The Complete Works: Poetry, Plays, Letters and Extensive Biographies. John Keats

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The Complete Works: Poetry, Plays, Letters and Extensive Biographies - John  Keats


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sweeps into a midnight cove.

      In pale and silver silence they remain’d,

      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, and every sullen depth,

      Voiceless, or hoarse with loud tormented streams:

      And all the everlasting cataracts,

      And all the headlong torrents far and near,

      Mantled before in darkness and huge shade,

      Now saw the light and made it terrible.

      It was Hyperion: – a granite peak

      His bright feet touch’d, and there he stay’d to view

      The misery his brilliance had betray’d

      To the most hateful seeing of itself.

      Golden his hair of short Numidian curl,

      Regal his shape majestic, a vast shade

      In midst of his own brightness, like the bulk

      Of Memnon’s image at the set of sun

      To one who travels from the dusking East:

      Sighs, too, as mournful as that Memnon’s harp

      He utter’d, while his hands contemplative

      He press’d together, and in silence stood.

      Despondence seiz’d again the fallen Gods

      At sight of the dejected King of Day,

      And many hid their faces from the light:

      But fierce Enceladus sent forth his eyes

      Among the brotherhood; and, at their glare,

      Uprose Iäpetus, and Creüs too,

      And Phorcus, sea-born, and together strode

      To where he towered on his eminence.

      There those four shouted forth old Saturn’s name;

      Hyperion from the peak loud answered, “Saturn!”

      Saturn sat near the Mother of the Gods,

      In whose face was no joy, though all the Gods

      Gave from their hollow throats the name of “Saturn!”

      Hyperion Book III

      Thus in alternate uproar and sad peace,

      Amazed were those Titans utterly.

      O leave them, Muse! O leave them to their woes;

      For thou art weak to sing such tumults dire:

      A solitary sorrow best befits

      Thy lips, and antheming a lonely grief.

      Leave them, O Muse! for thou anon wilt find

      Many a fallen old Divinity

      Wandering in vain about bewildered shores.

      Meantime touch piously the Delphic harp,

      And not a wind of heaven but will breathe

      In aid soft warble from the Dorian flute;

      For lo! ’tis for the Father of all verse.

      Flush every thing that hath a vermeil hue,

      Let the rose glow intense and warm the air,

      And let the clouds of even and of morn

      Float in voluptuous fleeces o’er the hills;

      Let the red wine within the goblet boil,

      Cold as a bubbling well; let faint-lipp’d shells,

      On sands, or in great deeps, vermilion turn

      Through all their labyrinths; and let the maid

      Blush keenly, as with some warm kiss surpris’d.

      Chief isle of the embowered Cyclades,

      Rejoice, O Delos, with thine olives green,

      And poplars, and lawn-shading palms, and beech,

      In which the Zephyr breathes the loudest song,

      And hazels thick, dark-stemm’d beneath the shade:

      Apollo is once more the golden theme!

      Where was he, when the Giant of the Sun

      Stood bright, amid the sorrow of his peers?

      Together had he left his mother fair

      And his twin-sister sleeping in their bower,

      And in the morning twilight wandered forth

      Beside the osiers of a rivulet,

      Full ankle-deep in lilies of the vale.

      The nightingale had ceas’d, and a few stars

      Were lingering in the heavens, while the thrush

      Began calm-throated. Throughout all the isle

      There was no covert, no retired cave

      Unhaunted by the murmurous noise of waves,

      Though scarcely heard in many a green recess.

      He listen’d, and he wept, and his bright tears

      Went trickling down the golden bow he held.

      Thus with half-shut suffused eyes he stood,

      While from beneath some cumbrous boughs hard by

      With solemn step an awful Goddess came,

      And there was purport in her looks for him,

      Which he with eager guess began to read

      Perplex’d, the while melodiously he said:

      “How cam’st thou over the unfooted sea?

      Or hath that antique mien and robed form

      Mov’d in these vales invisible till now?

      Sure I have heard those vestments sweeping o’er

      The fallen leaves, when I have sat alone

      In cool mid-forest. Surely I have traced

      The rustle of those ample skirts about

      These grassy solitudes, and seen the flowers

      Lift up their heads, as still the whisper pass’d.

      Goddess! I have beheld those eyes before,

      And their eternal calm, and all that face,

      Or I have dream’d.”– “Yes,” said the supreme shape,

      “Thou hast dream’d of me; and awaking up

      Didst find a lyre all golden by thy side,

      Whose strings touch’d by thy fingers, all the vast

      Unwearied ear of the whole universe

      Listen’d in pain and pleasure at the birth

      Of such new tuneful wonder. Is’t not strange

      That thou shouldst weep, so gifted? Tell me, youth,

      What sorrow thou canst feel; for I am sad

      When thou dost shed a tear: explain thy griefs

      To one who in this lonely isle hath been

      The watcher of thy sleep and hours of life,

      From the young day when first thy infant hand

      Pluck’d witless the weak flowers, till thine arm

      Could bend that bow heroic to all times.

      Show thy heart’s secret to an ancient Power

      Who hath forsaken old and sacred thrones

      For prophecies of thee, and for the sake

      Of loveliness new


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