The Complete Works: Poetry, Plays, Letters and Extensive Biographies. John Keats
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this last temple, by the golden age,
‘By great Apollo, thy dear Foster Child,
‘And by thyself, forlorn divinity,
‘The pale Omega of a withered race,
‘Let me behold, according as thou saidst,
‘What in thy brain so ferments to and fro!’
No sooner had this conjuration pass’d
My devout lips, than side by side we stood
(Like a stunt bramble by a solemn pine)
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.
Onward I look’d beneath the gloomy boughs,
And saw, what first I thought an image huge,
Like to the image pedestal’d so high
In Saturn’s temple. Then Moneta’s voice
Came brief upon mine ear ‘So Saturn sat
When he had lost his realms ‘ whereon 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. The lofty theme
At those few words hung vast before my mind,
With half unravel’d web. I set myself
Upon an eagle’s watch, that I might see,
And seeing ne’er forget. No stir of life
Was in this shrouded vale, not so much air
As in the zoning of a summer’s day
Robs not one light seed from the feather’d grass,
But where the dead leaf fell there did it rest.
A stream went voiceless by, still deaden’d more
By reason of the fallen divinity
Spreading more shade; the Naiad ‘mid her reeds
Press’d her cold finger closer to her lips.
Along the margin sand large footmarks went
No farther than to 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,
Unsceptred; and his realmless eyes were clos’d,
While his bow’d head seem’d listening to the Earth,
His ancient mother, for some comfort yet.
It seem’d no force could wake him from his place;
But there came one who with a kindred hand
Touch’d his wide shoulders after bending low
With reverence, though to one who knew it not.
Then came the griev’d voice of Mnemosyne,
And griev’d I hearken’d. ‘That divinity
‘Whom thou saw’st step from yon forlornest wood,
‘And with slow pace approach our fallen King,
‘Is Thea, softest natur’d of our brood.’
I mark’d the Goddess in fair statuary
Surpassing wan Moneta by the head,
And in her sorrow nearer woman’s tears.
There was a listening fear in her regard,
As if calamity had but begun;
As if the vanward clouds of evil days
Had spent their malice, and the sullen rear
Was with its stored thunder labouring up.
One hand she press’d upon that aching spot
Where beats the human heart, as if just there,
Though an immortal, she felt cruel pain;
The other upon Saturn’s bended neck
She laid, and to the level of his hollow ear
Leaning with parted lips, some words she spake
In solemn tenor and deep organ tune;
Some mourning words, which in our feeble tongue
Would come in this like accenting; how frail
To that large utterance of the early Gods!
‘Saturn! look up and for what, poor lost King?
‘I have no comfort for thee; no not one;
‘I cannot cry, Wherefore thus sleepest thou?
‘For Heaven is parted from thee, and the Earth
‘Knows thee not, so afflicted, for a God;
‘And Ocean too, with all its solemn noise,
‘Has from thy sceptre pass’d, and all the air
‘Is emptied of thine hoary majesty:
‘Thy thunder, captious at the new command,
‘Rumbles reluctant o’er our fallen house;
‘And thy sharp lightning, in unpracticed hands,
‘Scorches and burns our once serene domain.
‘With such remorseless speed still come new woes,
‘That unbelief has not a space to breathe.
‘Saturn! sleep on: Me thoughtless, why should I
‘Thus violate thy slumbrous solitude?
‘Why should I ope thy melancholy eyes?
‘Saturn, sleep on, while at thy feet I weep.’
As when upon a tranced summer night
Forests, branch charmed by the earnest stars,
Dream, and so dream all night without a noise,
Save from one gradual solitary gust,
Swelling upon the silence; dying off;
As if the ebbing air had but one wave;
So came these words, and went; the while in tears
She press’d her fair large forehead to the earth,
Just where her fallen hair might spread in curls
A soft and silken mat for Saturn’s feet.
Long, long those two were postured motionless,
Like sculpture builded up upon the grave
Of their own power. A long awful time
I look’d upon them: still they were the same;
The frozen God still bending to the earth,
And the sad Goddess weeping at his feet,
Moneta silent. Without stay or prop
But my own weak mortality, I bore
The load of this eternal quietude,
The unchanging gloom, and the three fixed shapes
Ponderous upon my senses, a whole moon.
For by my burning brain I measured sure
Her silver seasons shedded on the night,
And ever day by day methought I grew
More gaunt and ghostly. Oftentimes I pray’d
Intense, that Death would take me from the vale
And all its burthens gasping with despair
Of change, hour after hour I curs’d myself;
Until