commentator on, the tragic action.
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93 6 / JOHN KEATS
With such remorseless speed still come new woes That unbelief has not a space to breathe.8 Saturn, sleep on:?Me thoughtless,9 why should I Thus violate thy slumbrous solitude?
370 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,1 Dream, and so dream all night, without a noise,
375 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,
380 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
385 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
390 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, 395 And every 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: 400 Until old Saturn rais'd his faded eyes, And look'd around, and saw his kingdom gone, And all the gloom and sorrow of the place, And that fair kneeling Goddess at his feet. As the moist scent of flowers, and grass, and leaves 405 Fills forest dells with a pervading air Known to the woodland nostril, so the words Of Saturn fill'd the mossy glooms around, Even to the hollows of time-eaten oaks, And to the windings in the foxes' hole, 410 With sad low tones, while thus he spake, and sent Strange musings to the solitary Pan.
8. That disbelief has not an instant to catch its 1.72ff., reads: 'As when, upon a tranced summer- breath. night / Those green-rob'd senators of mighty 9. I.e., how thoughtless I am! woods, / Tall oaks, branch-charmed by the earnest 1. The grander version in the first Hyperion, stars, / Dream.'
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THE FALL OF HYPERION / 93 1
'Moan, brethren, moan; for we are swallow'd up
And buried from all godlike exercise
Of influence benign on planets pale, 415 And peaceful sway above man's harvesting,
And all those acts which deity supreme
Doth ease its heart of love in. Moan and wail.
Moan, brethren, moan; for lo! the rebel spheres Spin round, the stars their antient courses keep, 420 Clouds still with shadowy moisture haunt the earth, Still suck their fill of light from sun and moon,
Still buds the tree, and still the sea-shores murmur.
There is no death in all the universe,
No smell of death?there shall be death2?Moan, moan, 425 Moan, Cybele,3 moan, for thy pernicious babes Have chang'd a God into a shaking palsy. Moan, brethren, moan; for I have no strength left, Weak as the reed?weak?feeble as my voice? O, O, the pain, the pain of feebleness. 430 Moan, moan; for still I thaw?or give me help:
Throw down those imps4 and give me victory.
Let me hear other groans, and trumpets blown
Of triumph calm, and hymns of festival
From the gold peaks of heaven's high piled clouds; 435 Voices of soft proclaim,0 and silver stir proclamation Of strings in hollow shells; and let there be Beautiful things made new for the surprize Of the sky children.'?So he feebly ceas'd, With such a poor and sickly sounding pause, 440 Methought I heard some old man of the earth Bewailing earthly loss; nor could my eyes And ears act with that pleasant unison of sense Which marries sweet sound with the grace of form, And dolorous accent from a tragic harp 445 With large limb'd visions.5 More I scrutinized: Still fix'd he sat beneath the sable trees, Whose arms spread straggling in wild serpent forms, With leaves all hush'd: his awful presence there (Now all was silent) gave a deadly lie 450 To what I erewhile heard: only his lips Trembled amid the white curls of his beard. They told the truth, though, round, the snowy locks Hung nobly, as upon the face of heaven A midday fleece of clouds. Thea arose 455 And stretch'd her white arm through the hollow dark, Pointing some whither: whereat he too rose Like a vast giant seen by men at sea To grow pale from the waves at dull midnight.6
2. The passing of the Saturnian golden age (paralleled by Keats with the fable of the loss of Eden) has introduced suffering, and will also introduce death. 3. The wife of Saturn and mother of the Olympian gods, who have overthrown their parents. 4. I.e., his rebellious children, the Titans. 5. I.e., the narrator could not attach this speech, like that of a feebly complaining old mortal, to the visible form of the large-limbed god who uttered it. 6. I.e., like a giant who is seen at sea to emerge, pale, from the waves.
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93 8 / JOHN KEATS
They melted from my sight into the woods:
460 Ere I could turn, Moneta cried?'These twain
Are speeding to the families of grief,
Where roof'd in by black rocks they waste in pain
