Alexander Pope, An Essay on Criticism, in D.J.Enright
and Ernst de Chikera (eds), English critical Texts, p. 113.
i!
19 S. Barnet, M. Berman, and W. Burto, (eds), Dictionary
of Literary Terms, p. 29.
 - 16 -
had a need for some of the orderliness of traditional
forms. 20

;.

Technically, the sonnet is identified as a fourteen-line lyric,

usually divided into units of eight lines (octave) and six lines
(sestet). These divisions are indicated by a fixed rhyme-scheme,
and by a conventional structure for the development of the
thought-content in the poem. The sonnet in English traditionally
has an iambic metre. Keats had used the sonnet form in earlier
work, but mastery came to him as part of the inspirational
experience which resulted from a reading of Chapman's translation
of Homer's Iliad. Fowler's view is that a poet's voluntary
sUbjection to the "conventions" of the sonnet actually enhances
his creative abilities:

••. what the convention means to the poet is a

specialized "vocabulary" of formal devices in
addition to the normal rules of the language •..
and his voluntary sUbjection to this discipline
produces ..• a high precision of utterance, a

20 The sonnet is one such traditional form with which Keats

experimented. "Petrarch (1304-74) was the first major
sonneteer: his Rime to Laura established the essential
form and matter - a record of intense and hazardous
service of a lover, a service offering precarious local
triumphs and the certainty of final defeat" (Fowler, p.
178) •
Although the sonnet falls outside the realm of the
classics, reference is made in this study to some of
Keats's sonnets as they form an integral part of his
development, employ classical analogies, and create a
vital link in his experiments with the form of the ode.
(See chapter 5 below).
 - 17 -
new paradoxical freedom: "rhyme is no impediment
to his conceit, but rather gives him wings to
mount and carries him, not out of his course,
but as it were beyond his power to a far happier
flight."
(Fowler, p. 178)
"

Having delighted in the discovery of the "wide expanse / That

deep-brow'd Homer ruled as his demesne" (11. 5-6), Keats
compares his state of exultation with that of a discoverer of
new planets or unknown continents. He has traced "the Muses
upward to their Spring" (Pope, 1. 127), and is confident that
Apollonian inspiration belongs firmly also to the Romantics'
visionary "overflow of feelings." Keats has united, in this
sonnet, the Neoclassicists' concern with rules in composition
with the early Romantics' "spontaneous overflow of emotions"
(Barnet, p. 29).

On 9 October 1816 Keats met Leigh Hunt whom he had long admired,
and "the admiration was solidified by personal friendliness; the
first volume of Keats's poems was to be dedicated to Hunt"
(Bate, p. 79). Keats had long wanted to write poems of.
substantial length and in the atmosphere of Hunt's friendly
acceptance and encouragement, he wrote Sleep and Poetry,
probably completing it in December 1816. As Miriam Allott
perceptively states, the poem contains "Keats's first serious
attempt to outline his poetic ambitions and represents his most
I
substantial achievement in longer poems up to this time"
(Allott, p. 69). The last fifty lines describe the various
objets d'art in the room in Hunt's cottage where Keats had been
 - 18 -
provided a couch for the night, and where his inspiration to
write "these lines" had come.

The outline of Keats's "poetic ambitions" to which Miriam Allott

refers· are concentrated in the poet's continued admiration for
Apollo, and in his admission that he is not yet worthy to enter
the domain of Apollo, although he desperately wants to follow
"The morning sunbeams to the great Apollo":

o Poesy! For thee I grasp my pen

That am not yet a glorious denizen
Of thy wide heaven. Yet, to my ardent prayer,
Yield from thy sanctuary some clear air,
Smoothed for intoxication by the breath
Of flowering bays, that I may die a death
Of luxury and my young spirit follow
The morning sunbeams to the great Apollo
Like a fresh sacrifice; or, if I can bear
The o'erwhelming sweets, 'twill bring to me
the fair
visions of all places . . . .
(Sleep and Poetry, 11. 53-63)

These lines reaffirm Keats's yearning for Apollonian

inspiration. He is ready to swoon in an excess of pleasure, and
to offer himself as a sacrifice to Apollo: " ... that I 'may die
a death / Of luxury ... " (11. 58-59). In giving himself utterly
to Apollo, the poet affirms his commitment to the many facets
that make up poetry as epitomized in the god of poetic
inspiration. His sUbjection and commitment will afford him the
privilege of a view of "the fair / Visions of all places" (11.
62-62)1.
 - 19 -
Keats once more uses the image of poetry as a "realm" to be pos-
sessed by the poet in order to enumerate the various kinds of
poetry he intends writing: "Then will I pass the countries that I
;.

The poet intends to drink deep of the fountains of inspiration:

"First the realm I'll pass / Of Flora and old Pan ... " (11.
101-102). This allusion to Flora, goddess of flowers and gardens,
and Pan, the god of universal nature, illustrates Keats's intense
awareness of the beauty of nature and of the poet's need to recog-
nize that the source of poetic creation is nature. He further
describes the simple enjoyment of sensual pleasures experienced by
his being receptive to nature. To be receptive is to have the
ability or capacity to receive, and to take in or absorb what one
experiences through one's senses. Keats wants to wait in readiness
for poetic inspiration so that he might proceed to the second
'realm' of composition in which he will pay particular attention to
the "strife / Of human hearts":

And can I ever bid these joys farewell?

Yes, I must pass them for a nobler life,
Where I may find the agonies, the strife
Of human hearts -
(11. 122-125)

This reference to epic poetry introduces the extended metaphor (11.

126-163) of Apollo, the god of light, driving a chariot across the
skies. Miriam Allott suggests that Keats "uses the image as a
 - 20 -

symbol of creative imagination" (Allott, p. 75). Apollo, the

sun-god, descends from heaven; at first there is a slight awareness
of the warmth of the rays, then the skies brighten with "silver
from the sun's bright eyes" (1. 132). Ultimately, the charioteer
and his horses glide "downward with capacious whirl" (1. 132). The
charioteer then "talks / To the trees and mountains, and there soon
appear / Shapes of delight, of mystery, and fear, ..• " (11.
134-136) •

Just as the quiet emergence of Apollo into a new day gradually

gathers momentum, bursts into a joyous "capacious whirl," and
communes with nature, so poetic inspiration fills the poet slowly,
gently, until, like Apollo, he observes "Shapes of delight, of
mystery, and fear" (1. 138). Poetic inspiration does not end with
observation: joy, laughter, and anguish are experienced in the
commitment to Poesy:" as they would chase / Some ever-fleeting
music on they sweep. / Lo! how they murmur, laugh, and smile, and
weep-" (11. 140-142).

The exhilarating vision is fleeting, but Keats is determined to

immortalize i t : " But I will strive / Against all doubtings and
will keep alive / The thought of that same chariot and the strange
/ Journey it went" (11. 159-162).

In keeping with his awareness of the role of earlier poets in the

creation of poetry of the present, Keats devotes the next
sixty-seven lines of Sleep and Poetry to. an historical overview
 - 21 -
of the output of British poets. He expresses special admiration
for the Elizabethans:

•.. Here her [imagination's] altar shone,

E'en;.in this isle, and who could paragon
The fervid choir that lifted up a noise
Of harmony, to where it ay will poise
Its mighty self of convoluting sound,
Huge as a planet, and like that roll round,
Eternally around a dizzy void?
(11. 171-177)

Keats sees Renaissance poetry as a planet which contributes

eternally to the music of the spheres. One recalls the poet's
epistle to his brother George, . and his fervent desire to hear more
clearly, more vividly, the music of the spheres (Forman, p. 5).
Through his reading empathically the poetry of the Elizabethans, he
fulfils this wish.

The poet then states that, unfortunately, the harmony of poetic

creation was disturbed by the Augustans who effected a schism with
poetic tradition. He criticizes the weaker poets amongst the
Augustans for introducing "foppery and barbarism" (1. 182) into
poetry that "Made great Apollo blush for this his land": (1. 183):

... [you] were closely wed

To musty laws lined out with wretched rule
And compass vile, so that ye taught a school
Of dolts to smooth, inlay, and clip, and fit,
Till, like the certain wands of Jacob's wit,
Their verses tallied. Easy was the task-
A thousand handicraftsmen wore the mask
Of Poesy. . ..
(11. 194-201)
 - 22 -

His search for beauty and truth in poetry also caused Keats to
criticize poets of his own time. He thought they handled their
themes as
. as
~pcouthly Homer's one-eyed giant, Polythemus,
handled his club. Keats wanted to avoid the extremes of
enforced rules and insensitivity. He was convinced that Apollo,
the god of light, wields power over poetic creativity: " ... A
drainless shower / Of ,light is Poesy; 'tis the supreme of power;
/ . 'Tis might half slumbering on his own right arm" (11.
236-238).

Keats believed that a recognition of the power of what he identi-

fied as true Apollonian inspiration would assist poets of his
time so that they, too, would be "poet-kings":

... All hail delightful hopes!

As she was wont, the imagination
Into most lovely labyrinths will be gone,
And they ~hall be accounted poet-kings
Who simply tell the most heart-easing things.
Oh, may these joys be ripe before I die.
(11. 264-269)

commitment to Poesy is not just escapism for Keats; it is also

fulfilment. This was to become evident during his 'creative
year,' (1819), and in the composition of the great odes.' Before
him, now, " •.• there ever rolls / A vast idea ••• and I glean /
Therefrom my liberty" (11. 290-292).

As Keats's poetic impulse developed, he moved towards a search

for beauty and truth in poetry. In Sleep and Poetry his
 - 23 -

definitions are tentative; he enumerates individual qualities of

poetry; he does not yet take a composite, holistic view. He
says, for instance, that poetry has "power ..• ," "light .•. ,"
the quality' to "soothe," and to "lift the thoughts of man." A
lesser poet might have been satisfied with these discoveries:
Keats would quietly mature, "budding patiently under the eye of
Apollo" (Forman, p. 104), until he worked out for himself that
poetry is an instrument for the discovery of beauty.
Ultimately, he experienced the beauty that harmonizes with the
music of the spheres. He understood that the great, harmonizing
beauty of the universe is that which is the ultimate Truth.
Meanwhile, the poet's youthful ardour and idealism are
summarized in his allusion to Daedalus and his impetuous son,
Icarus, who ventured too close to the sun on his wings held in
place with wax •. Keats is prepared to risk his very being in an
attempt to scale the mountain tops of poetic endeavour:

These lines epitomize a Keats who wants to devote himself

utterly to Poesy. To have ventured is the aim; utter dedication
is the requirement: success would be a bonus.

The next long poem, which Keats completed in December 1816, was
I stood tip-toe upon a little hill. There is a lightness in
 - 24 -
the verse and in the atmosphere of the first part of the poem
(11. 1-115) that speaks of the poet's tranquil mind. The fine
detail of his observation and the sheer sensuous delight he
takes in the description of Spring lift "the thoughts of man."
Apollo calls upon poets to sing the praises of beauteous nature:

Open afresh your round of starry folds,

Ye ardent marigol~s!
Dry up the moisture from your golden lids,
For great Apollo bids
That in these days your praises should be sung
On many harps, which he has lately strung.
(11. 47-52)

The darting quality of the lines, created by images such as the

"starry folds" of the flowers that are invited to dry their "golden
lids," is carefully emphasised by the one classical allusion Keats
makes in the first part of the poem:

I gazed awhile and felt as light and free

As though the fanning wings of Mercury
Had played upon my heels; I was light-hearted,
And many pleasures in my vision started.
(11. 23-26)

Throughout the poem, Keats is also keenly aware of the close

relationship between Apollo and Mercury. The lyre of
inspiration was Mercury's gift to Apollo. Mercury, messenger of
the gods, has lifted the poet's spirit and has made him
clear-sighted. The link between Mercury and Apollo is extended
!
in the reference to Mercury's "fanning wings" that "played upon
my heels" (11. 24-25). In Keats and the Mirror of Art, Ian
 - 25 -
Jack illustrates the close relationship between the two
deities: IIApollo was in fact the Patron of sandal-makers, and
we notice that in 'The Inspiration of the Poet' and in most
other portrayals of the god, Apollo is shown wearing an
"
elaborate pair of sandals which are usually made of gold. 1121
Keats's poetic philosophy that divine inspiration gives life to
the creative spirit is extended to encompass the image of the
poet also as a fleet-footed messenger bringing beauty and
delight to the world. Mercury was, furthermore, "the god of
eloquence, ingenuity, skill .•. 1122 hence these qualities
quicken in the poet by divine intercession.

Keats's readings of Lempri~re and Tooke's Pantheon, as well as

his own experience of Apollonian inspiration, led him to a
discovery of myths and legends that he would use in his writings
in the years to follow. Apollo in his chariot would gently
kindle into life in the heart and mind of the poet that divine
infusion which inspired him to capture in words what he came to
perceive as beauty and truth.

21 Ian Jack, Keats and the Mirror of Art, p. 182.

Facsimile of Poussin's liThe Inspiration of the Poet"
facing p. 180.
I
22 C. T. Onions (ed.), The Shorter Oxford English
Dictionary I, p. 1235.
 - 26 -

Chapter 2

ENDYMION: A POETIC ROMANCE

;.
IN PURSUIT OF ARTISTIC PERFECTION

On 28 November 1817 Keats completed the first of his longer

poems which had as its source a brief classical reference to the
lovers, Endymion. and Diana. Endyrnion: A poetic Romance tells
the story of the "wanderer by moonlight" to whom Keats had
tantalizingly referred i n I stood tiptoe upon a little hill
(December 1816). Apart from embellishing the classical details
of the story, the poet also establishes an intimate link between
his own quest to perfect his art and Endymion's wanderings:
" ••• I did wed / Myself to things of light from infancy"
(Endymion IV, 11. 957-958). Just as Endymion arduously journeys
through the various elements - earth, water, air - and
experiences different forms of love, Keats feels he also needs a
period of preparation before he may assume the name of a poet.
Just as Endymion is 'spiritualized' once he has defeated:
temptation to turn from his true love and has denied his
selfhood, so Keats is cast in the 'sublime' role of poet only
onge he has committed himself totally to the god of poetry. The
poem, a classical allegory, therefore illustrates the Romantic
poet s pursuit of artistic mastery.
 - 27 -

Allegory, derived from the Greek allegoria, means "speaking

otherwise than one seems to speak" (Finch, p. 34). That is, in
allegory, words and images illustrate on a second or sUbmerged
level what the poet/author says on an obvious level. 23
Endymion's:quest, as well as his experiences and emotional
growth, reflect Keats's attempts to experience and capture
beauty. The poet, too, must "wander far" before attaining
fulfilment:

But woe is'me, I am but as a child

To gladden thee; and all I dare to say
Is that I pity thee; that on this day
I've been thy guide; that thou must wander far
In other regions, past the scanty bar
To mortal steps, before thou canst be ta'en
From every wasting sigh, from every pain,
Into the gentle bosom of thy love.
(Endymion II, 11. 120-127)

Keats's allegorical journey is very difficult. Like Endymion,

he has to cross the "bar" between mortality and immortality
before he is found worthy of his goal. He also has to learn to
negate his selfhood before he is relieved of "every wasting
sigh." The poet must keenly observe beauty and internalize it
utterly before he can recreate it in verse as artistic beauty

23 Some critics insist that "an allegory is (thus) a nar-

rative wherein a moral significance stands behind the
visible presentation, or a narrative with a continuous
system of equivalents. But narrative is not essential,
nor are abstractions; allegory is simply the presentation
of something by something else" (Barnet, p. 13).
I
 - 28 -

and truth.

The poet casts the story of Endymion's quest in the traditional

form of a romance. According to Fowler, "romance," as used in
the Middle Ages, implied the "new vernacular languages derived
from Latin, in contradistinction to the learned language, Latin,
itself" (Fowler, p. 162). Works written in the vernacular were
known as "Romanz," and this word became associated with "usually
non-didactic narratives of ideal love and chivalric adventures"
(Fowler, p. 162).

Unlike other poets of his time, Keats held the romance in high
regard "notwithstanding the circulating libraries." The romance
had become a disregarded form because a number of the novels
circulated by the lending libraries of the early nineteenth
century resorted to melodrama and·improbable situations
depicting "ideal love and chivalric adventures." Despite these
negative aspects associated with the form, Keats insisted on
SUb-titling the poem a 'romance':'

For the early Keats there had been no more

honorific (sic) word or attractive art than
romance. Even two months later he was to
insist, over his pUblishers' objection, on
giving Endymion the subtitle "A Poetic
Romance" with the assertion that "a ramance
(sic) is a fine thing n~~withstanding the
circulating Libraries."

------------------------
!

24 Morris Dickstein, Keats and his Poetry: A study in

Development, p. 139.
 - 29 -

Apart from considering the romance as an "attractive art," Keats

also chose this particular form for his first long poem in the
"
hope of capturing a ready-made audience in the regular readers
of narratives. Keats's romance explores the pursuit of "Ideal
love and chivalric adventures" by extending what is, in
"
Lempriere, a brief mythological reference to the love of
Endymion and Diana. Endymion's "ideal" love is personified in
the secretive lover - the moon - who reveals herself only once
he has given up all other loves. As a chivalrous 'knight' he
saves lovers from bondage and returns them to their blissful
state. According to Lempri~re, Endymion was:

••• a shepherd, son of Aethlius and Calyce.

It is said that he required of Jupiter to
grarit him to be always young, and to sleep as
much as he would; .•• Diana saw him naked as he
slept on mount Latmos, and was so struck with
his beauty that she came down from heaven
every night to enjoy his company •••• The fable
of Endymion's.amours with Diana, or the moon,
arises from his knowledge of astronomy, and as
he passed the night on some high mountain, to
observe the heavenly bodies, it has been re-
ported that he was courted by the moon •.
(Wright, p. 223)

Keats uses the myth of idealism and a perfect union between a minor
deity and the moon goddess to illustrate allegorically that perfect
love is attainable for the lover, just as artistic perfection is
I
within reach of the poet.

The linked classical figures of Apollo, god of poetry, and Pan, the
 - 30 -

god associated with nature, also emphasize the poet's search for
artistic perfection. 25 While Apollo, god of light and poesy was
also the pci~ron of shepherds, Pan was the "god of shepherds, of
huntsmen, and of all the inhabitants of the country" (Wright, p.
439). Their connection, here, prepares one for the universal scale
of Endymion's - and the poet's - quest for fulfilment. The world
of the adventures of Endymion encompasses all of Pan's domain. The
name of the deity, Pan, which signifies 'all' or 'everything'
implies that he is an "impersonation of Nature." 26 Apollo
inspires the poet to capture the various nuances of beauty in the
realm of the god of all nature, establishing the link between
classicism and Romanticism as entirely appropriate.

One of the passages in Endymion most acclaimed by critics is the

description of the festival of Pan and the "hymn" to Pan. Keats
strives to capture in verse the omnipresence of beauty as acclaimed
by Apollo in Pan's domain:

Leading the way, young damsels danced along,

25 The poet had already established the close relationship

between these two mythological figures in an earlier poem,
'Sleep and Poetry (Dec. 1816). After the poet has
confirmed his utter dedication to the god of poesy in the
first part of Sleep and Poetry, he goes on to describe
the various stages of composition that he wishes to
attempt. Of these, the first stage is the Arcadian world
"Of Flora and old Pan: sleep in the grass, / Feed upon
apples red and strawberries, / And choose each pleasure
that my fancy sees; .•. " (11. 102-104).
26 Finch (ed.), A New Elizabethan Reference
Dictionary, p. 1421.
 - 31 -
Bearing the burden of a shepherd song,
Each having a white wicker over-brimmed
With April's tender younglings; next, well
trimmed'
A crowd of shepherds with as sunburnt looks
As may be read of in Arcadian books,
Such as sat listening round Apollo's pipe,
When the great deity, for earth too ripe,
Let his divinity o'erflowing die
In music, through the vales of Thessaly;
(Endymion I,ll. 135-144)

The opening lines of Endymion establish its key theme by

explaining that beauty, as perceived by the poet in Nature and
in Poesy, will never pass. Keats asserts that the natural
beauty we behold becomes part of our entire emotional
experience; beauty becomes a "bower" where we may rest quietly;
beauty is life-giving in being the "quiet breathing" of every
waking morn. The poet's intimate perception of beauty is his
first step towards fulfilment, just as Endymion's observation of
the festival of Pan introduces h~m to the realm of his travels -
the universe itself:

A thing of beauty is a joy for ever:

Its loveliness increases; it will never
Pass into nothingness, but still will keep
A bower quiet for us, and a sleep
Full of sweet dreams, and health, and quiet
breathing.
Therefore, on every morrow, are we wreathing
A flowery band to bind us to the earth, .••
(Endymion I,ll. 1-7)

The "flowery band" that Keats proceeds to twist is the tale of the
shepherd-astrologer, the Latmian, Endymion. structurally, the
allusion to Latmos is the natural transition in the poem from a
 - 32 -
general statement on beauty to the hymn to Pan. The transition
centralizes the classical figures of Pan and Apollo in the poem
when the reader is led to "the woodland altar" (I, 1. 127) presided
over by "A,venerable
,. priest full soberly" (I, 1. 149) where
Endymion is amongst the suppliants:

Who stood, therein did seem of great renown

Among the throng. His youth was fully blown,
Showing like Ganymede to manhood grown,
And, for those simple times, his garments were
A chieftain king's; beneath his breast, half
bare
Was hung a silver bugle, and between
His nervy knees lay a boar-spear keen.
A smile was on his countenance; he seemed
To common lookers-on like one who dreamed
Of idleness in groves Elysian.
(Endymion I,ll. 16B-177)

Endymion listens with an "awed face" (I, 1. 191) as the priest

sings the praises of Pan and prepares the sacrifice. The formal
invocation to the god Pan illustrates his universal power: the
heavens are "his mighty palace roof" (I, 1. 232); his authority
encompasses "desolate places, where dank moisture breeds" (I, 1.
240) as well as "sunny meadows" (I, 1. 250) and "the mountain
pine" (I, 1. 260). The paean concludes with a fervent p~ayer:

Be still the unimaginable lodge

For solitary thinkings - such as dodge
Conception to the very bourn of heaven.
Then leave the naked brain; be still the leaven,
That spreading in this dull and clodded earth
Gives it a touch ethereal, a new birth;
Be still a symbol of immensity,
A firmament reflected in a sea,
An element filling the space between,
An unknown- .••
(Endymion I, ·11. 293-302)
 - 33 -

Though critics differ about the extent to which Endymion is an

allegory, the above passages support Keats's argument that
t.
artistic perfection is within the poet's reach. Like Endymion,
the poet grows towards immortality in his poetic creations
through his emotional experiences as well as through his search
for beauty and truth. The poet must prepare himself to attempt
the search, and he must conduct his search in the 'right' place,
in Pan's domain.' Just as Endymion is "to manhood grown" (I, 1.
170), has a "silver bugle" (I, 1. 171), and a "boar-spear keen"
(I, 1. 172), so also the poet must enter confidently upon his
quest with maturity and with his poetic weaponry prepared to
capture immortal beauty in verse. The poet's "silver bugle" is
the Apollonian inspiration given to him in sound, while with his
"boar-spear keen" the poet defends himself against attack or
failure. Just as Endymion has found favour with the gods, so
the poet, too, will experience the grace of the gods through
capturing nature's beauty in his verse.

The hymn to Pan, the god of the natural universe, is at the

heart of the first Book of Endymion: the 'source' of beauty, as
defined by the poet, is nature. This statement seems
paradoxical since natural beauty is mortal and transient. The
poet is the instrument which immortalizes this transient beauty
as it is reflected in his work.

Keats confirms his belief that he depends on the favours of the

 - 34 -
god of the natural universe in the prayer to Pan. All thoughts
on poetry are centred in Pan, the "unimaginable lodge/For
sol~tary thinkings" (I,ll. 293-294). While the poet is
inspired by divine infusion, Pan works as a leaven. On
maturation the leaven will prove, and the poet will be able to
adorn the world with his verse just as Pan's enigmatic power
spreads "in this dull and clodded earth / [and] Gives it a touch
ethereal, a new birth" (I,lL 297-298).

The structural development of Endymion's "journeys" in search of

his beloved - and, by implication, of the poet's search for
artistic perfection through capturing beauty -highlights Pan's
omnipresence. Endymion's quest is fraught with physical dangers
and disturbed by emotional and. spiritual turmoil. As the story
unfolds, he is often given the respite of sleep and dreams, and
while he is in such an unconscious state Diana, his beloved,
visits him. Even his final spiritualization occurs while he is
insensible to his surroundings:

••• So he inwardly began

On things for which no wording can be found,
Deeper and deeper sinking until drowned
Beyond the reach of music. For the choir
Of Cynthia he heard not, •••
(Endymion IV, 11. 961-965)

For the poet the trance or dream is also a further dimension of

the reality of beauty. Sensual observation and experience are
extended and "spiritualized" while the poet is given the respite
of a dream. In his earlier poem, "Sleep and Poetry" (c. Dec.
 - 35 -
1816), Keats revealed the healing power of dreams. In that poem
he tells how he experienced an 'other-worldly' truth through
fantasy, dream, and the imagination.

At the sta~t of his journeys Endymion is utterly dejected. He

had " ••• hourly striven / To hide the cankering venom that
had riven / His fainting recollections" (I, 11. 395-397). The
first person to assist him is his sister, Peona, who gently
leads him to her bower .. ' Once he is "calmed to life again" (1.
464), Peona coaxes him into revealing the source of his pain.
He tells how, while he was sleeping on the mountain, Diana, the
goddess of the moon, visited him:

..• Ah, see her hovering feet,

More bluely veined, more soft, more whitely
sweet
Than those of sea-born Venus, when she rose
From her cradle shell. The wind out-blows
Her'scarf into a fluttering pavilion:
'Tis blue, and over-spangled with a million
Of little eyes, as though that wert to shed,
Over the darkest, lushest blue-bell bed
Handfuls of daisies ..•.
••• She took an airy range,
And then, towards me, like a very maid,
Came blushing, waning, willing, and afraid,
And pressed me by the hand.
(Endymion I,ll. 624-636)

In the parallel progress towards consummation and fulfilment

between Endymion and the poet, Diana resembles the taunting,
tempting, yet evasive beauty that "reveals" itself to the poet
at rare moments, for Diana is the goddess of chastity who will
not give herself,openly or exclusively to anyone person.
 - 36 -

According to Lernpriere Diana:

••• the Greek Artemis, was the goddess of

hunting •••• (she was mo~t celebrated as) a daugh-
ter of Jupiter'and Latona. She was born at the
same birth as Apollo, and the pains which she
saw her mother suffer during her labour, gave
her such an aversion to marriage, that she
obtained permission from her father to live in
perpetual celibacy, and to preside over the
travail of women •••• She was supposed to be the
same as the moon, and Proserpine or Hecate, and
from that circumstance she was called Triformis;
and some of her statues represented her with
three heads, those of a horse, a dog, and a
boar.
(Wright, p , 204)

Keats incorporates the three-part "Triformis" quality of Diana

into the structure and progression of the poem to emphasize the
three 'planes' of experience,of the poet: the absorption of
beauty, the internalization of beauty, and its immortalization
in poetry. Endymion is destined to pursue his journey in three
elements - the depths of the earth, under the ocean, and in the
air. In her three aspects as Diana, Cynthia, and Hecate, Diana
directs his course. In the shape of the moon his beloved
inspires Endymion, entices him, comforts him, brings him
fulfilment. As the goddess of chastity, she evades him - having
made sure she has maddened him for love of her. In the shape of
Hecate she plays tricks on him, appearing as the bewitching
Indian maid.

Allegorically, the poet is tantalized by the god of poetry who

is as I fickle as the moon. The poet is totally enthralled by the
 - 37 -

muse but she eludes his amorous approaches. Tricks are played
on his sensibilities by false hopes that he will achieve poetic
mastery. Just as Endymion finds peace and consummation only
once it is :.revealed to him that his beloved, the moon, and the
Indian girl are one, so the poet attains his ideal of
immortalizing natural beauty in verse only once he has accepted
completely that he is forever a slave of poesy.

The three-fold quality of Diana is also transferred to the

number of her appearances to Endymion. Towards the end of Book
I, Endymion tells Peona: "Yes, thrice have I this fair
enchantment seen / Once more been tortured with renewed life"
(Endymion I, 11. 918-919). He is determined to discover the
true nature of his secret lover. The Books that follow continue
the cycle of 'three:' Endymion travels under the earth, along
the ocean floor, and through the air. He encounters three
groups of mythical figures: Venus and Adonis, Alpheus and
Arethusa, and Glaucus and Scylla. Just as Keats uses the
Endymion myth as a central classical example to illustrate
search cUlminating in fUlfilment, so he also employs three
further analogous classical examples of the search for 'love' in
a mythical setting to support his argument that both perfect
love and artistic perfection are attainable.

Pervading the poem is the central issue of beauty that allures

I
but eludes, that tricks the senses, and that inspires the search
for perfection. The poet's understanding of beauty culminates
 38 -
in his 'spiritualization' when, finally, he is permitted to see
and comprehend fully its nature. Just like Endymion, he
experiences an upsurge of joy when he perceives beauty clearly:
"

••. Aye, he beheld

Phoebe, his passion! Joyous she upheld
Her lucid bow, continuing thus: "Drear, drear
Has our delaying been. But foolish fear
Withheld me first. And then decrees of fate;
And then 'twas 'fit that from this mortal state
Thou shouldst, my love, by some unlooked-for
change
Be spiritualized ••••
(Endymion IV, 11. 988-993)

In a letter to John Reynolds (19 February 1818) Keats summarizes

the "unlooked-for" change he experienced while writing Endymion.
By that time he had completed the mammoth task of writing a poem of
4000 lines and in the letter he paints a picture of himself as a
man of leisure who could relax and enjoy the company of his
friends:

Now it is more noble to sit like Jove than to

fly like Mercury - let us not therefore go hurry-
ing about and collecting honey, bee-like buzzing,
here and there impatiently from a knowledge of '
what is to be aimed at; but let us open our
leaves like a flower and be passive and
receptive - bUdding patiently under the eye of
Apollo and taking hints from every noble insect
that favours us with a visit - sap will be given
us for meat and dew for drink.
(Forman, p. 104)

Although the letter appears to advocate a life of indolence, a

close examination of the verbs reveals the opposite: the artist
is invited to "open," to be "receptive;" he will then be
 - 39 -

"budding" while "taking hints" from the meanest creatures. This

letter confirms Keats's philosophy of active receptiveness, or
"diligent ~ndolence." As the poet observes nature, experiences
"

life emotionally and sensually, he is unconsciously infused with

divine inspiration. The wealth of artistic imagination that he
has amassed enables him to immortalize transient beauty.

The first of three myths that Keats uses to elucidate Endymion's

search is that of Venus and Adonis. He chooses this myth to
illustrate that the poet is enslaved by beauty just as Venus was
totally enthralled by the beautiful youth, Adonis. The young
mortal had captured Venus's attention so that she neglected her
divine duties and responsibilities and spent her days with him
on earth. Endymion comes upon the idyllic scene of the sleeping
Adonis after a voice has told him to " ..• Descend / Young
mountaineer! / Descend where alleys bend / Into the sparry
hollows of the world" (~ymion II, 11. 202-204). He wanders
dejectedly in the subterranean world. At last he calls upon
Diana who experiences "Freedom as none can taste it" to come to
his aid:

••• Thou dost taste

Freedom as none can taste it, nor dost waste
Thy loveliness in dismal elements,
But, finding in our green earth sweet contents,
There livest blissfully. Ah, if to thee
It feels Elysian, how rich to me,
An exiled mortal, sounds its pleasant name!
within my breast there lives a choking flame -
Oh, let me cool it the zephyr-boughs among!
(Endymion II, ,II. 310-318)

•
 - 40 -
The time has not yet come to extinguish the Ilchoking flame" of
love or the desire for perfection in the heart of the
"
lover/poet. Charmed by a haunting tune, Endymion is almost led
astray "down some swart abysm" (Endymion II, 1. 376), but is
diverted just in time by a "heavenly guide benignant" (Endymion
II, 1. 377) who leads him to the sleeping Adonis. ovid tells of
the perfect love between Venus and Adonis:

The goddess of Cythera, captivated by the

beauty of a mortal, cared no more for her sea
shores, ceased to visit seagirt Paphos, cin-
dos rich in fishes, or Amathis with its valua-
ble ores. She even stayed away from heaven,
preferring Adonis to the sky.
(Innes, p. 239)

Their idyll was not to last forever. Although Venus warned him
not to pursue wild beasts, Adonis loved the hunt so dearly that
"This advice he slighted, and at last received a mortal bite
from a wild boar .•.. Venus, after shedding many tears at his
death, changed him into a flower called anemone" (Wright, p.
9). Keats underlines his philosophy of absolute devotibn to the
muse by recounting the story of the tragic love of Venus and
Adonis. The miraculous re-awakening of Cupid illustrates the
power of love and total commitment. Venus, distracted in her
bereavement, pleads with Jove himself to restore her beloved.
Her supplications are so powerful that the "thunderer" is moved
to pity:
I

••• my poor mistress went distract and mad

When the boar tusked him. So away she flew
 - 41 -
To Jove's high,throne, and by her plainings
drew
Immdrtal tear-drops down the thunderer's beard,
Whereon it was decreed he should be reared
Each summer-time to life. Lo, this is he
That same Adonis, safe in the privacy
Of the still region all his winter-sleep.
(Endymion II, 11. 473-480)

Endymion's presence signals the moment for Adonis's release from

.
his winter sleep and the restoration of the lover's joy: "And
soon, returning from love's banishment, / Queen Venus leaning
downward open-armed, / Her shadow fell upon his breast and
charmed / A tumult to his heart and a new life / Into his
eyes ••• " (Endymion 11,11. 525-529). Keats sees Endymion, here,
as the 'traditional hero' of romance who assists others during
his journey towards personal fulfilment. In so doing, the
traditional hero paves his way with good deeds, and such action
contributes to his eventual success.

The allegorical development of the poet striving for perfection

through internalizing perceived beauty is also illustrated by
the "Triformis" structure of the poem. Endymion is awed by the
wonder of the awakening and the love between Adonis and Venus.
Being painfUlly reminded of the love of his dreams, he yearns for
consummation, but doubts whether he will ever experience it.
Similarly, the poet is overcome by his limitations to capture in
verse the supreme happiness of the lovers: " ••• who, who can
I

write / Of these first minutes? The unchariest muse / To

embracements warm as theirs makes coy excuse" (Endymion II, 11.
531-533).
 - 42 -

Keats uses two more analogous legends which illustrate his own
search for fulfilment as well as Endymion's quest for
happiness. ;-In recounting the legends of Alpheus and Arethusa,
and of Glaucus and Scylla, Keats allows the lovers to be
released from bondage through Endymion's intercession. This
process of release seems to prophesy that Endymion will attain
his own happiness at the end of the journey. The poet
intercedes on Endymion's behalf and releases him from his
eternal quest by creating a happy conclusion for the Latmian in
his verse. Just as lovers experience joy once they are united,
so the poet also labours towards the joy of accomplishment when
his poetic endeavours unite divine inspiration with total
dedication to the muse.

Having witnessed the awakening of Adonis and the re-uniting of

the lovers, Endymion ascends from the subterranean world along
"The diamond path" (Endymion II, 1. 652) which ends "abrupt in
middle air" (Endymion II, 1. 653). For a brief moment the poet,
too, had been allowed to live with beauty as he observed:the
perfect love between Venus and Adonis; however, beauty eludes
him once again "in middle air." An eagle rescues Endymion when
he finds himself "in middle air" and carries him to a "jasmine
bower, all bestrown / with golden moss" (Endymion II, 11.
670-671). Allegorically, the poet is given respite to restore
I
quietly and receptively his creative powers after he has
I

experienced that creative energy is fickle and transient. Once

 - 43 -
more Endymion is visited by his secret lover. Once more the
poet sighs that he is unable to immortalize in verse their
moment of supreme happiness:
"

..• Aye, the count

Of mighty poets is made up; the scroll
Is folded by the Muses; the bright roll
Is in Apollo's hand: our dazed eyes
Have seen a new tinge in the western skies.
The world has done its duty. Yet, oh yet,
Although the sun of poesy is set,
These lovers did embrace, and we must weep
That ther~ is no old power left to steep
A quill immortal in their joyous tears.
(Endymion II, 11. 723-733)

Keats feels he is not yet ready " ... to steep / A quill immortal"
in order to capture in words the happiness of the lovers.
However, he recounts the lovers' bliss despite a "dearth / Of
human words!· Roughness of mortal speech!" (Endymion II, 11.
817-818). Endymion, lost in reverie after his beloved has once
more departed, does not end his quest for happiness. He hears
the sad plaints of Alpheus and Arethusa who are forever captured
apart as a river and a spring .'27 Awakening from his own
moment of rapture, he is filled with compassion for the sad
lovers. He calls upon his love to come to their rescue:

.•• I urge
Thee, gentle Goddess of my pilgrimage,

27 Arethusa had been transfrmed into "a holy spring" by

Diana who rescued her and saved her from violation by
Alpheus, the river, who had fallen in love with her when
she bathed in his waters after a hunt (Innes, p. 131).
 - 44 -

By our eternal hopes, to soothe, to assuage,

If thou art powerful, these lovers pains,
And make them happy in some happy plains.
(Endymion II, 11. 1013-1017)

In keeping 'with his theme of the beauty and invincibility of

love, Keats changes the "holy spring" (Innes, p •. 131) where
Arethusa is held captive into a blissful union of the streams of
Alpheus and Arethusa. The legend thus prophesies that
Endymion's search will be crowned with success, implying that
the poet, too, will attain his goal of immortalizing beauty in
verse.

The third analogous myth which serves to illustrate Endymion's

search for love and Keats's "quest for inspiration as an aspect
of the soul's search for beautyll (Jack, p. 146) occupies the
greater part ·of Book III. Endymion does not realize that the
moon and his beloved are one. His emotional and spiritual
SUfferings, and his empathic compassion for other suffering
lovers, make him aware of the nature of true love. In a similar
vein, through emotional growth and an increasing sympathy
between his powers of observation and divine inspiration, the
poet gains insight into the truth of beauty. Keats illustrates
the truth of their IIquest" in Endymion's enthralment by the
moon:

••• On gold sand impearled

with lily shells and pebbles milky-white,
Poor Cynthia greeted him, and soothed her light
Against his pallid face. He felt the charm
To breathlessness, and suddenly a warm
 45 -
.Of his heart's blood •.••
(Endymion III, 11. 103-107)

Endymion's.reflection that the moon has influenced every moment

.'

of his existence also reveals Keats's fascination with the

ethereal beauty of the moon. The poet feels that he will have
attained his ideal in his poetic endeavours, the "glory won,"
once he has immortalized in verse the beauty of the moon. The
moon epitomizes the fickleness and changeability of poetic
inspiration. To capture her beauty in verse would ensure
immortality for the poet:

... Thou wast the deep glen,

Thou wast the mountain-top, the sage's pen,
The poet's harp, the voice of friends, the
sun.
Thou wast the river, thou wast glory won.
Thou ~ast my clarion's blast, thou wast my
steed,
My goblet full of wine, my topmost deed.
Thou wast the charm of women, lovely Moon!
(Endymion III, 11. 163-169)

The third myth Keats uses to illustrate Endymion's quest, the

tale of Glaucus and Scylla, contains a warning for Endymion as
well as for the poet. Just as Endymion had been tempted to turn
from his 'true love' to the moon, the poet had been tempted to
concentrate on SUbjective emotional deviations thereby
neglecting to observe the perfect beauty of the moon, nature,
and ~oetry. Both Endymion and the poet must turn their
attention singularly to the pursuit of their ideal, the perfect
union with their 'loves,' the moon and poesy. The clarity of a
 - 46 -
visionary and a perfect understanding of the truth of beauty
will then come to both "Naked and sabre-like against my breast"
(Endymion III, 1. 557).

While Endymion sadly asks his love to pardon him for having
turned his attention from her to the moon, he sees "far in the
concave green of the sea" (Endymion III, 1. 192), where he now
finds himself, an old man sitting upon a "weeded rock" (Endymion
III, 1 193). Everything about the old man speaks of long years
of waiting: " ••• a mat / Of weeds were cold beneath his cold
thin feet, .•• " (Endymion III, 11. 194-195). At last he raises
his "hoary head." Unseeing1y he looks at Endymion. Then he
realises that Endymion is the person destined to lift the curse
placed on him and Scylla by the evil sorceress, Circe. Once
again the poet has created a situation where the hero of his
romance assists another being and, in doing so, moves closer to
his 'holy grail'- a consummation of his love. Restored to
vitality, Glaucus:

.•• rose, he grasped his stole,

with convulsed clenches waving it abroad,
And in a voice of solemn joy, that awed
Echo into oblivion, he said:
"Thou art the man! Now shall I lay my head
In peace upon my watery pillow.
(Endymion III, 11. 230-235)28

,
-----~------------------

2~ Ovid's account of these events describe Glaucus as a god

of the sea. He had first been a mortal who loved the sea.
One day, chewing certain blades of grass, he was "seized
with a passionate desire for this other element, the sea"
(Innes, p. 310). He plunged into the ocean and saw himself
 - 47 -

Endymion has to learn from his encounter with the creatures in

this myth ~pat his search must be direct. He must avoid calling
on the enchantress, the moon, to assist him in his quest.
Should he do so, his beloved might be defiled into a monstrous
beast. Similarly, the poet's attempt at immortalizing perceived
beauty must proceed unaided: he must trust unerringly Apollo's
inspiration.

Keats allows Glaucus to say he loved Scylla lito the very white
of truth, / And she would not conceive it" (Endymion III, 11.
402-403) in his account' of the myth. Glaucus's desperate
turning to circe leads him into her thraldom. She "cradled
(him) in roses" (Endymion III, 1. 457), and to "this arbitrary
queen of sense / I bowed a tranced vassal" (Endymion III, 11.
459-460). Glaucus came to his senses as he observed Circe
holding court in a dark alley over " ... shapes, wizard and
brute, / Laughing, and wailing, grovelling, serpenting, /

transformed into a creature with "a beard of rusty green,

the hair which I sweep through the vast seas, these huge
shoulders, dark blue arms, and my legs curving away at the
end into a fish complete with fins" (Innes, p. 310).
Glaucus fell in love with the nymph, Scylla, but she fled
from him as from a monster. Glaucus then sought the help
of Circe for a love potion. However, Circe fell in love
with Glaucus and, when he rejected her advances, she cast
~ horrid spell on scylla. As Scylla bathed in a pool
polluted by Circe, the lower part of her body turned into
"a pack of wild dogs, and with truncated thighs and womb
emerging from the mass, (she) rested heavily on the backs
of the wild beasts that supported her from below. II
(Innes, p , 313).
 - 48 -
Showing tooth, tusk, and venom-bag, and sting! / Oh, such
deformities" (Endymion III, 11. 500-503). Circe had turned all
her previous lovers into creatures of the most despicable
shapes. For Glaucus II • • • Truth had come / Naked and sabre-like
;.

against my breast" (Endymion III, 11. 556-557).

Endymion is much moved by Glaucus's tale and accepts his destiny

and kinship with the old man's sUffering. Endymion's compassion
lifts the spell: Glaucus is rejuvenated, while Scylla and all
true lovers who had ever died at sea revive as flowers do when
they are touched by Apollo's enervating rays:

Endymion, with quick hand, the charm applied -

The nymph arose. He left them to their joy,
And onward Went upon,his high employ,
Showering those powerful fragments on the dead.
And, as he passed, each lifted up his head
As doth a flower at Apollo's touch.
(Endymion III, 11. 782-786)

Book III concludes with a festival in the palace of Neptune.

Redeemed in the rescue of Glaucus and scylla, Endymion is
returned to "a grassy nest" (Endymion III, 1. 1032) in the upper
world. Once more, Endymion has a respite from his labours; once
more, the poet replenishes his inspirational resources under the
watchful eye of Apollo.

The final Book of Endymion changes in concept. Books I, II, and

III had stated Keats's argument that ideal love for Endymion and
artistic perfection for the poet are attainable. He used three
 - 49 -
"
legends analogous with the Endymion legend to illustrate and
support his argument. Book IV introduces a strongly
philosophical tone on the purpose and nature of poetry. The end
towards which Endymion journeys is clearly approaching, although
"
the hero remains unaware of the prophecies and fortuitous
pointers right to the end. Just as consummation is granted to
Endymion only once he has accepted the truth of total commitment
to his love, so the poe~ will attain his goal of artistic
mastery only when his commitment to the god of poesy is complete
and absolute.

The first indication of approaching accomplishment is evident in

Zephyr's reaction when he sees Endymion and the Indian maid fly
through the air on two "jet-l;>lack" steeds:

There curled a purple mist around them. Soon

It seemed as when around the pale new moon
Sad Zephyr droops the clouds like weeping
willow-
'Twas sleep slow journeying with head on pillow.
For the first time, since he came nigh dead born
From the old womb of night, his cave forlorn
Had he left more forlorn. For the first time
He felt aloof the day and morning's prime -
Because into his depth Cimmerian
There came a dream, showing how a young man, .
Ere a lean bat could plump its wintery skin,
Would at high Jove's empyreal footstool win
An immortality, and how espouse
Jove's daughter and be reckoned of his house.
(Endyrnion IV, 11. 367-380).

Endymion
I
is . unaware that the Indian maid who beguiled him after
I
his s~bmarine journey is "Jove's daughter" and his love. He has
struggled hopelessly not to fall under her spell. The identity
 - 50 -

of his beloved will be revealed to him only once he is

spiritually 'cleansed' of all temptations. Similarly, the poet
must sUbjugate his entire self to the divine infusion of
:.
inspiration before he will grasp the beauty that is truth.
However, neither Endymion nor the poet is ready yet to be
spiritualized into,an ~cceptance of their roles. Unable to re-
sist the advances of the, Indian maid, Endymion succumbs and asks
her to sing to him: "Let me have music dying •.. " (Endymion IV,
1. 140).

The greater part of Book IV is written - like the rest of the

poem - in loose rhyming couplets. Keats now introduces the
maid's "roundalay" as a'delil;>erate experimentation with
form. 29 Both the rhythm and the content of the song lend
themselves to the form of the roundelay. The song also
expresses the caring, comforting relationship the maid has with
Endymion. Keats states that "the little song" represents the
ideal form in which to cast the beauty he has perceived in his
imagination of the love of Endymion and the Indian maid:

29 Although not his invention, the "roundalay" is Keats's

adaptation of "rondeau," a "poem in iambic verse, with
only two rhymes, the opening words coming twice as a
refrain" (onions, p. 1252). The maid's song does not
adhere to these rules. The first seven stanzas vary
in length from five to nine lines. The eighth stanza
introduces the feast of Bacchus and his triumphal
passage. In this section the stanzas vary in
length between six and sixteen lines, and the rhythm
reverts to that of the couplet. The song concludes with
the chanting rhythms and length of the last three stanzas
similar to those that had introduced the roundelay.
 - 51 -

I am certain of nothing but the holiness of the

Heart's affections and the truth of Imagination
- what the imagination seizes as Beauty must be
truth - whether it existed before or not - for I
have the same Idea of all our Passions as of
Love they are all in their sUblime, creative of
essential Beauty. In a Word, you may know my
favorite (~) Speculation by my first Book
[Endym~8n] and the little song I sent in my
last- which is a representation from the
fancy of the probable mode of operating in these
Matters. The Imagination may be compared to
Adam's dream - he awoke and found it truth. I
am the more zealous in this affair, because I
have never yet been able to perceive how any
thing can be known for truth by consequitive
reasoning - and yet it must be. Can it be that
even the greatest Philosopher ever arrived at
his goal without putting aside numerous
objections. However it may be, 0 for a Life of
Sensations rather than of Thoughts 1
(Forman, pp. 67-68)

The poet, here, discusses the role of the imagination and

emotions in poetic composition which he illustrated in
Endymion's journeys and reactions. Keats believes that poetic
imagination and emotional experiences will guide him towards the
discovery of truth which, for him, seems the ultimate aim and
purpose of Poesy. In this context he refers to the roundelay as
"a representation from the fancy of the probable mode of
operating in these Matters" (Forman, p.68). The poet seeks to
capture in the melancholy, tuneful song of the Indian maid and
in her description of the passage of Bacchus the beauty he has

30 Keats had copied the first five stanzas of the song to

sorrow from Endymion IV in a letter to Bailey, written
on 3 November 1817 (See: Forman, pp. 62-63).
 - 52 -
perceived and which he has transformed in his imagination into
verse. Keats has grown more confident of his powers of
expression than he had been at the outset of the journey. He
captures vividly Bacchus's colourful, noisy triumphal procession
which is like a " •.• moving vintage •.• Crowned with green
leaves~ ••• and faces all on flame-" (Endymion IV, 11.200-201):

And as I sat, over the light blue hills

There came a noise of revellers. The rills
Into the wide stream came of purple hue-
'Twas Bacchus and his crew!
The earnest trumpet spake, and silver thrills
From kissing cymbals made a merry din-
'Twas Bacchus and his kin!
Like to a moving vintage down they came
Crowned with green leaves, and faces all on
flame-
All madly dancing through the pleasant valley,
To scare'thee, Melancholy!
Oh, then, oh, then, thou wast a simple name!
And I forgot thee, as,the berried holly
By shepherds is forgotten, when, in June,
Tall chestnuts keep away the sun and moon-
I rushed into the folly!
(Endymion IV, 11. 193-208)

Apart from the role played by the imagination and emotion in

poetic creativity, Keats also states in the letter to Bailey
quoted above that "our Passions" and "love" are "creative of
essential Beauty." This implies that all experiences, painful
and joyous alike, bear the seeds of beauty. It is for the poet
to transform such experiences through his imagination into
immortalizing verse.

Keats's idea that there is "a necessary connection between

sUffering and creativity" (Allott, p. 266), which is one of the
 - 53 -
main themes of Endymion, is best illustrated in the "Cave of
Quietude" section of the poem (Endymion IV, 11. 513-562).
Endymion has confessed to the Indian maid his perplexity in
loving her, the moon, and his erstwhile secretive lover.
Endymion realises that the love he feels for the maid is not
fulfilling:because it is tainted by the memory of his other
loves. He experiences no union with the maid, as he sees his
"spirit flit / Alone about the dark." The mental and emotional
sUffering culminates in his loss of identity:

Can I prize thee, fair maid, all price above,

Even when I feel as true as innocence"
I do, I do. What is the soul then? Whence
Came it? It does not seem my own, and I
Have no self-passion or identity.
Some fearful end must be. Where, where is it"
By nemesis, I see my spirit flit
Alone about the dark.
(Endymion IV, 11. 473-480)

The maid vanishes and Endymion is led by "a grievous feud ... to
this Cave of Quietude" (Endymion IV, 11. 548-549). The
miraculous change takes place: from a state of emotional and
spiritual exhaustion, Endymion enters a world of quiet happiness
where nothing "Could rouse him from that fine relish, that high
feast" (Endymion IV, 1. 554). The poet, too, experiences
respite and a final cleansing preparation to accept his
responsibilities as a poet. According to Bate: "In this place
of desperate apathy and eXhaustion, beyond sorrow and joy, he
recovers peace of mind" (Bate, p. 191). SUbjective biographical
references are evident in Keats's description of the cave. He
 - 54 -
states that the Cave of Quietude cannot be entered deliberately
nor by inclination: "Enter none / Who strive therefore - on the
sudden it is won" (Endymion IV, 11. 531-532). Only the person
who has suffered beyond endurance is permitted to enter "that
deep den" where anguish and sUffering are no longer felt, and
where pleasure endures:

the man is yet to come

Who hath not journeyed in this native hell.
But few have ever felt how calm and well
Sleep may be had in that deep den of all.
There anguish does not sting, nor pleasure pall,
Woe-hurricanes beat ever at the gate,
Yet all is still within and desolate.
(Endymion IV, 11. 522-528)

Like Endymion, the poet needs to experience quietude and to turn

from the strife of the quest. Both need the peace of the
"lulled soul,i (IV, 1. 549) and freedom from being torn between
truth and tinsel in order to recover their sense of identity and
direction, and in order to prepare emotionally for the moment of
ultimate spiritualization.

Almost a year after the completion of Endymion, on 8 October

1818, Keats painstakingly copied into a letter to Bailey part of
a letter he had written to George before he started writing the
poem. His statement of intent contained in that letter might be
regarded his credo for the writing of Endymion, and his sojourn
in hi~ own Cave of Quietude a consolidation of his intent. In
that letter the poet confirms that he will deliberately try to
emulate the great poets of the past in the writing of the tale:
 - 55 -
"Did our great Poets ever write short Pieces?" (Bate, p. 170).
His intent of artistic endeavour is quite clear; he plans to
write 4000 lines of poetry in which he will follow the example
set by the masters:
.
:

. [Endymion] will be a test, a trial of my Powers

of Imagination and chiefly of my invention which
is a rare thing indeed - by which I must make
4000 Lines of one bare circumstance and fill
them with Poetry; ••• a long Poem is a test of
Invention which I take to be the Polar star of
Poetry, as Fancy is the Sails, and Imagination
the Rudder. Did our great Poets ever write
short Pieces? I mean in the shape of Tales -
This same invention seems indeed of late Years
to have been forgotten as a Poetical excellence.
(Forman, p. 52)

Keats's powers of invention and the "rudder" of his

"Imagination" sustained him.so that he carried his intent to a
distinct conclusion. The "traditional" romance ends with the
return of the hero, his quest attained. At first this does not
seem to be true for Endymion. Revived from his brief stay in
the Cave of Quietude, he is spirited away and witnesses the
preparations for Diana's nuptial. He then descends to earth
where he is reunited with the Indian maid, and where he chooses
an earthly, human existance with her. When she tells him she
cannot be his love he vows to be a hermit ever after. Returning
to his earlier haunts, Endymion meets Peona. She rejoices at
her brother's return, and greets the Indian maid as their future
queen. Endymion, turned hermit, bids them both farewell. In
I

casting off all worldly affinities, he is transformed and

"spiritualized." At last he is purified and ready for his union
 - 56 -

with the "Triformis" - the maid, the moon, and the goddess - to
be perfected:

A distinct difference exists between Endymion's journey and the

poet's quest for artistic mastery. Endymion has found his
beloved and has consummated his love. The poet has also been
enriched spiritually and emotionally; he, too, has sojourned in
the Cave of Quietude. The composition of this romance is,
however, not an ultimate achievement for Keats. Although he had
attained deeper insights into the nature of beauty as well as
into the role of the poet in immortalizing beauty, he continued
his search for artistic mastery. Endymion: A Poetic Romance is
only one of several such quests to immortalize natural, : '
perceived beauty in verse.
 - 57 -

Chapter 3

TRANSITION:

AXIOM AND FORM

Keats started Hyperion. A Fragment in autumn 1818 3 1 while

still working on Endymion (completed ca 28 November 1818). The
tour de force of writing 4000 lines of poetry, and the rigours
of embarking on a new form, the epic, took their toll on the
poet's physical .and creative resources. After eight months of
constant work on Endymion he, therefore, indulged in a period of
creative languor which Gittings calls a "dazed relaxation. ,,32
Apart from spending some of this time with his friends, Keats
also expressed in letters to family and acquaintances axioms
about the creation of poetry and poetic conventions as he had
perceived them while writing Endymion. Gittings describes Keats
spending the first few weeks of "freedom" caught up in a social
whirl that seemed to wipe from his mind - for some time at least

31 Although no exact date has been established for the

start of Hyperion. A Fragment, the autumn of 1818 is
generally accepted as correct. The conjecture is based
on Keats's reference to his work in a letter to Woodhouse,
27 October 1818: "Might I not at that very instant have
been cogitating on the Characters of Saturn and Ops?"
(Forman, p , 228)
I
32' Robert Gittings, John Keats, p. 169.
 - 58 -

-,all serious thought of writing new pieces or of revising

Endymion:

••• Keats [was left] free to satisfy the so-

cial demands 'of his friends, who had seen lit-
t~e of him since April. Now he relaxed among
them to the exclusion of poetry; they occupied
him nearly every day for the next four weeks,
at the end of which he had to confess to Taylor
that he had only just started revising Book One
of Endymion. The strain and isolation of the
long poem had left him with an appetite for
society, which he was able to indulge with
several varied sets.
(Gittings, p. 169)

Gitting's comment on Keats's state of mind is supported by

letters the poet wrote at this time which further express his
philosophy concerning the creative arts, and which explain his
thoughts on poetry and the role of the poet.

A key concept of creative art which preoccupied Keats was truth

and its nature, as well as the link between truth and beauty.'
The poet states that the beauty he perceives in nature is, for
him, truth. As a creative artist he distils the absorbed beauty
in verse, therefore immortalizing the otherwise transient beauty
in art. In a letter to his brothers (21 December 1817) Keats
equates beauty and truth, explaining the concept of such
equation by referring to a painting by Benjamin West, "Death on
a Pale Horse." While Keats considers it a "wonderful picture,"
he feels it is lacking in the precept of linking beauty and
truth: j'The excellence of every art is its intensity, capable
I
of making disagreeables evaporate, from their being in close
relationship with Beauty and Truth" (Forman, p.71). The poet
 - 59 -

suggests, here, that art has an intrinsic power to transform the

unpleasant "disagreeables" through artistic forms into objects
of beauty. "Disagreeables" and ugliness in sUbject matter are
truths in tpemselves but as yet contain no aesthetic quality.
The artist's role is to use the aesthetic means of his
.discipline (poetry, music, painting) to imbue what is not
pleasing in sUbject matter with the qualities of an artefact of
beauty. In the artistic'process the truth observed in life is
condensed in the beauty of art.

When Keats asserts "Beauty is truth, truth beauty" (Allott, p.

537) he equates the existence of beauty with the existence of
truth. The poet, by divine inspiration, represents these con-
cepts in verse, thereby giving voice to both and immortalizing
beauty and truth in words.

Keats was not the only Romantic who was preoccupied with truth.
He drew, for instance, on Wordsworth who described poetry as:
" •.• the most philosophic of all writing: it is so: its object
is truth, not individual and local, but general, and op~rative;

not standing upon external testimony, but carried alive into the
heart by passion; truth which is its own testimony .•. ,,33

Although Keats drew on the philosophic concepts of his

3'3 illiam Wordsworth, Preface to Lyrical Ballads, in

D. J. Enright and Ernst De Chickera (eds), English
critical Texts, p. 173.
 - 60 -

contemporaries, his application of the term "beauty/beautiful"

is, ironically, founded on classicism. Absorption of the beauty
of nature as well as of beauty in art means, for the poet, an
:.
awareness of an element of intrinsic perfection in symmetry,
proportion, repetition, contrast, and harmony, that is, classi-
cal form. Objects may be beautiful by virtue of their inherent
form, and because beauty emenates from their inner significance.

Plato also employed such an empirical existence theory of truth

and beauty in his dialogue Philebus. There, the discussion of
beauty arises as part- of a discourse on a larger question which
is not in itself purely aesthetic, namely, whether pleasure or
knowledge is the supreme good for man. Socrates gives examples
to distinguish between "purelland "mixed" pleasures. Among the
examples of "pure" pleasures are the "pleasures evoked by ob-
jects that are beautiful 'intrinsically.'11 Plato, therefore,
considered beauty to be "a property ingredient in things"
(Edwards, p. 263). It is clear that Keats's precept of truth
equating with beauty coincides with Platonic-Socratic pronounce-
ments on beauty. For Keats, too, beauty is intrinsic in
objects, forms, and shapes. In the course of Philebus, Socrates
speaks of beauty as "created in surfaces and solids which a
lathe, or a carpenter's rule and square, produced from the
straight and the round II (Edwards, p. 264). This statement
.
suggests the intrinsic beauty of shape, proportion, balance,
harmony, and form, which are at the empirical basis of
aesthetics. Underlying Keats's view of 'classical as well as his
 - 61 -

Romantic ideal of beauty is an inherent quality of beauty as

'being,' and of beauty creating an upliftment of spirit in the
observer because of its perfect form, harmony, and symmetry.

In the letter to George and Tom (21 December 1817) Keats states
further that beauty and truth as distilled in poetry are recreat-
ed in the reader's own empathic perception. In this way, tran-
sient beauty is forever new:

I had an idea that a Man may pass a very

pleasant life in this manner - let him on a
certain day read a certain Page full of Poesy
or distilled Prose, and let him wander with
it, and muse upon it, and reflect upon it,
and bring home to it, and prophesy upon it,
and dream upon it, until it becomes stale -
but when will it do so? Never. When Man has
arrived at a certain ripeness in intellect
anyone grand and spiritual passage serves
him as a starting-post towards all "the
two-and-thirty Palaces." How happy is such a
voyage of conception, what delicious diligent
Indolence!
(Forman, p. 103)

The phrases "voyage of conception" and "diligent Indolence" are

central for Keats's striving towards a more complete understand-
ing of beauty and truth. The poet undertakes a "voyage of
perception" as a deliberate journey of exploration into the
written word. Empathic perceptive reading brings to life in the
imagination of the reader what the poet has captured in words
and images, and enables him to imagine as true what the poet had
perceived as possible in words. The ph~ases, "voyage of
conception" and "diligent Indolence," therefore, further empha-
 - 62 -
size the important creative role the poet plays in immortalizing
transient beauty.

During the period of 'idiligent Indolence," Keats also composed

;.

shorter pieces like the unrhymed sonnet he included in a letter

to Reynolds (19 February 1818). Keats wrote the sonnet in re-
sponse to the song of a thrush and sent a copy to his friend as
an excuse for his "idleness." However, in writing the lines he
proved his "diligence" by recreating in words the. rhythm of the
thrush's song. The structural repetition in lines 1 and 5, and
the content repetition in lines 9 and 11 embody the rhythm of
the song of the bird:

o thou whose face hath felt the winter's wind,

Whose eye has seen the the snow-clouds hung in
mist,
And the black elm-tops 'mong the freezing stars,
To thee the spring will be a harvest-time.
o thou, whose only book has been the light
Of supreme darkness which thou feddest on
Night after night when Phoebus was away,
To thee the spring shall be a triple morn.
Oh, fret not after knowledge - I have none,
And yet my song comes native with the warmth.
Oh, fret not after knowledge - I have none,
And yet the evening listens. He who saddens
At thought of idleness cannot be idle,
And he's awake who thinks himself asleep.
(Allott, p. 311)

The thrush has suffered the deprivations of winter. It has

'read' wisdom in the book of "supreme darkness ••• Night after
night I when Phoebus was away" (11. 6-7). It will, ultimately, be
i
'reborn' in the warmth of a spring morning. Likewise, the poet,
who might regret the 'winter' of inactivity, will 're-awaken' to
find he has been infinitely enriched during his supposed
 - 63 -

indolence. Although this sonnet is not generally considered one

of Keats's best, it is important as a culmination of axiom and
example. Keats, here, illustrates the poet's growth in percep-
tion while he is in a state of "passive inactiveness," as well
as his joy;in creating poetry that immortalizes the fleeting
moment of inspiration.

A further maxim which Keats put forward is his firm belief in

.'
the poet's creative response, through his imagination, to
inspiration. Richard Woodhouse, a contemporary admirer, tells
how Keats would not sit down to write:

"unless he .is full of ideas - and then thoughts

come about him in troops, as tho' soliciting to
be accd & he selects - one of his Maxims is that
if P[oetry] does not come naturally, it had bet-
ter not come at all."
(Bate, p. 234)

Once again Keats draws on the earlier Romantics when he

emphasizes the importance of the imagination in the creative
process. Coleridge speaks of the imagination as "that synthetic
and magical power, to which we have exclusively appropriated the
name of imagination.,,34 He goes on to explain that the
creative imagination produces balance and symmetry, and
reconciles "opposites or discordant qualities" - that is, beauty
is born through the imaginative creative process:

I
34 S. T. coleridge, Biographia Literaria, in D. J.
Enright and Ernst De Chickera (eds) , English Critical
Texts, p. 196 •
 - 64 -

The poet, described in ideal perfection, brings

the whole soul of man into activity, with the
subordination of its faculties to each other,
according to their relative worth and dignity.
He diffuses a tone and spirit of unity, that
blends, and (as it were) fuses, each into each,
by ~hat synthetic and magical power, to which we
hav~ exclusively appropriated the name of
imagination. This power, first put into action
by the will and understanding, and retained
under their remissive, though gentle and
unnoticed, control (laxis effertur habenis)
reveals itself in the balance or reconciliation
of opposite or discordant qualities: of
sameness, with difference; of the general, with
the concrete; the idea, with the image; the
individual, with the representative; the sense
of novelty and freshness, with old and familiar
objects; a more than usual state of emotion,
with more than usual order; jUdgement ever awake
and steady self-possession, with enthusiasm and
feeling profound· or vehement; and while it
blends and harmonizes the natural and the
artificial, still subordinates art to nature;
the manner to the matter; and our admiration of
the poet to our sympathy with the poetry.
(Enright and De Chickera, p. 196)

In his sonnet, "On First Looking Into Chapman's Homer,,35 Keats

puts into practice the maxim that the artist's creative imagina-
tion reacts to inspiration. His inspired imagination selects
carefully those images that capture the thoughts that came to
him "in troops," and he blends his thoughts on the classical
poet, Homer, with a "sense of novelty and freshness" to create a
poem in which "the idea" and '·"the image" are in complete
harmony.

35 "On First Looking into chapman's Homer" has been

discussed in some detail in Chapter I.
 - 65 -
K~ats also turned his attention to form and conventions of
poetry letter to Reynolds (3 February 1818). Categorically
stating his dislike of affectation and mannerisms in poetry, he
refers to the work of contemporaries and suggests that "where
there is a:~hrong of delightful Images ready drawn simplicity is
the only thing •.• Wordsworth &c should have their due from
us ••. " (Forman, p. 96). For Keats, poetry is only truly great
when it is an honest reflection of what the poet conceives as
beauty and truth. The written word must convey unobtrusively
and without unnecessary embellishment observed beauty and truth:

We hate poetry that has a palpable design upon

us - and if we do not agree, seems to put its
hand in its breeches pocket. Poetry should be
great and unobtrusive, a thing which enters
into one's soul, and does not startle it or
amaze it with itself,' but with its sUbject.
(Forman, p. 96)

~eats expounds further his theory that poetry should be as unob-

trusive as a "primrose" or a "violet" in a note to his
pUblisher, John Taylor (27 February 1818), while preparations
for the pUblication of Endymion were under way. Keats uses the
word 'axioms,' traditionally a scientific or mathematical term,
to summarize his theories on poetry. He states that simplicity
is one of the first qualities to look for in poetry - it should
never' strike one by "Singularity." Further, the beauty ex-
pressed in poetry should be rounded and absolute, the imagery
should be as natural as the rising of the sun. The third axiom
I
states that poetry should never be forced, but should come as
"naturally as the Leaves to a tree:"
 - 66 -

In Poetry I have a few Axioms, and you will see

how far I am from their Centre. 1st. I think
Poetry should surprise by a fine excess and not
by Singularity - it should strike the Reader as
a wording of his own highest thoughts, and ap-
pear almost a Remembrance - 2nd. Its touches of
Bea~ty should never be half way ther[e]by making
the reader breathless instead of content: the
rise, the progress, the setting of imagery
should like the Sun come natural natural (sic)
too (sic) him - shine over him and set soberly
although in magnificence leaving him in the
\
Luxury of twilight - but it is easier to think
! what Poetry should be than to write it - and
this leads me on;to another axiom. That if
Poetry comes not as naturally as the Leaves to a
tree it had better not come at all.
(Forman, p. 108)

The paradox in the last· two axioms reveals that Keats was, in
fact, experiencing as a poet the problem of blending his
thoughts on "what Poetry should be" with the practical circum-
stance "to write it."

The role of the poet, Keats believes, is that of mediator. He,

therefore, places the reader in the centre of the first two
axioms. First, the joy that the poet experienced in the concep-
tion of his poem must be 're-born' in the perceptive reader.
This, Keats believes, is only possible if the poem is not experi-
enced as out of the ordinary, but as a verbalization of the
reader's own thoughts. Keats's awareness of the close link
between the reader and the poet emulates the classical view of
the role of the artist. As Gilbert Murray states: "In a Greek
society the artist was treated frankly as a friend and fellow
worker. He helped to make life beautiful, which is at least one
large and obvious way of making it good:" 36

36 Gilbert Murray, The Rise of the Greek Epic, p.3.

 - 67 -

Keats's second axiom: "Its touches of beauty should never be

half way ther[e]by making the reader breathless instead of
content: the rise, the progress, the setting of imagery should
like the Sun come natural (sic) ••. " reiterates the idea of
Apollonian:Jnspiration that runs through his verse. The imagery
of a poem, Keats says, must be as complete, as natural as the
rising and setting of the sun. Apollo's chariot is the natural
conveyor of poetic imagination. In setting, the sun leaves the
poet fulfilled in "the luxury of twilight."

The final key to Keats's thoughts on artistic creativity is the

much-vaunted idea of 'Negative Capability' which he condensed
into a theory after a conversation with Dilke on literature as
they were walking home across Hampstead after one of their so-
cial outings:

... I had not a dispute but a disquisition, with

Dilke on various sUbjects; several things
dove-tailed in my mind, and at once it struck me
what quality went to form a Man of Achievement,
especially in Literature, and which Shakespeare
possessed so enormously - I mean Negative
Capability, that is, when a man is capable of
being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, with-
out any irritable reaching after fact and reason,
- Coleridge, for instance, would let go by a '
fine isolated verisimilitude caught from the
Penetralium of mystery, from being incapable of
remaining content with halfknowledge. This
pursued through volumes would perhaps take us no
further than this, that with a great poet the
sense of Beauty overcomes every other
consideration, or rather obliterates all
 - 68 -
consideration.
(Forman, p. 72)

Negative Capability is the clear-cut ability of the poet to be

utterly receptive to the object he observes even without under-
'.
standing it consciously. Keats criticizes the rationalist Col-
eridge for thinking "too carefully upon the event," thereby
allowing himself: " ..• to let go by a fine isolated verisimili-
tude caught from the Penetralium of mystery, from being incapa-
ble of remaining content with halfknowledge." Keats, therefore,
warns the artist against too deeply rationalizing beauty: doing
so might mean that a precious jewel of beauty garnered from the
sanctuary of truth itself might elude the artist. 37 The poet
must permit the imagination to transcend the material in order
to achieve a union with the unseen. That means he must be
receptive beyond the sensual and the rational. such
transcendence will lend an empathic power to the poet to absorb
beauty by being receptive or accessible to the truth that is
beauty. Bate comments: "Truth and beauty spring simultaneously
into being and also begin to approximate each other" (Bate, p.
243). The poet's creative powers build on the union between
beauty and truth. For Keats such an unconditionally receptive
imagination is possible only if the poet negates his own

37 Keats's letter of 22 December 1818, addressed to his

brothers, contains the essence of his philosophy of
Negative Capability.
(Maurice Buxton Forman (ed.), The Letters of John Keats,
pp. 70 - 72).
 - 69 -

sUbjective interests.

While Keats's poetic axioms were being crystallized, he also

deliberately experimented with form. In so doing he followed
the classical precept that "style means the same as 'form', and
'form' includes 'spirit'll (Murray, p. 5). While choosing the
patterns of traditional forms like the sonnet and the romance,
or the 'restrictions' of classical conventions like the ode or
the epic, Keats changed these forms and conventions to suit his
material, mood, and tone. After Endymion he turned away from
the Chaucerian romance; between the end of Endymion and the
start of Hyperion he wrote Petrarchan and Shakespearean
sonnets. Keats also extended his experimentation with form to
include the poem "Isabella; or,· The Pot of Basil" which was
written in ottava rima, and was completed by 27 April 1818. In
the sonnet liOn Sitting Down to Read King Lear once again"
(Allott, pp. 295-296) the poet bids farewell to "g01den-tongued
Romance II (1.1). He now wishes to encounter lithe fierce dispute
/ Betwixt damnation and impassioned clay" (11. 5-6). Keats
attempted to understand the cycle of change as well as the na-
ture of SUffering. He chose the form of the classical epic to
work on these issues. In probing the questions of life and
eternity, Keats hoped to be re-born as a poet: " ••• when I am
consumed in the fire, / Give me new Phoenix wings to fly at my
desire" (11, 13-14).

Keats continued with the use of classical allusions and imagery

in certain of the sonnets of this period (January - March
 - 70 -

1818).38 This implies that he felt secure enough with classi-

cism to choose a classical convention, the epic, as the form for
his next l~ng poem. When Bate states that Keats used the period
between Endymion and Hyperion to "mark time" before the "large
choice he must soon make" (Bate, p. 315) he suggests that the
creative work Keats completed at the time may be regarded as
preparatory material which served to assist the poet to mature
for the important task ahead. Keats would soon choose deliber-
ately to break ~ith the traditions of his contemporaries who
turned from the rationalism of classicism to sUbjective emotion-
al responses in their artistic endeavours. He chose to write
the classical epic Hyperion. A Fragment in which he tried to
come to terms with the imponderables conducting the lives of men
and gods.

The poet had been a long time "maturing under the eyes of
Apollo" and was ready to test the axioms regarding form, beauty
and truth, the role of the poet, and "Negative Capability" which
had taken shape in his mind while he was rededicating himself to
the god of poesy. In making the "great choice" of an appropri-
ate form for the fall of the Titans and the rise of the
Olympians, Keats remained conscious of his indebtedness to poets
of the past as well as to his sound classical background. The

------------------------
I

38 'Spenser! A jealous honourer of thine' (5 Feb. 1818);

'Blue! 'Tis the life of heaven' (8 Feb. 1818); '0 thou
whose face hath felt the winter's wind' (19 Feb. 1818).
 - 71 -
vast scale of the epic seemed to him to be the only form worthy
of illustrating the tragedy of the fall of an entire god-race.
"
 - 72 -

.'
Chapter 4

HYPERION. A FRAGMENT:

AN END AND A BEGINNING

Referring to the role Clarke played in introducing him to

various forms of poetry in his epistle "To Charles Cowden
Clarke" (September 1816), Keats remarked on the superior
position of the epic and concluded that his friend "Showed me
that epic was of all the king, / Round, vast, and spanning all
like saturn's ring" (Allott, p. 57). Two years later, in the
autumn of 1818, when he told the story of the fall of Saturn and
his god-race in Hyperion. A Fragment,39 Keats selected the
epic as the vehicle for the tragic history. For Keats, ,the
"king" of forms provided the vastness of scope in which he felt
the struggle between the Titans and the Olympians moved. It
also offered him a challenge in the demands the form makes on
the poet's creative genius and control of form.

-----~-----------------­
,

39 Keats started the first Hyperion. A Fragment in

autumn 1818 and abandoned it in April 1819. In July
1819 he started a reconstruction of the poem and called
it The Fall of Hyperion. A Dream. He abandoned this
second version towards the end of September 1819.
 - 73 -

The epic form originated in the primary epic of ancient

Greece. 40 ?riginally; the primary epic was a narrative passed
-»

on by word of mouth. The sUbject matter encompassed the myths

and legends on which the Greek nation was nurtured and which
they proudly preserved in their tales. The epic praised heroic
figures and radiated national pride and political
idealism, 41 but there is a link between the oral simplicity
of the primary epic and the Romantic ideal of venerating the
language of the common man. Although the latter quality of the
ode would probably not have been in Keats's mind at all, his
choice of the epic as his next venture into form was,
nevertheless, not extraordinary. His choice of sUbject-matter,
an occasion from classical mythology depicting the changing
order arising from the struggle between the Titans and the
upstart Olympians, may, perhaps, be regarded as revolutionary in
the Romantic context. However, Keats draws an analogy between
the changing cosmic order and the revolutionising influence of

40 Abrams defines the primary epic as follows: "In its

strict use by literary critics the term epic or heroic
poem is applied to a work that meets at least the
following criteria: it is a long narrative poem on a
great and serious sUbject, related in an elevated
style, and centred on a heroic or quasi-divine figure
on whose actions depends the fate of a tribe, a nation,
or the human race" (Abrams, p. 50).
i
41 Few primary or traditional epic~ have survived.
Homer's Iliad and Odyssey are examples of primary
epics in Greek. The Anglo-saxon epic Beowulf is
part of the English cultural heritage.
 - 74 -
the Romantic period on the established order of the neoclassical
period in art.

,.

On 23 January 1818 Keats wrote enthusiastically to Haydon about

the poem that he planned to start, and advised Haydon to wait
for its completion before illustrating a frontispiece for a
proposed edition of Endymion. He felt Hyperion. A Fragment
would have greater scope and depth of expression than anything
he had written to date:

- when that Poem is done there will be a wide

range for you - in Endymion I think you may
have many bits of the deep and sentimental
cast - the nature of Hvperion will lead me to
treat it in a more naked and grecian Manner -
and the march of passion and endeavour will be
undeviating - and one great contrast between
them will be - that the Hero of the written
tale being mortal is led on, like Buonaparte,
by circumstance; whereas the Apollo in
Hyperion (sic) being a fore-seeing God will
shape his actions like one.
(Forman, pp. 82-83)

Keats purposefully set about preparing himself for the

self-imposed task of writing an epic along classical lines. On 27
April 1818 he informed Reynolds of his intention to "learn Greek,
and very likely Italian _II (Gittings, ~. 89) as he wanted to
deepen his studies of the classics as of the masters of English
literature:

••• although I take poetry to be the Chief,

[yet] there is something else wanting to one who
passes his life among Books and thoughts on
Books - I long to feast upon old Homer as we
 - 75 -
have upon Shakespeare, and as I have lately upon
Milton.
(Forman, p. 137)

Not only did Keats want to be thoroughly steeped in Greek

classical tradition, but his letters also reveal his great
admiration for Milton, whose Paradise Lost served him as an
example of the epic in his own tongue.

Both Paradise Lost and Virgil's Aeneid - which Keats knew in

translation and admired greatly - are examples of 'secondary' or
literary epics. These were epics written in deliberate
imitation of the primary epic in the oral tradition, and dealt
with the exploits of a nation, or the destiny of man.

Keats's Hyperion: A Fragment also belongs to the genre of

literary epic and it has certain features in common with the
traditional epics of Homer. According to Abrams, the central
figure in the epic is a person of national importance whose
actions influence the destiny of nations. The vast scale of the
epic, and its "cerem6nial" character, elevate not only the deeds
enacted in the poem to "superhuman" proportions, but also
elevate the language above that of common men:

1. The hero is a figure of great national or

even cosmic importance.
2. The setting of the poem is ample in scale,
and may be worldwide, or even larger.
3. The action involves superhuman deeds in
battle.
4. In these great actions the gods and other
supernatural beings take an 'interest or
active part.

.
~
 - 76 -

5. An epic poem is a ceremonial performance,

and is narrated in ceremonial style which
is deliberately distanced from ordinary
speech and proportioned to the grandeur and
:.formality of the heroic sUbject and epic
architecture.
(Abrams, p. 51)

All these features are present in Hyperion. A Fragment. The

narrative recounts the superhuman circumstances of the struggle
between the Titans and the Olympians which leads to the creation
of a new order of gods in Greek mythology. The setting is the
universe: " ••. Cannot I fashion ~orth / Another world, another
universe, / To overbear and crumble this to naught? / Where is
another chaos? Where?" (Hyperion I,ll. 142-145).

Characters enter into the tale and exit from it in ceremonial

style, using the speech of gods. For instance, when Hyperion
refuses to concede defeat, he enters among the dejected Titans
"full of wrath" (I. 1. 213) and vows retaliation in language
that is passionate and authoritative although he tempers his
words with "godlike curb." He shows great empathy with:the
sUffering horde, but refuses to succumb to the "infant
thunderer, rebel Jove," as saturn has done:

His voice leapt out, despite of godlike curb,

To this result: "0 dreams of day and night!
o monstrous forms! 0 effigies of pain!
o spectres busy in a cold, cold gloom!
o lank-eared phantoms of black-weeded pools!
Why do I know ye! Why have I seen ye? Why
Is my eternal essence thus distraught
To see and to behold these horrors new?
saturn is fallen, am I too to fall? ...
Fall? No, by Tellus and her briny robes!
 - 77 -
Over the fiery frontier of my realms
I will advance a terrible right arm
Shall scare that infant thunderer, rebel
Jove,
And bid old Saturn take his throne again."
(Hyperion I,ll. 226-250)

The sUbject matter of Hyperion. A Fragment is treated on a

cosmological scale. Kea~s uses the vast scope of the epic form
to identify the hero, Hyperion, with the sun - he is not just the
god of the sun. Hyperion threatens to "advance a terrible right
arm .•• / Over the fiery frontier of my realms" (Hyperion I,ll.
248-249). He also wears kingly attire: "His flaming robes
streamed out beyond his heels" (Hyperion I, 1. 214).

Keats employs epic convention in starting the narrative in medias

res (Abrams, .p. 52). The Titans, the most ancient deities in
Greek mythology, have been defeated by the upstart Olympians.
Saturn is to be replaced by Jupiter, son of Hyperion, the leader
of the Titans. Amongst the saddened, defeated deities Hyperion
alone refuses to accept the inevitability of change: "And be ye
mindful that Hyperion, / Our brightest brother, still is
undisgraced- I Hyperion, lot his radiance is here!" (Hyperion II,
11. 343-345). The allegorical parallel between the fall of the
Titans and the end of neoclassicism in art is emphasized in
Keats's allusion that some of the "brightness" of classicism is,
as yet, still part of Romanticism. One might suggest that he
views himself as the "still ••. · undisgraced" poet who recognizes
the special values of form, structure, beauty, and truth in
classicism. Like Hyperion, he vows to protect "the fiery
 - 78 -

frontier of my realm" and to make the precious qualities of

classicism an integral part of his artistic endeavours.

"

Hyperion's tragedy is that he, the "brightest brother," will have

to make way for someone more beautiful, for the "morning-bright
Apollo!" (Hyperion II, 11.294). Hyperion is held in high regard
by the Titans. He acts like a god, and changes the natural
cycles of night and day:

••• he fled
To the eastern gates, and full six dewy hours
Before the dawn in season due should blush,
He breathed fierce breath against the portals
(Hyperion I,ll. 263-265)

In contrast, Apollo is gentle, callow, he speaks from a "white

melodious throat" (Hyperion III, 1. 81). Supported by
Mnemosyne, he is metamorphosed and emerges as the god of light:

••• So young Apollo anguished;

His very hair, his golden tresses famed,
Kept undulation round his eager neck.
During the pain Mnemosyne upheld
Her arms as one who prophesied. At length
Apollo shrieked - and 101 from all his limbs
Celestial •••
(Hyperion III, 11. 130-136)

Keats leaves the allegorical cycle of change incomplete in

Hyper~on. A Fragment. The poem ends with the image of Apollo in
agonYI as he 'gives birth' to the gift of song bestowed on him by
Mnemosyne. When Keats restructured the.poem, and called it ~

Fall of Hyperion. A Dream (July 1819), he devoted the greater

 - 79 -

part of the First Canto to a dialogue between himself and

Moneta. She embodied the history of her race, and she conferred
upon the poet the priesthood of Apollo. One might suggest that
this action completed ,the allegorical cycle because, at last,
the poet was imbued with the divine inspiration that made him
both the slave of the muse and the priest of the god of poesy,
Apollo:

••• - till sad Moneta cried:

'The sacrifice is done, but not the less,
will I be'kind to thee for thy good will.
My power, which to me is still a curse,
Shall be to thee a wonder; for the scenes
still swooning vivid through my glbbed brain,
With an electral changing misery,
Thou shalt with these dull mortal eyes behold,
Free from all pain, if wonder pain thee not.'
(The Fall of Hyperion I,ll. 240-248)

Keats also introduced elements of epic drama into the

narrative. Dialogue, characterization, and the resolution of
the tragic hero's conflict enhance the dramatic quality of the
narrative.

Hyperion. A Fragment personifies Keats's admiration for,the

"beautiful mythology of Greece" (Allott, p. 119). In his
dedication of Endymion to the late Thomas Chatterton Keats
expressed the desire to travel much in "these realms of gold."
He states further: "I hope I have not in too late a day touched
the beautiful mythology of Greece, and dulled its brightness:
I .
for I wJ.sh to try once more, befor (sic) I bid it farewell"
(Allott, p. 119). Keats is, here, convinced of his destiny to
 - 80 -
'save' what he considered as valuable in classicism. He also
recognizes his responsibility as 'custodian' of the classical
truths of beauty and form. He trusts he has not "dulled (the)
"
brightness" of civilization's Greek heritage in his rendering of
the story of Endymion and Diana, and confirms his further
involvement with the Greek myths.

The poem also exposes the emergence of maturity in Keats. As

the end of the Titans means the emergence of the olympians, so
Keats bids farewell to the "realm •.. / Of Flora and old Pan"
("Sleep and Poetry" 11. 101-102) where the sensuous expressions
of Endymion were sufficient for immortalizing in words and
images the poet's spontaneou~ observation of the beauty of
nature. The poet now, in Hyperion. A Fragment, wants to explore
in his verse the order and harmony that sustain natural beauty.
For Keats, as well as for Hyperion, there is an end of an old
order, and a beginning of a new one.

In his authoritative biography of John Keats, Bate argues that

Keats purposely tackled in Hyperion. A Fragment the problem
facing all modern poets: how to achieve originality in the
presence of a vast artistic heritage. Keats had always revered
the "Great Spirits." In Hyperion. A Fragment he begins to draw
more deliberately than before on his own inner life and
experiences. He found it difficult to divert his immediate
attention from the recognized masters, and to become more
self-reliant. As Bate points out, the "'self-clarification" was
 - 81 -
still in the "process of working itself out" when the poet died:

Thls new self-clarification, indispensable to

the poetry of his final year and a half, did
not come easily. In fact, it was very much
against the grain; and though it began with
unexpected suddenness this spring, it was
still in the process of working itself out
when his career ended. For it would ultimate-
ly involve, if not the surrender, at least the
thorough modification of something very pre-
cious to him: his consuming ideal of the great
poets of the past that had proved so formative
in his own development.
(Bate , p , 323 )

Keats's struggle to understand and to accept changes of direction

in his development as an artist are illustrated in the poems on
Hyperion and in the poems of the final period (September 1819-July
1820). In a long letter to Reynolds (3 May 1818), Keats
illustrates the problem of intellectual growth and life-experience
in an extended simile. He compares life to a large mansion with
many rooms. The poet's progress through life is symbolised by his
entering one room after the other. Keats tells of his long sojourn
in the "Chamber of Maiden Thought" where he experienced:life
sensuously. He is now on the threshold of many darkening chambers,
however, because he has become more aware of the "heart and nature
of man" through his personal SUffering:

•.• [compare] human life to a Mansion of Many

Apartments, two of which I can only describe,
the doors of the rest being as yet shut upon
, I
me. The first we step into we call the infant
or thoughtless Chamber, in whiqh we remain as
long as we do not think- We remain there a
long while, and notwithstanding the doors of
the second Chamber remain wide open, showing a
 - 82 -

bright appearance, we care not to hasten to

it; but are at length imperceptibly impelled
by the awakening of this thinking principle
within us- we no sooner get into the second
Chamber, which I shall call the Chamber of
Mqiden-Thought, than we become intoxicated
with the light and the atmosphere, we see
nothing but pleasant wonders, and think of
delaying there for ever in delight: However
among the effects this breathing is father of
is that tremendous one of sharpening one's
vision into the heart and nature of Man - of
convincing one's nerves that the world is full
of Misery and Heartbreak, Pain, Sickness and
oppression - whereby this Chamber of Maiden
Thought becomes gradually darken'd and at the
same time on all sides of it many doors are
set open - but all dark - all leading to dark
passages - We see not the ballance (sic) of
good and evil. We are in a Mist. We are now
in that state - We Feel the "burden of the
Mystery, ..• "
(Forman, pp. 143-144)

Keats wrote this letter about five months before he started

Hyperion: A Fragment. By this time in his life he had lingered
for a while in the "Chamber of Maiden-Thought," which, according
to the poet, is the phase during which he first started thinking
constructively, and became "intoxicated" with the beauty that
surrounded him, and with the possibilities life offered him as a
creative artist. Keats's family circumstances had allowed him
to be happy in the second chamber. George had taken care of the
ailing Tom as well as of the family's financial impasse.
However, George was now (May 1818) on the point of emigrating to-
North America, and John was to take over the supervision of the
family's affairs and the nursing of Tom. In these circumstances
the poet came face to face with "the world (that) is full of
Misery and Heartbreak, Pain, Sickness and oppression." As he
 - 83 -

said, all around him "many doors are set open," emotionally,
spiritually, and - ultimately - artistically. All these doors
lead to chambers as yet "dark," unvisited, unexplored. Keats
did not attempt to enter the doors unprepared. He re-read
:.
Shakespeare's Lear to understand better the "heart of man." He
also studied Dante, Milton, and Wordsworth for the importance of
form in composition, and to choose where his sympathies lay. He
further attended Haz1itt,'s Lectures on the English Poets (Bate,
p. 259). suitably prepared, he then entered one of the chambers
of darkness and worked out, in Hyperion. A Fragment, an empathic
allegorical progression of the artist who must inevitably accept
change if he is to sing under the brilliant banner of the
"morning-bright Apollo" (Hyperion II, 1. 294).

In Book I of Hyperion. A Fragment Keats recognizes his "human"

shortcomings in his attempt to tell a cosmic tale of the fall of
gods. Theirs is a woe " ••• Too huge for mortal tongue or pen of
scribe" (Hyperion I,ll. 160). The poet feels himself
inadequate to the task: nOh, how frail/To that large
utterance of the early gods" (Hyperion I,ll. 50-51). However,
he persists in giving "mortal tongue" to the pain and SUffering
of a defeated god-race. In doing so, he is true to himself:
just as Saturn can be nothing but a god, so the poet is destined
to fulfil his reason for being.

Thea, iwife of Hyperion, has spoken to the fallen god, Saturn.

She has no words of comfort, for the elements over which Saturn
 - 84 -
held sway have deserted him:

For heaven is parted from thee and the earth

Knows thee not,- thus afflicted, for a God;
And ~cean too, with all its solemn noise,
Has from thy sceptre passed; and all the air
Is emptied of thine hoary majesty.
Thy thunder, conscious of the new command,
Rumbles reluctant o'er our fallen house;
(Hyperion I,ll. 55-61)

In response to Thea's sad words, Saturn stirs and "saw his

kingdom gone" (Hyperion I, 1. 90). Between Saturn and the poet
the empathic link is established: neither can avoid the truth of
the pending change to his course. Saturn would gladly have
slept on, cast in stone, but just as Thea has roused him to face
his misery, so the poet must inevitably give life to the story
of the fall of the Titans and the rise of a new race.
Allegorically, the poem becomes a history of poetry: the
changing order of the gods reflects the changing generations of
poets. Ultimately, Romanticism, which had rebelled against
Neo-classicism, is destined to be replaced by a new, vigorous
younger generation of poets. Just as Saturn "must be King," so
Keats must be a poet. Saturn's desperate cry that he is, after
all, a god of creation, is also the cry of the poet who wants to
create a new "order" of form and content in poetry from the
"chaos" of artistic endeavour he perceives in his time:

••. But cannot I create?

Cannot I form? Cannot I fashion forth
Another world, another universe,
To overbear and crumble this to naught?
Where is another chaos? Where? .
(Hyperion I,ll. 141-145)
 - 85 -

Saturn firmly believes that, given the chance, he can create a

new universe from chaos. Similarly, the poet wants to shape and
form the "chaos" of ideas, images, and words into a coherently
structured poem. Keats's expression of artistic consciousness
sharpened during the composition of Hyperion. A Fragment. The
vast canvas on which the epic is painted gave him the
opportunity to expand his mastery of images while at the same
time providing him with the conventions of form to coalesce and
harmonize his ideas.

A further allegorical link between the poet and Saturn is the

question of identity. Saturn states that he has parted with his
identity during the fall to the stronger power of the young
Olympians:

I am gone
Away from my own bosom; I have left
My strong identity, my real self,
Somewhere between the throne and where I sit
Here on this spot of earth.
(Hyperion I,ll. 113-116)

These lines summarize the change that has taken place. In

surrendering his identity, the master of the universe effected
the end of an order, and made way for the start of the new,
I
Olympian order. Keats and his contemporaries, too, have said
farewell to the "old" order of the Augustans and are searching
to create a new order of poetry in their own time. As Miriam
 - 86 -
Allott states: "Titans are men of identity and power. Their
successors, the Olympians, whose qualities are epitomized in
Apollo, have no identity and express Keats's idea of the
poetical cB~racter" (Allott, p. 403).

Keats further confirmed his idea of negation of identity by the

poet in a letter to Woodhouse (27 October 1818) written during
the period of the composition of Hyperion. A Fragment.
"Negative Capability" is one of the fundamental principles of
Keats's artistic philosophy and, as explained in the letter to
Woodhouse, this principle stands in contrast to Wordsworth's
view of the character of the poet, that of the "egotistical
sublime." Wordsworth elevated the artistic personality to that
approaching a deity in his reliance on the "self." In contrast,
Keats stated .that the poet "is every thing and nothing":

As to the poetical Character itself (I mean

that sort of which, if I am any thing, I am a
Member; that sort distinguished from the words-
worthian or egotistical sUblime, ... ) it is not
itself - it has no self - it is every thing
and nothing - It has no character - it enjoys ..
light and shade; ... A Poet is the most unpoet~'
ical of any thing in existence; because he has
no Identity - .•.
(Forman, pp. 227-228)

Keats goes on to explore the forced surrender of identity in the

tragic destruction of Hyperion, the god of the sun, who has to
I
make way for the bright Apollo because he refuses to bow to the
inevitable. similarly, in putting aside the 'old order' of
poetic aspirations, Keats moves purposely into the 'order' of
 - 87 -

poets who rely firmly on Apollonian inspiration. 42 The old order

is, for the poet, epitomised in the work of the neoclassicist poets
who applied· the rules of the classics rigorously, but who denied
the role of Apollo and the muse in their work. Keats, in the new
order of his poetry, uses the form and SUbject matter of classicism
but handles the themes with the sensuous, imaginative awareness of
Romanticism.

Hyperion's passage is characterized by fierce emotional struggles.

Keats affords him a Shakespearean dramatic entry. He is still
"blazing Hyperion" (Hyperion I, 1. 166). However, this description
becomes ironic when one reads, two lines on, that he is "unsecure"
(sic) despite his defiant entry. Although he is unconquered as
yet, the god of the sun is uneasy because there are amongst his
"fiery galleries" disturbances, darkness, and unprecedented
visitations:

And all its curtains of aurorian clouds

Flushed angerly, while sometimes eagle's
wings,
Unseen before by gods or wondering men,
Darkened the place, and neighing steeds were
heard,
Not heard before by gods or wondering men.
(Hyperion I,ll. 181-185)

-----~------------------
42 See chapter 1 above for a discussiom of the concept
"Apollonian inspiration."
 - 88 -

The "neighing steeds" foreshadow Apollo's chariot that will soon

race across the skies, Hyperion's domain. In allegorical
parallel, the poet flies upon "eagle's wings" in a bid to fulfil
his destiny: In self-destructive pride Hyperion "flared" on,
only to discover that his empire has been destroyed:

.•. my lucent empire?' It is left

Deserted, void~ nor any haunt of mine.
The blaze, the splendour and the symmetry
I cannot see - but darkness, death and
darkness.
(Hyperion I, 11. 239-242)

Just as Hyperion finds himself in a world of darkness where all

symmetry is gone, the poet, too, has entered an unknown
"chamber." He has left behind for ever the "Chamber of
Maiden-Thought" for the uncertainties of experimentation with
the epic form of composition which he adopted as a vehicle to
illustrate theirparallel destinies. Hyperion's struggle is
not over. The mighty Titan creates an eclipse to re-affirm his
supremacy over the heavenly bodies. He forces "the eastern
gates, .•• full six dewy hours / Before the dawn in ,season due
should blush, .•. " (Hyperion I,ll. 264-265). There is, however,
a natural inevitability in the movement of the spheres. "The
sacred seasons might not be disturbed" (Hyperion I, 1. 293).
The valiant, bright Titan is forced to accept the truth of
inevitable defeat: ,

And the bright Titan, frenzied with new woes,

Unused to bend, by hard compulsion bent
His spirit to the sorrow of the time;
 - 89 -
And all along a dismal rack of clouds,
Upon the boundaries of day and night,
He stretched himself in grief and
radiance faint.
(Hyperion I, 11. 299-304)
"

Hyperion's radiance has diminished, but it has not yet been

eclipsed by the brilliance of Apollo. The parallel in the
development of art in the early nineteenth century lies in the
revolution by the modern poets against the achievement of
classicism and the poets of the Augustan period. The advance is
gradual but deliberate. No great poet has, as yet, risen to
'eclipse' the great works of the past. When Hyperion stretches
himself in "grief and radiance faint," Coelus, father of the
Titan-gods, tells him "Yet do thou strive; as thou art capable"
(Hyperion I, 1.337). Coelus encourages his son to fulfil his
destiny. Hyperion slowly recovers, and Keats gives him as
dramatic an exit as his entry had been. The god plunges from
his sun-filled skies into darkness:

Like to a diver in the pearly seas,

Forward he stooped over the airy shore,
And plunged all noiseless into the deep night.
(Hyperion I,ll. 355-357)

Keats has prepared his readers for this step. He, too, has
plunged into the darkness of the "Third Chamber" in search of
beauty and of truth.

Adhering to one of the conventions of the literary epic, Book II

opens with a listing of the defeated Titans in their "nest of
 - 90 -
pain" (Hvperion II, 1. 90). While Saturn has failed to resolve
his conflict, the poet has advanced, like Apollo, into a new
realm wher~ he works out his artistic destiny. While
immortalizing their fall, the poet gives order, in classical
epic composition, to the disintegrating world of the defeated
Titans. In depicting saturn, here, as an impotent, despairing
ruler who does not understand what has happened to his tribe,
Keats is - possibly - illustrating what happens to the poet who
has no negative capability, who has no sensitivity, and who
cannot absorb impulses from the world around him. The four
elements had traditionally been Saturn's domain which he
approached as an authoritative ruler, not as an empathic
fellow-creature. Now that he has been supplanted, Saturn tries,
without success, to force an answer from the elements:

••• nor in sign, symbol, or portent

Of element, earth, water, air and fire -
' 0 ' not in that strife,
Wherefrom I take strange lore and read it deep
Can I find reason why ye should be thus.
(Hyperion II, 11. 139-149)

Saturn, here, fails to find an answer because he has never been

in sympathy with nature and because his superiority and
independence have been petrified into silent stone. The poet,
on the other hand, knows that the artist who is "a man of
I

achie~ement" possesses "negative capability," and that the

answers are given him while he is deliberately quiet before the
elements of nature and human experience.
 - 91 -
In his search, Saturn then calls upon the assembled gods for an
answer. oceanus,43 revered for his wisdom, empathically
speaks the yards of Keats, the poet. Oceanus reiterates that
Saturn's weakness is his short-sightedness, his turning to
himself and his own physical power for an answer: " for this
reason that thou art King,/ And only blind from sheer
supremacy, / One avenue was shaded from thine eyes" (Endymion
II, 11. 184-186). Oceanus believes - and so does Keats - that
change is as inevitable as the seasonal cycle: "We fall by
course of Nature's law, not force / Of thunder, or of Jove"
(Hyperion II, 11. 181-182). Keats contends that, although he
and his peers have taken over from the Augustans, they too will,
in time, be replaced by a 'new race' of poets. The important
thing is to accept the inevitability of the cycle of change.
The poet must rise above his circumstances of defeat and pain
and accept the supremacy of truth which is, to him, beauty:

Now comes the pain of truth, to whom 'tis pain -

o folly! for to bear all naked truths
And to envisage circumstance, all calm,
That is the top of sovereignty.
(Hyperion II, 11. 202-205)

43 "Oceanus was one of the oldest gods - he is preceded

only by Earth and Heaven in Hesiod's Theogony, (Cooke's
translation 206-216) - and was traditionally revered
for his wisdom by his fellow deities" (Allott, p. 425).
'In early mythology Oceanus is much more an element than
a personality; in Homer he is the river which encircles
the whole world and in which the sun and stars rise and
set ••• " (Betty Radice, Who's Who in the Ancient World,
pp. 173-174).
 - 92 -

Although it is difficult for the poet to accept the truth of

change, it ~s a "state devoutly to be wished." There is justice
in accepting truth: "For 'tis the eternal law / That first in
beauty should be first in might" (Endymion II, 11. 228-229).
The poet who has mastered fully that "truth is beauty, beauty
truth" (Allott, p. 537), will rise like an eagle
"golden-feathered" (Hvperion II, 1. 226) above the common flock.

Oceanus arrived at his perception of truth through logic.

Clymene, the next speaker, perceives truth through emotions and
feelings. However, she is "one whom none regarded" (Hyperion
II, 1. 248). She has learnt truth from experience: " ... let me
tell/of what I heard, and how it made me weep" (Hyperion II,
11. 259-260). Clymene also expressed the truth of their
sUffering in song: " .•. (she) took a mouthed shell/And
murmured into it, and made melody" (Hyperion II, 11. 270-271).
Receptively in tune with their circumstances, she "was filled /
with that new blissful. golden melody" (Hyperion II, 1. 279-280).
The poet speaks through Oceanus and Clymene: logical
perceptiveness as well as poetry reveal beauty, truth, and joy
for, as Clymene listens sympathetically, the new music of the
spheres envelops her:

•.• For while I sang •••

There came enchantment with the shifting wind,
That did both drown and keep alive my ears.
I threw my shell away upon the sand,
And a wave filled it, as my sense was filled
With that new blissful golden melody •••
 - 93 -

And still it cried, "Apollo! Young Apollo!

The morning-bright Apollo! Young Apollo!"
(Hyperion II, 11. 272-294)
"

Clymene experiences and accepts the truth of their defeat. Upon

this acceptance follows a "sweeter tune than all." Keats
states, here, that the poet's submission to the truth of beauty
will enable him to play the lute of poesy more tunefully than
before. The younger generation of poets is destined to come
into their own. No longer does Keats have to move in the
shadows cast by his great forebears - Spenser, Shakespeare, and
Milton. He is ready to undergo, with Apollo, the spiritualizing
transformation which will herald him as a great poet.

Eenraged by Clymene's joy at the "new" song, Ence1adus 44 rises

as the last of the Titans to speak in council. By his refusal
to accept her message of truth through beauty, Ence1adus
precipitates his own destruction as well as the final
capitulation of the Titans. Allegorically, the poet suggests
that those artists of his time who refuse to accept the:coming
supremacy of Apollo are doomed to destroy their own endeavours.
Enceladus believes in fierce action only, and he reminds the
Titans that Hyperion is still undefeated. However, as Hyperion

44 Ence1adus, included among the Titans in

Lempriere •.• (was) "the most powerful of the giants
who conspired against Jupiter. He was struck with
Jupiter's lightning and overwhelmed ,by the god under
mount Aetna. Some suppose that he is the same as
Typhon" (Al1ott, p. 421). ..
 - 94 -
enters the "nest of pain," the Titans read in his expression
that he, too, has accepted the terrible truth of their defeat.
:.
Allegorically, this defeat illustrates the end of the era of the
neoclassicists and the supremacy of the Romantics. Ironically,
they were also 'born' of the neoclassicists, just as the upstart
Olympians were descendan~s of the Titans. For the new beauty of
Apollo to be born, Hyperion's spent beauty must die: the cycle
of change is that of birth and death:

Till suddenly a splendour, like the morn,

Pervaded all the beetling gloomy steeps,
All the sad spaces of oblivion,
And every gUlf, and every chasm old,
And every height, a~d every sullen depth,
Now saw the light and made it terrible.
(Hyperion II, 11. 357-367)

Hyperion's conflict has been resolved. In the "terrible" light

of truth he knows that Apollo must take his place. The Titans
turn from the "dejected King of Day" (Hyperion II, 1. 380) to
shout "forth old Saturn's name" (Hyperion II, 1. 387), but to no
avail. Saturn can neither understand nor accept the cyclical
inevitability of change. He lacks both knowledge and
sensitivity.

Book III of Hyperion. A Fragment is devoted almost entirely to

the preparation of Apollo's metamorphosis so that he will be
.,
,
worthy of taking Hyperion's place. As "Apollo is once more the
golden theme" (Hyperion III, 1. 28), the poem's imagery changes
from sombre, dolorous rhythms like "The ponderous syllables,
 - 95 -
like sullen waves / In the half-glutted hollows of reef-rocks, /
Came booming thus, ••. ~ (Hyperion II, 11. 305-307) to scenes of
:-
gentle beauty reminiscent of some phrases in Endymion: "
(Apollo) wandered forth / Beside the osiers of a rivulet, / Full
ankle-deep in lilies of the vale" '(Hyperion III, 11. 33-35).
These changes in imagery and sound foreshadow the changes which
occur when the poet speaks with the voice of a young Apollo.

While the Titans were sorrowing in their cave, Mnemosyne 45

was "straying in the world" (Endymion II, 1. 29) in search of
Apollo. Keats, here, develops an interesting element of his
artistic theory: the importance, for him, of the muse in
artistic inspiration. Just as Apollo wept helplessly in
response to the beauty he observed but could not adequately
express in song because he lacked divine inspiration, so the
poet's consciousness of beauty can only be immortalized in verse
once he has been imbued with the inspiration of the muse of
poesy:

... Throughout all the isle

There was no covert, no retir~d cave,
Unhaunted by the murmurous noise of waves,

45 "[Mnemosyne], Mother of the Muses by Jupiter and

included among the Titans in Hesiod's Theogony
, (Cooke's translation 81-4)." (A1lott, p , 418).
The daughters of Zeus and Mnemosyne.were the nine
muses who "presided over the liberal arts," and who
"resided at the foot of mount Helicon." Mnemosyne
also had the "attribute of memory," and she "harboured
the history of the race of gods." (Finch, p. 955).
 - 96 -
Though scarcely heard in many a green recess.
He listened, and he wept, and his bright
tears
Went trickling down the golden bow he held.
(Hvperion III, 11. 38-43)

The "golderi bow" is silent. Although the mother of the muses,

Mnemosyne, is still to bestow the gift of song on Apollo, he
has, in anticipation of his role, dreamt of her: "I have beheld
those eyes before, / And their eternal calm, and all that face,
/ Or I have dreamed" (Hyperion III, 11. 59-61). Apollo, here,
expresses what Keats believes about the process of artistic
creation. The muse assists, by divine inspiration, in bringing
to consciousness what is beneath the surface in the poet's
being. Mnemosyne tells Apollo that the entire universe is
affected by his song:

Thou hast dreamed of me; and awaking up

Didst find a lyre all golden by thy side,
Whose strings touched by thy fingers all the
vast
Unwearied ear of the whole universe
Listened in pain and pleasure at the birth
Of such new tuneful wonder.
(Hyperion III, 11. 62-67)

Although Apollo's poesy has filled the "ear" of the universe

with "pain and pleasure," he sits and "moan(s), / Like one who
once had wings" (Hyperion III, 1. 90). Once again the voice of
the poet speaks through Apollo's words. Earth-bound and
frustrated, he finds it extremely difficult to transfer
exper~ence into art: " •.. Oh, why should I / Feel cursed and
thwarted, when the liegeless air / Yields to my step aspirant?"
 - 97 -
(Hyperion III, 11. 91-93).

In an impassioned speech which reveals the poet's frustrations

as well as his aspirations, Apollo implores the muse to "point
~

forth some unknown thing" (Hyperion III, 1. 95). Keats, like

all 'modern' poets, often feels that he can only build on work
of the old masters. But he wants some new idea, something
uniquely his own to write about. The poet strives for the ideal
of immortalising in verse the beauty he observes in nature. He
feels, however, that he lacks the wisdom to attain his ideal:

... Where is power?

Whose hand, whose essence, what Divinity,
Makes this alarum in the elements,
While I here idle listen on the shores
In fearless yet in aching ignorance?
(Hyperion III, 11. 103-107)

Mnemosyne does not reply to Apollo's questions. In her silence

Keats illustrates the poet's own capacity to find the answers
through sensitivity and knowledge; that is, through negative
capability and empathic experience.

Apollo states that he "can read / A wondrous lesson in thy

silent face: / Knowledge enormous makes a God of me" (Hyperion
III, 11. 111-113). In Apollo's realization that it is "in our
wills that we are thus or thus" lies the seed of his
metamorphosis. Because of this realization he is ready to "Die
into life" (Hyperion III, 1. 130). Similarly, the poet's
fortune lies in his own hands. A sensitivity towards all
 - 98 -

things, a knowledge of the suffering and pain of life, a

realization that all matters of the universe are sUbject to his
"
art if he so chooses, will 'open' him to inspiration by the
muse. The poet, too, will be given the "golden harp" of song.
Just as an old order of gods had to die, so the old order of
poets, having sown their, seed, play out their role. The poets
under the banner of the "morning-bright" Apollo herald a bright
new future.
 - 99 -

" Chapter 5

THE ODES OF 1819

Keats turned to the classical ode during his most productive

period, April-May 1819, and wrote the last of the great odes,
"To Autumn" on 19 September of the same year. His classical
interests had by now extended beyond allusion to classical
deities to experiments with the forms themselves. 46

Keats also used his odes as a vehicle to explore the process of

soul-making. In a journal letter to George and Georgiana Keats
(14 February-3 May 1819), the poet discussed at length what he
perceived as the journey of the soul through the "vale of
Soul-making" (Forman, p. 336), as he insisted on calling the
world, rather than "a vale of tears" which he considered "a
little circumscribed straightened notion!" (Forman. p. 335).
Keats says that there may be "sparks of the divinity in

46 Keats's attempt at writing a classical epic found

expression in Hyperion: a Fragment (autumn 1818-
April 1819), discussed in chapter 4 'above.
 - 100 -
millions" (Forman, p. 336), but these sparks only take fire when
the person has established his own identity. He states,
furthermor~, that "the Intelligence ••. the human heart ••. and
the World or Elemental space" (Forman, p. 336) are the qualities
of his existence which help man to discover and develop his
unique identity:

There maybe intelligences or sparks of the

divinity in millions - but they are not Souls the
(sic) till they acquire identities, till each one
is personally itself. I[n]telligences are atoms
of perception - they know and they see and they
are pure, in short they are God - How then are
Souls to be made? How then are these sparks
which are God to have identity given them - so as
ever to possess a bliss peculiar to each one's
individual existence? ,How, but by the medium of
a world like this? This point I sincerely wish
to consider because I think it a grander system
of salvation than the chrystiain (sic) religion -
••. This is effected by three grand materials
acting the one upon the other for a series of
years - These three Materials are the
Intelligence - the human heart (as distinguished
from intelligence or Mind) and the World or
Elemental space suited for the proper action of
Mind and Heart on each other for the purpose of
forming the Soul or Intelligence destined to
possess the sense of Identity.
(Forman, p. 336)

The odes of 1819 illustrate different ways in which reason and

passion combine in Keats's work.

Keats, appiied some of the principles of classical thought when

he selected the ode as a structuring device. In his discourses,
Plato (427-347 B.C.) considered poetry as mere mimesis which had
 - 101 -
a corrupting influence on society, and he banished the poet from
his "ideal~
society as structured in The Republic. While
admitting that Homer47 "is the best of poets and first of
tragedians," Plato warns that the only poems that should be
permitted into the state are lithe hymns to the gods and paeans
in praise of good men, II 'because these poems were not SUbjective
or written for self-gratification, but in the interest of
society. The verse of Homer, much admired by Keats, served a
communal purpose according to Plato, and elevated human emotions
by directing them to the gods and to praiseworthy ideals as
evinced in the actions of great men:

And so, Glaucon, I continued, when you meet people

who admire Homer as the educator of Greece, and who
say that in the administration of human affairs and
education we should study him and model our whole
lives on his poetry, you must feel kindly towards
them as good men within their limits, and you may
agree with them that Homer is the best of poets and
first of tragedians. But you will know that the
only poetry that should be allowed in a state is the
hymns to the gods and paeans in praise of good men;
once you go beyond that and admit the sweet lyric or'
epic muse, pleasure and pain become your rulers
instead of law and the rational principles commonly
accepted as best.
(Republic X, p. 437)

47 "The Greeks believed that the Iliad and the Odyssey

were composed by Horner, and seven Greek cities claimed to
be the birthplace of the blind poet, but nothing is known
of his life or date, nor can it be proved that both epics
were put together by a single perso~ at the same time."
Betty Radyce, Who's Who in the Ancient World, p. 135.
 - 102 -
The admiration of Homer that Keats shared with Plato led him to
combine ra£ional principles of form and purpose in the classical
ode with his theory that "intelligence" and the "human heart"
lead him through the "vale of soul-making" towards his
. individuation as a poet.

The classical ode is represented in the work of Pindar (522-442

B.C.) who manipulated the form and designed his odes for choric
song and dance. They were publicly delivered by trained
choruses, and in these poems "the poet is the spokesman, and
this is an important point for the appreciation of the often
intensely personal tone of the lyric chorus as compared with the
chorus of-the drama." 48 In following the example of the
classical conventions of the ode, Keats also manipulated the
form, creating an ode-form which incorporated the rational
processes of classicism as well as the inspirational imaginative
work of Romanticism, and which is associated with his name.

The only extant element of pindar's odes are the words. 49

48 H.T. Peck(ed.), Harper's Dictionary of Classical

Literature and Antiquities, p. 1261.
49 "Findar was a consummate master of the whole domain of
lyric poetry, as shown by the fragments of his hymns,
'his paeans, his dancing-songs, his processional songs,
his songs for choruses of virgins,- his songs of praise,
his drinking-songs and catches, his dithyrambs and
dirges." (Peck, p. 1261).
 - 103 -

These reflect the demands of the other two arts, song and
dance. An intricate triadic structure of the words epitomises
movement: ;.

A strophe, a complex metrical structure whose

length and pattern of irregular lines varies from
ode to ode, reflects a dance pattern, which is
then repeated exactly in an antistrophe, the pat-
tern being closed by an epode, or 58ird section,
of differing length and structure.

Although Keats's odes do not follow the intricate patterns of

contrast which Pindar employed, they retain the basic elements of
lyrical rhythm and they "uplift the hearts of men."

The Pindaric ode is not only a public performance of word, dance,

and song - its sUbject matter is also of 'public' concern. The
performances were probably held in a oionysiac theatre to celebrate
a divinity. As they are also songs of joy and paeans of praise in
celebration of athletic victories, the tone of the odes is,
traditionally, "emotional, exalted, intense" (Preminger, p. 585).
The Greek world is inspired to exalt the prowess of the victor:
"the victor is transfigured into a glorious personification of his
race, and the present is reflected, magnified, illuminated in the
mirror of the rhythmic past" (Peck, p. 1262). The odes of Pindar

----~-------------------
50 Alex Preminger (ed.), Princeton Encyclopedia of
'Poetry and Poetics, p. 585.
 - 104 -

seem to be a blend of sUbjective poetic genius and an objective,

communal experience of pride in Hellenism. In Lexikon der Alten
Welt, Andressen states that pindar's work reflects a keen awareness
;.

of his responsibility as a poet. He allowed himself no time for

love or adventure, but praised qualities like efficiency, honour,
and beauty which he believed were godly gifts. These gifts
depended on the poet's ability to stress them in song:

Reichtum, Schoenheit, koerperliche Tuechtig-

keit und bes. Ruhm gel ten ihm als hoechste
Gueter; diese sind im Adelerblich, aber doch
von den Goettern verliehen und koennen durch
unrechten Gebrauch verlorengehen. Vor allem
bleiben sie wirkungslos, wenn der Dieter nicht
fuer ihre Erhaltung und Verbreitung im Liede
sorgt ••.• Von Liebe und Lebensgenus ist bei
ihm kaum die Rede. Als Dichter fuehlt sich
Pindar von den Goettern, vor alSrm Apoll, den
Muesen und Chariten inspiriert.

Keats's odes not only 'express a keen awareness of his

responsibility as a poet,' but he also chose the sUbject matter
of his various odes to reflect the central, communal aspect

51 C. Andressen (ed.), Lexikon der Alten Welt, p. 2330.

(Translation: Wealth, beauty, physical fitness and
especially honour are for him [Pindar] the highest
virtues; they are a noble inheritance, however still
granted by the gods, and may be lost if employed
unjustly. Above all, they remain without effect if
the poet does not further their preservation and
distribution by means of his songs •••• Of love and
the pleasures of life he thinks little. As a poet,
Pindar feels inspired by the gods, especially by
Apollo, the muses and divinities. - H.S.).
 - 105 -
which Plato demanded from poetry before he would permit it in
his ideal state. A definition of the modern usage of the term
emphasises:.the same quality:

ODE (Gr. aeidein "to sing," "to chant"). In

modern usage the name for the most formal,
ceremonious, and complexly organized form of
lyric poetry, usually of considerable length.
It is frequently"the vehicle for publ Lc
utterance on state occasions, as, for example, a
ruler's birthday, accession, funeral, the
unveiling or dedication of some imposing
memorial or pUblic work.
(Preminger, p. 585)

The formal aspects of sUbject and occasion influence the

prosodic elements of tone, diction, and imagery. Exalted
sentiments are expressed in dignified language and images, and
philosophical matters are often discussed. The tone might be
didactic in the Pindaric tradition, and the ode carries weight
as it sets norms of moral and civic behaviour.

Like Pindar, Keats recognizes his 'public' responsibility to set

'norms,' not, however, of social behaviour but of emotional
sensibility. Like Pindar, he feels inspired by the gods,
especially by Apollo. Keats takes a dramatically revolutionary
step in his Romantic application of the ode convention. He uses
this most 'pUblic' form of lyric poetic communication to express
his most intimate, sUbjective views on love, poetry, sUffering,
i
beauty, truth, and fulfilment. Keats sets norms of behaviour in
his odes, but they have to do with personal beliefs rather than
 - 106 -
with pUblic decorum.

The five spring odes of 1819 are a manifesto of Romanticism in

Keats's work in their emotive response to the imagination. Yet,
even in these intensely personal poems, Keats refers to
classical sources. Indeed, he goes even further, when he bases
his poetic constructs on classical conventions: he writes in
praise of a "hethan [sic] Goddess" (Psyche, p. 514); he speaks
of "Bacchus and his pards" (Nightingale, p. 527), and he tries
to unravel the teasing mysteries depicted on an ancient Greek
vase.

Keats supports the sUbjective Romantic mode of inspirational,

intuitive utterance with the classical mode of underlying form
that proceeds by reason and law. His handling of the ode is
based on the sonnet, and is his personal adaptation of a
specific classical form through which he shifts the ode's
didactic civic purpose to a SUbjective inspirational
philosophical utterance which is, in essence, also didactic but
with a focus on explaining the process of finding one's identity
in the "vale of soul-making," thereby setting on fire one's
individual spark of god-head.

Apart; from Keats turning to the ode as a further investigation

I
into classical forms, Bate argues that Keats also experimented
with the ode as a specific form of lyrical expression because of
 - 107 -

his growing frustration with the sonnet. This view is supported

by Keats's letter to George (14 Feb.-3 May 1819) in which he
stated that he had been:

\
"endeavouring to ~iscover a better sonnet stanza
than we have. The legitimate does not suit the
language over-well from the pouncing rhymes - the
other kind appears too elegiac - and the couplet
at the end of it has seldom a pleasing effect -
II

(Gittings, p. 255)

Both the sonnet and the ode are lyrical expressions; both rely
heavily on rhythm and tone. In his search for a new form of the
sonnet which, Keats felt, would be more suitable to English
than either thePetrarchan or the Elizabethan forms, both of
which had long been absorbed into English, he resolved his
dilemma by combining the rhythmical aspects of the sonnet with
those of the ode. Furthermore, he either extended or curtailed
the fourteen-line sonnet stanza to suit the content of his
adaptation in the ode.

Keats's first 1819 ode, Ode to Psyche, (written between 21 and

30 April 1819) incorporates the five-foot iambic pentameter of
the Shakespearean sonnet:
I
!
,,!- \I v - .J - \J
o God/dess! Hear/ these tune/less wrung/ n~m/bers,
>I _ '1.1 - v_ \J v - -
By sweet/ enforce/ment and/ remem/brance dear,//
 - 108 -
Here, the poet extends the fourteen-line sonnet into a lyric
stanza alldwing him greater flexibility to express his
admiration for Psyche as well as to pursue his aim to create a
shrine of words for this goddess who had been neglected by the
neo-classicists. Poets of that era had not considered her
important in the creation of poetry - indeed, the presence of
Psyche, or the spirit, might lead them astray from the rationale
of creativity. Keats, on the other hand, insists that the
"heart of man" must combine with his "intellect" before the
poet can accomplish his individual destiny in the world, or
before the process of his soul-making can have run its course

Ode to Psyche is catalytic in form as well as in content. For

instance, the first stanza has 23 lines: lines 12 and 21 are
iambic trimeters, while line 23 is an iambic dimeter. Keats
further adapts 52 both the Petrarchan and the Shakespearean
sonnet forms in the first part of the ode. The last eighteen
lines of the poem form a curtailed Shakespearean sonnet:with the
couplet occurring after the octave, and concluding on a
Shakespearean quatrain: abab cdcd ee fgfg abab. The ten-line

52 The first fourteen lines are similar to the rhyme-

patterns of Keats's experimental sonnet "How fever'd
is the man" (30 April 1819): still predominantly Shake-
spearean, two quatrains are regular (abab cdcd) and the
third quatrain combines with the last two lines to
obviate the "pouncing" couplet of the traditional
Shakespearean sonnet (efgeeg).
 - 109 -
stanza he creates in this way (abab cdcd ee), with adaptations,
"
is the predominant form of the subsequent odes of 1819.

Keats's hymnal ode. further creates a "new tone" for the English
lyric. While retaining the dignity of expression associated
with the Pindaric ode, the "capaciousness" gives him room enough
to express his thoughts on love, art, truth, and the human
condition. He also uses the extended space created by the
number of lines he added to the fourteen lines of the sonnet for
sensorial elaboration, detailed description, and philosophical
comments. For instance, the description of the lovers, "the
winged boyll and his lIPsyche true,lI is imbued with sensory
perceptions: the flowers are lIcool-rootedll and "hushed,lI while
the lovers' lips seem parted by lIsoft-handed slumber:"

'Mid hushed, cool-rooted flowers, fragrant-eyed,

Blue, silver-white and budded Tyrian,
They lay calm-breathing on the bedded grass
Their arms embraced, and their pinions too;
Their lips touched not, but had not bade adieu,
As if disjoin~d by soft-handed slumber,
And ready still past kisses to outnumber
At tender eye-dawn of aurorean love.
The winged boy I knew;
But who wast thou, 0 happy, happy dove?
His Psyche true!
(Psyche, 11. 13-23)

!
Keats's account of Psyche in his journal letter to George and
Georgiana Keats (14 February-3 May 1819) suggests that he
consulted Lempri~re: "The word [Psyche] signifies the SOUl, and
 - 110 -
this personification of Psyche first mentioned by Apuleius is
thus posterior to the Augustan age, though it is connected with
ancient mythology" (Allott, headnote p. 515).53 Keats's Ode
"
to Psyche is a paean of praise to the neglected "hethan [sic]
Goddess," who was the personification of the soul of man as
distinct from his body. According to Peter Finch, the soul is
\
I "the moral and emotional part of a person; [as well as] the
intellectual part of a person, [or] consciousness" (Finch, p.
1371). Keats wanted to raise Psyche to what he perceived to be
her rightful place in the hierarchy of gods because he
discovered an allegorical parallel between Psyche's search for
her lover and the soul's journey through life. He vows to build
a shrine in praise of her et~ereal beauty and passion for he
believes she should, indeed, be worshipped with "ancient
fervour:"

Psyche was not embodied as a goddess before the

time of Apulieus [sic] the Platonist who lived
after the Agustan [sic] age, and consequently the

53 "Psyche ('soul'): In Homer the souls of the dead appear

in the Underworld looking as they did in life, and it was
under the influence of orphism that the soul was conceived
by poets and philosophers as being materially different from
the body •.•• the personification of Psyche as a girl visited
at night by her lover Eros/cupid has ••. the characteristics
of a fairy-tale, and is first told by APULEIUS in The Golden
Ass. She is forbidden to look at him, but cannot resist
holding a lamp over him to do so. The god is waked by a
drop of hot oil, disappears, and Psyche has to search the
world for him until Zeus takes pity on the lovers and
reunites them."
(See: Betty Radice, Who's Who in the Ancient World, p. 207).
 - 111 ...

Goddess was never worshipped or sacrificed to with

any of the ancient fervour - and perhaps never
thought of in the old religion -"
, (Gittings, p. 253)
:.

Keats resolves to enshrine in her rightful place the forgotten

goddess who was "born" too late to have had her praises sung by
the "fond believing lyre" (Psyche, 1. 37). In doing so, he
restores classical romanticism to his world-view, that is, he
gives man's soul, spirit, and mind their rightful place in a
world of reason and law. Like the goddess who needs no longer
love her Eros clandestinely, so also romantic sensibility is
allowed to express itself openly in poetry. Through the "fane"
or the shrine of words the poet has constructed in her honour,
Psyche is set free to pursue her love for Eros openly and
without fear 'of losing him. Similarly, the poet's mind and soul
and spirit are set free in his verse to capture immortal beauty
expressed in words and images which are both of the mind and the
heart. Pursuing such new-found freedom of expression assists
the poet's 'soul-making' as an individual artist when he. writes
. ,'

what "my own eyes inspired:"

o latest born and loveliest vision far

Of all Olympus faded hierarchyI •.•
o brightest, though too late for antique vows!
Too, too late for the fond believing lyre, .••
I see, and sing, by my own eyes inspired.
So let me be thy choir and make a moan
Upon the midnight hours -
Thy voice, thy lute, thy pipe, thy incense sweet
From sWing~d censer teeming;
Thy shrine, thy grove, thy oracle, thy heat
Of pale-mouthed prophet dreaming.
(Psyche, 11. 24 - 49)
 - 112 -

As her "pale-mouthed" prophet, the poet fearfully embraces his

role as Psyche's "oracle." He is proud to immortalize in his
verse the transient, ephemeral beauty of the soul. In setting a
"bright torch, and a casement ope at night, / To let the warm
love in" (Psyche, 11. 66 - 67), the poet executes his role as
oracle of the goddess. In keeping with his philosophy that the
world is not so much a "vale of sorrow" as a "vale of
soul-making," Keats effects the individuation of the ancient
goddess, Psyche, in his hymnal ode by lifting her from obscurity
and giving her the divinity that is her due and is unique to
her.

Keats continues to investigate the nature of activities

associated with ."soul making" in Ode to a Nightingale (c. May
1819). According to Allott, this ode " •.• traces the inception,
nature and decline of the creative mood, and expresses Keats's
attempt to understand his feelings about the contrast between
the ideal and the actual and the close association of pain with
pleasure" (Allott, p. 524). Keats experiences the "inception of
the creative mood" when he identifies with the bird's song,
experiencing it as an opiate that transports him to visions of
warmth, happiness, and delight. In the "vale of SOUl-making"
the song of the "light-winged Dryad of the trees" (Nightingale,
1. 7) juxtaposes with a world of sorrow "Where youth grows pale,
 - 114 -
eternity ••• " (Urn, 11. 44-45). However, the poet uses the form
to capture in words the beauty he has observed and experienced •
.'
The poet has progressed beyond his deliberately personal
immersion in beauty, as expressed in Ode to a Nightingale, to
more objective considerations of an actual object of beauty
personified in a vase as a "foster-child of silence and slow
time" (Urn, 1. 2). Ode on a Grecian Urn does, however, share
with the Ode to a Nightingale a "preoccupation with the
difference between ideal and actual experience" (Allott p.
532). The "bold lover" (Urn, 1. 17) can never kiss his beloved;
he has gain~d immortality at the expense of consummation. The
actual human experience of love "leaves a heart high-sorrowful
and cloyed, / A burning forehead, and a parching tongue" (Urn,
11. 29-30).

The poet does not profess to have understood the mysteries of

silence, time, beauty, and form but he accepts them as empirical
truths. While he states that the "Cold pastoral" (Urn, ,I,. 45)
is as inscrutable as is eternity, his own profound philosophy on
truth and beauty is expressed in the words spoken by the vase:

Thou, silent form, dost tease us out of thought

As doth eternity. Cold pastoral!
When old age shall this generation waste,
Thou shalt remain, in midst of other woe
Than ours, a friend to man, to whom thou say'st,
'Beauty is truth, truth beauty' - that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know. 54
(Urn"11. 44 - 50)

54 Ode on a Grecian Urn may be considered Keats's most

"classical" ode, 'especially in respect of the SUbject
matter. Commentators have attempted to establish a
connection between the poem and a specific vase. Bate
points out, however, that the ode epitomizes Keats's
fascination with the Elgin Marbles. The poem's univer-
sality in the handling of themes supports this suggestion.
(See Bate's discussion of the odes in John Keats (~979],
 - 115 -
Ode on Melancholy (c. May 1819) recalls some of the thoughts ex-
pressed in ,Ode to Psyche and in Ode to a Nightingale. The poem
"

differs, however, from the earlier odes in that, instead of

addressing a central \figure,' Keats takes as his theme man's
response to a state of melancholy. In turning to a theme which
is of communal concern, :'Keats approaches the civic classical
function of the ode. People often find themselves in a state of
dejection without knowing why. The poet explains that
melancholy is not evoked by thoughts of death, oblivion, or
gloom, but that it is closely related to our perception that
beauty, joy, ,and love are transient. Melancholy is, therefore,
a further necessary experience in the "vale of soul-making"
which will contribute to a person's individuation. The poem
emphasizes the poet's philosophy that every experience, every
state of being, contributes to the maturing of man's psyche.
According to Allott, Ode to Melancholy is a "characteristic
Keatsian statement about the necessary relationship between joy
 - 116 -
and sorrow" (Allott, p. 538), that is, man has to experience all
states of being for his psyche to mature, and for the spark of
god-head in him to be released - sorrow and joy are two sides of
the same coin. While insisting that there is no escape from
melancholy, Keats also states that the person who lives life to
the full, who can with "strenuous tongue .•. burst Joy's grape
against his palate fine," is the one who will most acutely
experience melancholy and bow under her might:

She dwells with Beauty - Beauty that must die;

And Joy, whose hand is ever at his lips
Bidding adieu; and aching Pleasure nigh
Turning to poison w~ile the bee-mouth sips.
Aye, in the very temple of Delight
Veiled Melancholy has her sovran shrine,
Though seen of none save him whose strenuous
tongue
Can burst Joy's grape against his palate fine;
His soul shall taste the sadness of her might,
And be among her cloudy trophies hung.
(Melancholy, 11. 21-30)

The last of the May 1819 odes is Ode on Indolence, which, like
the Ode on Melancholy, describes a state of being. Here, the
poet delights in finding himself in "a sort of temper indolent
and supremely careless: I long after a stanza or two of
Thomson's Castle of Indolence ••• " (Gittings, p. 228). He
professes
I
no interest in writing, love, or ambition; his only
"happiness" is being in a state of utter, thoughtless
indolence. The poem is related to Ode on a Grecian Urn in that
Keats banishes the three figures - Love, Ambition, and "my
 - 117 -
demon, Poesy" (Indolence,l. 30) to be "once more / In
masque-like;. figures on the dreamy urn" (Indolence, 11. 55-56).
However, Ode on Indolence is also important as it epitomizes
Keats's theory of "Negative capability." In a letter to
Mary-Ann Jeffery (9 June 1819), Keats states:

I have been very idle lately, very averse to

writing; both from the overpowering idea of our
dead poets and from abatement of my love of
fame •••. You will jUdge of my 1819 temper when I
tell you that the thing I have most enjoyed this
year has been writing an ode to Indolence.
(Forman, p. 347)

These statements imply that Keats delighted in "idleness."

However, during such periods of supposed indolence he absorbed,
actively, the beauty of objects (an "urn", for instance) or feel-
ings (of "melancholy") which were, later, distilled in verse.
These experiences were, in themselves, also necessary for the
poet's development in the "vale of soul-making" because he was
able to bring together "Intellect" and "the heart of man" in the
verse he wrote to recall his joy while in a state of idleness,
•
as well as his melancholy when he realised that joy is fleeting.

The last of Keats's major odes of 1819, To Autumn, has been

dated 9 September 1819. critics generally consider this to be
I

Keats's most accomplished and·mature lyric. The poet's

experiences in the "vale of Soul-making" have come full circle:
in To Autumn one is aware of the opulent ripeness of autumn
 - 118 -
which the poet praises with a nostalgic backward glance at the
transient beauty and joy of spring:
;.

Where are the songs of spring? Aye, where

are they?
Think not of them, thou hast thy music too -
While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day,
And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue.
(Autumn, 11. 23 - 25)

While Keats immortalizes the fulness of autumnal beauty, the

mood of drowsiness and repose further reveals his sensitivity in
observing nature. He also accepts the inevitability of cyclical
change. For the poet this experience is one more step in his
individuation as a creative artist.

A structural difference is evident between To Autumn and the

spring odes after Ode to Psyche. Keats retained the metrical
iambic pentameter, but, with full mastery of the form, he added
a line to each of the three stanzas. When Keats started working
in the classical convention of the ode in April 1819, he adapted
and extended the sonnet form in Ode to Psyche in order to
discover a personal lyrical form of the hymnal ode. Having
found such a form, he cast To a Nightingale in ten-line stanzas
of iambic pentameter, with a curtailed trimeter in line eight.
The other three odes use the ten-line pentameter throughout, and
To Autumn extends the stanza by one line. Keats seemed to find
'the additional line important to illustr~te the progression from
season to season, and in order to express the autumnal mood of
 - 119 -
repletion that pervades the poem•

.
'

The odes of 1819 illustrate clearly that Keats's classicism

extends beyond analogy and references to mythical figures. He
also experiments with classical forms, and his odes become a
truly romantic expression of sUbjective response as well as a
mode of commentary on life, experiences, poetry, and philosophy.
 - 120 -
Chapter 6

"

THE FALL OF HYPERION. A DREAM:

THE PRIEST OF APOLLO

In July 1819 Keats started reconstructing Hyperion. A Fragment

(autumn 1818-April 1819), naming it The Fall of Hyperion. A
Dream, and abandoning it by 21 september 1819. He was caught up
during this period in a feverish attempt to write new material
as well as to complete work already commenced. The verse-drama,
Otho the Great, on which he collaborated with Charles Brown, was
written during July-August 1819. He worked on Lamia at the same
time, and the last of his great odes, To Autumn, is dated 21
September 1819. An awareness of his declining health 55 and an
urgency to fulfil his life's work must have urged him on to do
final justice to the world of Greek myths and legends. .

55 According to Bate: "There is little doubt that, from

mid-September [1819] throughout the next month, the
tuberculosis of the lungs that was to prove fatal to him
had seriously begun (or sUddenly moved into an active
stage), bringing with it periods of immense fatigue and
some fever. To this condition should be added the
psychological effect of his own near conviction that he
now had the disease, .•• " (Bate, p. 614).
 - 121 -
Keats continued to pursue the legend of the destruction of the
Titans and the rise of the Olympians in the reconstructed poem,
The Fall of Hyperion. 'A Dream. However, the re-worked poem is
"

not cast in the form of an epic, nor is the poet exclusively

concerned with the fall of a god-race. Keats uses the poem to
work out his perception of the role of the poet aS,a creative
artist, so that the poet!s relationship with Apollo takes on a
new dimension when he assumes the role of priest to Apollo. The
poet states that he answered Moneta "with a pythia's spleen"
(Fall I,1. 203).56 As Apollo's priest, Keats expresses his
anger at the " ..• mock lyrists, large self-worshippers / And
careless hectorers in proud bad verse" (Fall I,ll. 207-208).
Apollo's priest is the guardian of the name and standards of his
god. In the reconstructed poem Keats's attitude towards Apollo
has changed from that of a passively receptive worshipper to
that of an active participant who speaks out boldly as a poet in
defence of the honour of his master.

The first part of The Fall of Hyperion: A Dream explores the

themes of the tragedy of a fallen race, and the poet's analogous
search for identity and immortality through poetic creativity as

5~ Pythia, the priestess of Apollo, delivered the

god's oracles: "The Pythia •.. was no sooner inspired
but she began immediately to swell and foam at the mouth •
•.• if the spirit was in a kind and gentle humour, her
rage was not very violent; but if sullen and malignant,
she was thrown into extreme fury" (Allott, p. 671).
 - 122 -
a personal, sUbjective experience. The narrative objectivity of
the epic form used in. Hyperion. A Fragment having, in
retrospect~ seemed limiting and restrictive, Keats now wants

more directly to be the instrument through which Moneta tells of

the tragic fall of a god-race. He, furthermore, abandons the
Miltonic mode of Hyperion. A Fragment, stating that: ,,-
Miltonic verse can not be written but in an artful or rather
artist's humour.' I wish to give myself up to other sensations."
(Forman, p. 384). The poet is no longer the narrator as in the
epic: Moneta's voice reflects his voice. The poet realises that
posterity will judge the standards of his work when his "hand is
in the grave." However, he also knows that it is his birthright
to be a poet:

... Who alive can say,

'Thou art no poet; may'st not tell thy dreams'?
Since every man whose soul is not a clod
Hath visions, and would speak, if he had loved
And been well nurtured in his mother tongue.
Whether the dream now purposed to rehearse
Be poet's or fanatic's will be known
When this warm scribe my hand is in the grave.
(Fall I,ll. 11-18)

Keats, who had steeped himself in Shakespeare, Milton, and

Dante, became more and more conscious of the human element in
the drama of life as distinct from the inscrutable ways of the
gods directing the lives of men. Influenced by the human drama
 - 123 -
of King Lear,S7 he now adds a more emphatic 'human' dimension
"
to the characters of the Hyperion myth. His description of the
saturn depicted in Hyperion. A Fragment is that of an awesome
creature, gigantic in appearance, and undoubtedly a god. The
stillness of the universe is reflected in the silent, colossal
figure of Saturn, god of the universe:

Deep in the shady sadness of.·a vale

Far sunken from the healthy breath of morn,
Far from the fiery noon, and eve's one star,
Sat grey-haired Saturn, quiet as a stone,
still as the silence round about his lair;
••• No stir of air was there ••••
A stream. went voiceless by, still deadened more
By reason of his fallen'divinity
Spreading a shade; ...
(Hyperion I,ll. 1-13)

In contrast, the "image, huge of feature as a cloud" (Fall I, 1.

88) is but dimly seen, and the poet describes the Saturn of The
Fall of Hyperion as a sUffering, despairing soul:

... where old Saturn's feet

Had rested, and there slept - how long a sleep!
Degraded, cold, upon the sodden ground
His old right hand lay nerveless, listless, dead,

57 " .•• by early January [1818] he bought a copy of

Hazlitt's Characters of Shakespeare's Plays •.•. with
only one exception, all his underscorings and marginal
comments are concentrated in the chapter on Lear •••• "
"On Thursday, January 22 [1818], he'finished copying the
first book of Endymion; and then, as he told his brothers
the next day, "I sat down ... to read King Lear once
again ••. " (See: Bate, p. 262-263, for further comments
on Keats's fascination with King Lear).
 - 124 -
Unsceptred: and his realmless eyes were closed,
While his bowed head seemed listening to the Earth
His ancient mother,for some comfort yet.
(Fall I,ll. 320-326)

Keats reconstructed the earlier lyrical epic as a "dream" in The

Fall of Hyperion. He did so because his purpose had changed
from objectively narr~ting the fall of the Titans to a personal
involvement in the destiny of the defeated race and the rising
conquerers.

In The New Elizabethan Reference Dictionary Peter Finch defines

a dream as a "vision •.• (as) to conceive as possible ••. (or
as) to picture in hope and imagination" (Finch, p.434). The use
of a dream concept as structuring technique gave Keats the means
to immortalize in words and images what he perceived as possible
in his imagination. A dream need not be coherent: detours of
description and comment are legitimate. The poet may enter
personally into the "world" of. the dream: he may converse with
his characters, or may comment at will. The dream is fanciful,
of the imagination, and expresses emotions, longings, fears, and
passions. In his 'dream' of the fall of Hyperion, the poet
loses his identity and becomes the mouthpiece for Apollo, the
god of poetry. The muse infuses him with immortality, enabling
him to observe as a god might and to immortalize his vision in
poetry:
 - 125 -

••• there grew

A power within me of enormous ken
To see as a god sees, and take the depth
Of things as nimbly as the outward eye
Can size and shape pervade.
(Fall I,ll. 302-306)
;.

Keats further states that all men have dreams, the "fanatics" as
well as "the savage," but says that human dreams die, or lie
buried in eternal darkness. Poetry alone articulates the
feelings and dreams of men and brings these into the light of
day "with the fine spell of words (which) alone can save /
Imagination from the sable charm I And dumb enchantment" (Fall
I,lL 9-11).

The introduction to The Fall of Hyperion: a Dream is

deliberately sUbjective and personal. After a general comment
on dreams and poesy, the poet induces in himself a trance-like
dream-state. He recalls his earlier commitment, in Sleep and
Poetry, (c. Dec. 1816), "to the idea of development from simple
sensuous enjoyment to an understanding of the darker realities
of existence" (Allott, p. 658). In keeping with his greater
I '

awareness of human sUffering, the poet now places himself face

to face with Moneta who is destined to tell him of the fearful
torments of the defeated Titans. Before he is totally
overpowered by her awesome presence, Keats experiences a swift
recall transition through the "Eden" of the senses:

I saw an arbour with a drooping roof

Of trellis vines, and bells, and la~ger blooms,
 - 126 -
Like floral censers swinging light in air;
Before its wreathed doorway, on a mound
Of moss, was spread a feast of summer fruits,
. .. And appetite
More yearning than on earth I ever felt
Growing within, I ate deliciously; •••
;. (Fall I,ll. 25-40)

Replete, the poet then drinks the IIdomineering potion" (Fall I,

1. 54), and falls into a deep slumber. When he awakes, starting
up "as if with wings" (Fall I, 1. 59) he confidently mounts the
stairs to the altar where the ministering goddess, Moneta,
awaits him. Allegorically, Keats is confident that he is
destined to be Apollo's priest: he experiences the vision of a
poet and he indulges in the senses in order to learn from this
experience what he will encounter in the realm of the gods.
While he is still being prepared for his ultimate role, he sees
the lIimage ll e>f Saturn and experiences the truth of suffering
through his vision. His final task before he is brought into
the company of the gods is the mounting of the "immortal
steps"(Fall I, 1. 117). As he aChieves this arduous task, the
poet experiences a sense of loss of identity and fearfully asks
Moneta why he has been spared from dying because he feels his
attempts at creating poetry are lIutterance sacrilegious: 1I

..• 'Holy Power,'

Cried I, approaching near the horn~d shrine,
'What am I that should so be saved from death?
What am I that another death come not
To choke my utterance sacrilegious here?'
Then said the veil~d shadow: 'Thou hast felt
What 'tis to die and live again before
Thy fated hour ••. ;
 - 127 -
None can usurp this height, •••
But those to whom the miseries of the world
Are misery, and will not let them rest.'
" (Fall I,lL 136-149)

Moneta reassures the poet that he has earned his immortality as

a visionary and as a poet because he has experienced the
miseries of the world and because he was willing to sacrifice
his identity in the service of the god of poesy. This is a
symbolic pronouncement about the destiny of the poet who had
spent his brief life in the pursuit of immortalizing perceived
truth and beauty in his verse.

Keats's discourse with Moneta on his identity as a "visionary"

(Fall I, 1. 161) sets him apart as the poet destined to become
the mouthpiece for Apollo. Moneta, also called Mnemosyne, was
the mother of the muses. Keats had been reading Hyginus's
Fabulae (1742 edition) at this time (Allott, p. 656), and
probably used references to Moneta from this source. 58 As
the mother of the muses, Moneta gives creative life to the poet
and prepares him for his role of high priest to Apollo. Apart
from

58 "Ex Aethete et Terra Dolor Dolus Ira Luctus

Mendacium Iusiurandum Vltio Intemperantia Altercatio
Obliuio Socordia Timor Superbia Incustum Pugna Oceanus
Themis Tartarus Pontus: et Titanes, Briareus Gyges
steropes Atlas Hyperion et Polus, Sturnus Ops Moneta
Dione, Furiae tres, id est Alecto Magaera Tisiphone."
H. Rose (ed.), Hygini Fabulae, p. 1.
 - 128 -
possessing wisdom and prophetic power, Moneta was also guardian
of the history of her people. In this respect Keats refers to
her as "Shade of Memory" (Fall I, 1. 282).
"

Keats's choice of Moneta as interlocutor and source of wisdom

helps him to express his most mature conclusions about the role
of the poet and poetry. Moneta, mother of the muses, is the
source of ultimate wisdom in this regard. Her inspiration will
make of the poet ,the priest of Apollo. It is possible that Keats
felt no need to complete The Fall of Hyperion because, for him,
its completion lay in his dialogue with Moneta. Her assurance
that he is 'different' destines him, as a visionary, to see
beyond the mortal world. Moneta's power, which she experiences
as a curse because she perceives so intensely the SUffering of
the fallen Titans, will be transferred to the poet and he will
see "with mortal eyes ••. Free from all pain:"

••• till sad Moneta cried:

'The sacrifice is done, but not the less,
will I be kind to thee for thy good will.
My power, which to me is still a curse,
Shall be to thee a wonder; for the scenes
still swooning vivid through my globed brain,
with an electral changing misery,
Thou shalt with these dull mortal eyes behold,
Free from all pain, if wonder pain thee not.'
(Fall I, 11. 240-248)

Moneta's first words to the poet are a challenge to mount the

stair~ and accept his destiny. Keats recognizes the Dantean
struggle in "the hard task proposed" (Fall I, 1. 120). However,
 - 129 -

he accepts the challenge to mount the steps to the altar because

Moneta has juxtaposed death through inaction with immortality
through forceful action: " •.• If thou canst not ascend / These
steps, die ;.on that marble where thou art" (Fall I,ll.
107-108). For Keats, the poet's desire - and ultimate destiny -
is actively to immortalize himself in poesy. The first promise
of a quickening is fulfilled when "One minute before death, my
iced foot touched / The :lowest stair: and as it touched, life
seemed / To pour in at the toes" (Fall I,lL 132-134). The
poet has overcome human mortality by accepting the challenge to
approach the altar of the gods where he will be given the
divinely inspired words to immortalize in the verses of The Fall
of Hyperion. A Dream the struggle between the Titans and the
Olympians.

The dialogue between Keats and Moneta concerns Keats's attempt

"to assess the value of the poet to humanity" (Allott, p. 665).
Keats had already expressed himself in emotive lyricism ("Sleep
and Poetry," c. Dec. 1816), and in allegory (Endymion, 28 Nov.
1817) in his previous enquiries into this issue. He now:places
himself face-to-face with the muse of poetry, and his first
question, "What am I that should so be saved from death?" (Fall
I, 1. 138) pointedly reveals his yearning to know precisely what
role he has to playas a poet.

Keats structures the dialogue between himself and Moneta as a

 - 130 -
discourse on and answer to his question, "What am I ••• ?" Moneta
remains 'veiled,' but her words are a revelation of the poet's
'worth' to himself as ,well as to humanity. Having in mind the
question of" poetic identity, Keats s~ated in a letter to Bailey,
(22 November 1817),59 that he did not want to arrive at
answers by "consequitive thinking," that is, by the processes of
progressive reasoning. He had also developed the theory of
"negative capability" (see ch. 3, above). His discussion with
Moneta now points to a resolution of these - apparently -
opposite views. Moneta's assurance that he has been 'saved' so
that he might experience fulfilment as a poet reveals that Keats
has deliberately chosen knowledge of suffering, and, according
to Moneta,this choice has saved him from death and extinction.
Instead, he will live through his work:

... Thou hast felt

What 'tis to die and live again before
Thy fated hour. That thou hadst power to do so
Is thy own safety; thou hast dated on
Thy doom••.•
(Fall I,ll. 141-145)

Keats's choice to empathize with sUffering humanity is a crucial

element in his poetic role. other mere dreamers who "selfishly
escape" from reality will "rot on the pavement .•• " (Fall I, 1.

-----~------------------
59 Forman, p. 68.
 131 -
153). The true poet, however, is no 'mere' dreamer: he is a
visionary who "pictures in hope and imagination" (Finch p. 434)
what he experiences as truth and beauty.
"

Earlier, in Hyperion. A Fragment, Book III, Keats had touched

upon the interdependence between poetic power and human
sUffering. He described the meeting between the young, untried,
conquering Apollo and "the awful Goddess" (Hyperion III, 1. 46),
Mnemosyne, who would invest him with poetic powers. Apollo
questions the muse, who does not reply; instead, Apollo is
infused with her "unspoken power, and attains his godhead:

Knowledge enormous makes a god of me.

Names, deeds, grey legends, dire events, rebellions
Majesties, sovran voices, agonies,
Creations and destroyings, all at once
Pour into the wide hollows of my brain,
And deify me, as if some blithe wine
Or bright elixir peerless I had drunk,
And so become immortal ...
(Hyperion III, 11. 113-120)

A similar 'immortalizing' process occurs in The Fall of

Hyperion. This time, however, the poet rather than Apollo is
'transformed' when there grows "A power within me of enormous
ken / To see as a god sees, •.. " (Fall I,lL 303-304). The poet
is exhilarated by the· experience and sets himself "upon an
eagle's watch, that I might see, / And seeing ne'er forget"
(Fall: I, 11. 308-309). The poet's destiny is clear: he is to
immortalize in verse the truth of the destruction of the Titans
 - 132 -
and the rise of the Olympians which Moneta reveals to him.

The discourse between Moneta and the poet, furthermore,

questions if Keats is a 'worthy' poet, or a worthless
'dreamer.' The poet argues that there are "thousands" more
worthy than he is of the honour of Moneta's presence and
concern, others having given more consistently of themselves to
sUffering humanity than he has done. Moneta wisely replies that
these "thousands" remained caught up in the 'materialism' or
concreteness of their efforts because they lacked the creative
vision or divine inspiration of a poet. The poet, the
'visionary,' is the only one who can immortalize sUffering
because he has an empathic understanding of sUffering, having
experienced it himself. This insight into and understanding of
the nature of sUffering is what distinguishes him from other
'mere' dreamers:

'Those whom thou spak'st of are no visionaries,'

Rejoined that voice. 'They are no dreamers weak,
They seek no wonder but the human face;
No music but a happy-noted voice -
They come not here, they .have no thought to come -
And thou art here, for thou art less that they.'
(Fall I,ll. 161-166)

Moneta persuades the poet that he, a "dreamer weak" is permitted

to re~enter the "gardens" of experience because he has borne
"more. woe than all thy sins deserve" (Fall I, 1. 176). Through
his own sUffering he has gained greater.empathic insight into
 - 133 -
human suffering and is, therefore, worthy of being the
mouth-piece of Apollo. Moneta's argument emphasizes Keats's
discovery of the close relationship between sUffering and poetic
inspiration.

Keats, acutely aware of his unworthiness, lists the functions of

the true poet, as he perceives them, and contrasts the ideal
with his own feelings of inadequacy and bewilderment. He states
that the wisdom and benevolence of the true poet heal the pains
of the world, but feels that he has none of these qualities:

•.• sure a poet is a sage,

A humanist, physician to all men.
That I am none I feel, as vultures feel
They are no birds when eagles are abroad.
What am I then? Thou spakest of my tribe:
What tribe?
(Fall I,ll. 189-194)

The poet, questioning further, "What am I then?" (Fall I, 1.

193) expresses his desperate search for self-knowledge and for a
true understanding of his role as a poet. His fundamental
question seems to be 'Am I a dreamer, worthless, a burden to
myself and to the world because I am disturbed by fantasies? Or
am I a poet, a man of vision?' Moneta's reply is unequivocal:
Keats is , as yet, a member of "the dreamer tribe" (Fall 1, 11.
198). He still has to experience the transmutation of an
Endymion from an unhappy searching wanderer who is diverted from
his goal by temptations of love which are only reflections of
 - 134 -

his true love, to a lover who is constant and totally committed

to his one true love. Keats's transmutation will be complete as
soon as he changes from self-doubt and his haunting knowledge of
his 'unworthiness' to total commitment as priest of the god of
poetry, Apollo:
;.

" ••• Art thou not of the dreamer tribe?

The poet and the dreamer are distinct,
Diverse, sheer opposite, antipodes.
The one pours out a balm upon the world,
The other vexes it."
,(Fall I,lL 198-202)

Vexed into "Pythia's spleen" by Moneta's words, the poet puts

aside his 'self,' declaiming against false poets and "mock
lyrists." Keats moves towards a greater consciousness of his
role as a poet and he now verbalises what he felt but never
fully understood about the poet's position, function, and
responsibility. In assuming the role of Apollo's high priest,
he deliberately chooses the path of knowledge, sUffering, and
utter commitment. This choice completes his spiritualization
and he is, finally, worthy as a poet to see the figure behind
the veil. Having played her role to its conclusion, Moneta
unveils herself, and hands over to the poet her "power" of
insight and poetic inspiration. She calls this power a
"curse," for the responsibility of the poetic gift, the poet's
never-ending search for perfection, ~nd his thraldom to the muse
are also inherent in the power she transfers to him: he will
experience joy and fulfilment as well as sUffering in the divine
 - 135 -
gift:

'My power, which to me is still a curse,

Shall be to thee a wonder; for the scenes
Still swooning vivid through my globed brain,
With an electral changing misery,
Thou shalt with these dull mortal eyes behold,
Free from all pain, if wonder pain thee not.'
(Fall I,ll. 243-248)

Keats's "transmutation" is complete when he accepts Moneta's gift

of divine insight into the history of her race. He is now the
priest of Apollo who sees "as a god sees." In terms of the
allegory in The Fall of Hyperion he observes intimately the agony
of the fallen race, and he immortalizes this "vision II in verse.

Throughout his work, Keats employs classical allusions, myths,

and references to gods to illustrate his progress as a poet and
to define his vision of the role of the poet. In doing so, he
makes a triumphant assertion of classicism as a vehicie for
romantic expression. His first, tentative steps were taken in
adoration of the god of poesy. Endymion revealed, through an
allegorical journey, that the poet may, ultimately, see clearly
once he has rejected tempting distractions. Hyperion: a Fragment
is an exercise in classical form and illustrates the poet's
tragic progress when, with accompanying pain, a new order of
poetry replaces the old. When Keats wrote the odes of his
"fruitful year,1I 1819, he illustrated that a classical form
served admirably as a vehicle for Romantic expression. The Fall
!
 - 136 -

of Hyperion: a Dream is the cUlmination of poetic reason

interacting and fusing with visionary fantasy. The poet has
journeyed through the. "vale of soul-making"; he has gathered
intimate krtowledge of sUffering humanity. The muse favours him,
and the poet is raised to be a priest to Apollo, the god of
poesy.
 - 137 -

BIBLIOGRAPHY

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Allott, Miriam (ed.), The Poems of John Keats (London:

Longman, 1970).

Barnard, J. (edv ) , John Keats: The Complete Poems

(Harmondsworth: Penquin Books, 1979).

Bullett, G. (ed.) John Keats's Poems (Letchworth: Dent

and Sons, 1964)).

Forman, H. B. (ed.), The Poetical Works of John Keats

(London: O.U.P., 1953).

Forman, M. B. (ed.) The Letters of John Keats ( Oxford:

U.P., 1935).

Garrod, H. W. (ed.), The Poetical Works of John Keats

(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1958).

Gittings, Robert (ed.) Letters of John Keats (Oxford: U.P.,

1979).

Rollins, H. E. (ed.), The Letters of John Keats 1814 -

1821 (Cambridge: U.P., 1958).

SECONDARY SOURCES:

Andressen, C. (ed.), Lexikon der Alten Welt (Zuerich: Artemis

Verlag, 1965).

Antippas, A. P., The Burden of Poetic Tradition: A study in the

works of Keats, Tennyson, Arnold, and Morris
(Wisconsin: U.P., 1968).
 - 138 -

Austeda, F., Woerterbuch der Philosophie (Berlin: weiss, 1962).

Barnet, S., Berman, M., Burto, W. (eds) , A Dictionary of

:. Literary Terms (London: Constable, 1964).

Bate, walter Jackson, John Keats (London: Chatto and Windus,

1979).

Bate, Walter Jackson (ed.), Keats: A Collection of critical

Essays (New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, 1964).

Bate, Walter Jackson, The stylistic Development of Keats

(New York: Humanities Press, 1945).

Becker, M. G., A New Concordance to the Poetry of John Keats I

(Wisconsin: U.P., 1971).

Becker, M. G., A New Concordance to the Poetry of John Keats

II (Wisconsin: 'U.P., 1971).

Blackstone, Bernard, The Consecrated Urn~ An Interpretation of

Keats in Terms of Growth and Form (London:
Longmans, 1959).

Bush, Douglas (ed.) Milton: Poetical Works (Oxford: U.P., 1969).

Cary, M. (ed.), The Oxford Classical Dictionary (Oxford:

Clarendon, 1964).

Coomar, D. H., Silence, Language, and the Poetry of criticism in

Romantic Expression: Blake, Keats, Foscolo, and
Tagore (California: Riverside U.P., 1976).

Dickstein, Morris, Keats and His Poetry: A Study in Development

(Chicago: U.P., 1971).
!
Dorsch, T. S. (ed.), Classical Literary criticism
(Harmondsworth: Penquin, 1965).

Edwards, Paul (ed.), The Encyclopedia of Philosophy I and II

(New York: Macmillan, 1967).
 - 139 -
Enright, D. J. and De Chickera, Ernst (eds) , English critical
Texts, 16th to 20th century (Oxford: Clarendon
Press, 1989).

Evert, Walter H., Aesthetic and Myth in the Poetry of John Keats
(Princeton: U.P., 1965).

Finch, Peter (ed,), The New Elizabethan Reference Dictionary

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