called The Fall of Hyperion. In the introductory section of this fragment the poet is told by the prophetess Moneta that he has hitherto been merely a dreamer; he must know that
The poet and the dreamer are distinct,
Diverse, sheer opposite, antipodes,
and that the height of poetry can be reached only by
those to whom the miseries of the world Are misery, and will not let them rest.
He was seemingly planning to undertake a new direction and subject matter, when illness and death intervened.
On the night of February 3, 1820, he coughed up blood. As a physician he refused to evade the truth: 'I cannot be deceived in that colour; that drop of blood is my death warrant. I must die.' That spring and summer a series of hemorrhages rapidly weakened him. In the autumn he allowed himself to be persuaded to seek the milder climate of Italy in the company of Joseph Severn, a young painter, but these last months were only what he called 'a posthumous existence.' He died in Rome on February 23, 1821, and was buried in the Protestant Cemetery, where Mary and Percy Shelley had already interred their little son William, and where Percy's ashes, too, would be deposited in 1822. At times the agony of his disease, the seeming frustration of his hopes for great poetic achievement, and the despair of his passion for Fanny Brawne compelled even Keats's brave spirit to bitterness and jealousy, but he always recovered his gallantry. His last letter, written to Charles Brown, concludes: 'I can scarcely bid you good bye even in a letter. I always made an awkward bow. God bless you! John Keats.'
No one can read Keats's poems and letters without an undersense of the tragic waste of an extraordinary intellect and genius cut off so early. What he might have done is beyond conjecture; what we do know is that his poetry, when he stopped writing at the age of twenty-four, exceeds the accomplishment at the same age of Chaucer, Shakespeare, and Milton.
The texts here are taken from Jack Stillinger's edition, The Poems of John Keats (Cambridge, Mass., 1978).
On First Looking into Chapman's Homer1
Much have I travell'd in the realms of gold, And many goodly states and kingdoms seen;
1. Keats's mentor Charles Cowden Clarke intro-conqueror of Mexico, who caught his first sight of duced him to Homer in the robust translation by the Pacific from the heights of Darien, in Panama, the Elizabethan poet and dramatist George Chap-but none of Keats's contemporaries noticed the man. They read through the night, and Keats supposed error, and modern scholarship (Keatswalked home at dawn. This sonnet reached Clarke Shelley Journal 2002) has strongly argued that by the ten o'clock mail that same morning. It was Keats knew exactly what he was doing. the gold-hunter Balboa, not Cortez, the Spanish
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SLEEP AND POETRY / 881
Round many western islands have I been Which bards in fealty to Apollo hold.
5 Oft of one wide expanse had I been told That deep-brow'd Homer ruled as his demesne;2 Yet did I never breathe its pure serene3
Till I heard Chapman speak out loud and bold: Then felt I like some watcher of the skies io When a new planet swims into his ken;? view Or like stout Cortez when with eagle eyes He star'd at the Pacific?and all his men Look'd at each other with a wild surmise? Silent, upon a peak in Darien.
Oct. 1816 1816
From Sleep and Poetry1
[O FOR TEN YEARS]
O for ten years, that I may overwhelm Myself in poesy; so I may do the deed That my own soul has to itself decreed. Then will I pass the countries that I see
IOO In long perspective, and continually Taste their pure fountains. First the realm I'll pass Of Flora, and old Pan:2 sleep in the grass, Feed upon apples red, and strawberries, And choose each pleasure that my fancy sees;
105 Catch the white-handed nymphs in shady places, To woo sweet kisses from averted faces,? Play with their fingers, touch their shoulders white Into a pretty shrinking with a bite As hard as lips can make it: till agreed,
110 A lovely tale of human life we'll read. And one will teach a tame dove how it best May fan the cool air gently o'er my rest; Another, bending o'er her nimble tread, Will set a green robe floating round her head,
115 And still will dance with ever varied ease, Smiling upon the flowers and the trees: Another will entice me on, and on Through almond blossoms and rich cinnamon; Till in the bosom of a leafy world
2. Realm, feudal possession. Flora, and old Pan' (line 102) and, within ten 3. Clear expanse of air. years, to climb up to the level of poetry dealing with 1. At the age of twenty-one, Keats set himself a 'the agonies, the strife / Of human hearts' (lines regimen of poetic training modeled on the course 124?25). The program Keats set himself is illufollowed by the greatest poets. Virgil had estab-minated by his analysis of Wordsworth's progress lished the pattern of beginning with pastoral writ-in his letter to J. H. Reynolds of May 3, 1818 ing and proceeding gradually to the point at which (p- 945). he was ready to undertake the epic, and this pat-2. I.e., the carefree pastoral world. Flora was the tern had been deliberately followed by Spenser and Roman goddess of flowers. Pan was the Greek god Milton. Keats's version of this program, as he of pastures, woods, and animal life. describes it here, is to begin with the realm 'of
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88 2 / JOHN KEATS
120 We rest in silence, like two gems upcurl'd In the recesses of a pearly shell. 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 125 Of human hearts: for lo! I see afar, O'er sailing the blue cragginess, a car3 And steeds with streamy manes?the charioteer Looks out upon the winds with glorious fear: And now the numerous tramplings quiver lightly BO Along a huge cloud's ridge; and now with sprightly Wheel downward come they into fresher skies, Tipt round with silver from the sun's bright
