250 Could to a mother's soften, were these last: But yet I had a terror of her robes, And chiefly of the veils, that from her brow Hung pale, and curtain'd her in mysteries That made my heart too small to hold its blood.
255 This saw that Goddess, and with sacred hand
Parted the veils. Then saw I a wan face, Not pin'd? by human sorrows, but bright blanch'd exhausted By an immortal sickness which kills not; It works a constant change, which happy death
260 Can put no end to; deathwards progressing To no death was that visage; it had pass'd The lily and the snow; and beyond these I must not think now, though I saw that face? But for her eyes I should have fled away.
265 They held me back, with a benignant light, Soft mitigated by divinest lids Half closed, and visionless? entire they seem d blind Of all external things?they saw me not, But in blank splendor beam'd like the mild moon,
270 Who comforts those she sees not, who knows not What eyes are upward cast. As I had found A grain of gold upon a mountain's side, And twing'd with avarice strain'd out my eyes To search its sullen entrails rich with ore,
7. Cf. the 'shattered visage' of the fallen statue in Shelley's 'Ozymandias' (p. 768).
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93 4 / JOHN KEATS
275 So at the view of sad Moneta's brow, I ached to see what things the hollow brain Behind enwombed: what high tragedy In the dark secret chambers of her skull Was acting, that could give so dread a stress 280 To her cold lips, and fill with such a light Her planetary eyes; and touch her voice With such a sorrow. 'Shade of Memory!' Cried I, with act adorant at her feet, 'By all the gloom hung round thy fallen house, 285 By this last temple, by the golden age, By great Apollo, thy dear foster child, And by thy self, forlorn divinity, The pale Omega' of a wilher'd race, Let me behold, according as thou said'st, 290 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,9 295 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 3oo 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,? range of vision To see as a God sees, and take the depth 305 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 hall unravel'd web. I set mysell Upon an eagle's watch, that I might see, 310 And seeing ne'er forget. No stir of life Was in this shrouded vale, not so much air As in the zoning0 of a summer's day course Robs not one light seed from the feather'd grass, But where the deaf leaf fell there did it rest: 315 A stream went voiceless by, still deaden'd more By reason of the fallen divinity Spreading more shade: the Naiad0 mid her reeds water nymph Press'd her cold finger closer to her lips. Along the margin sand large footmarks went 320 No farther than to where old Saturn's feet Had rested, and there slept, how long a sleep! Degraded, cold, upon the sodden ground
8. Tilt- final letter of the Greek alphabet. represented as allowed to envision the course ol 9. This had been the opening line of the original events that Moneta recalls in her memory (lines Hyperion. The rest of the poem is a revised version 282, 289-90). of part of that first narrative, with the poet now
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THE FALL OF HYPERION / 93 1
His old right hand lay nerveless, listless, dead, Unsceptred; and his realmless1 eyes were clos'd, 325 While his bow'd head seem'd listening to the Earth, His antient mother,2 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
330 With reverence, though to one who knew it not. Then came the griev'd voice of Mnemosyne,3 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,
335 Is Thea,4 softest-natur'd of our brood.' I mark'd the goddess in fair statuary Surpassing wan Moneta by the head,5 And in her sorrow nearer woman's tears. There was a listening fear in her regard,
340 As if calamity had but begun;
As if the vanward clouds6 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
345 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
350 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?7
355 I have no comfort for thee, no?not one: I cannot cry, Wherefore thus steepest 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,
360 Has from thy sceptre pass'd, and all the air Is emptied of thine hoary majesty.
Thy thunder, captious0 at the new command, quarrelsome Rumbles reluctant o'er our fallen house; And thy sharp lightning in unpracticed hands
365 Scorches and burns our once serene domain.
1. Saturn's eyes, when open, express the fact that 4. Sister and wife of Hyperion. he has lost his realm. 5. I.e., Thea was a head taller than Moneta. 2. Saturn and the other Titans were the children 6. The front line of clouds. of heaven and Earth. 7. Keats several times recalls King Lear in repre3. As in 2.50, Keats substitutes for 'Moneta' the senting the condition of Saturn. Keats's contem' Mnemosyne' of the first Hyperion. This may be a poraries may have thought, too, of George III, mad, slip but more likely indicates an alternative name blind, and dethroned by his son, who had become for Moneta, in her role as participant in, as well as prince regent.
