HYPERION.

BOOK II.

JUST at the self-same beat of Time's wide wings
Hyperion slid into the rustled air,

And Saturn gain'd with Thea that sad place

Where Cybele and the bruised Titans mourn'd.

It was a den where no insulting light

Could glimmer on their tears; where their own groans They felt, but heard not, for the solid roar

Pouring a constant bulk, uncertain where.

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Of thunderous waterfalls and torrents hoarse,

Crag jutting forth to crag, and rocks that seem'd
Ever as if just rising from a sleep,

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Forehead to forehead held their monstrous horns;
And thus in thousand hugest phantasies

Made a fit roofing to this nest of woe.

Instead of thrones, hard flint they sat upon,

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Couches of rugged stone, and slaty ridge

Stubborn'd with iron. All were not assembled:

Some chain'd in torture, and some wandering.
Cœus, and Gyges, and Briareüs,

Typhon, and Dolor, and Porphyrion,

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With many more, the brawniest in assault,
Were pent in regions of laborious breath;

Dungeon'd in opaque element, to keep

Their clenched teeth still clench'd, and all their limbs Lock'd up like veins of metal, crampt and screw'd;

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Without a motion, save of their big hearts
Heaving in pain, and horribly convuls'd
With sanguine feverous boiling gurge of pulse.
Mnemosyne was straying in the world;
Far from her moon had Phoebe wandered;
And many else were free to roam abroad,
But for the main, here found they covert drear.
Scarce images of life, one here, one there,
Lay vast and edgeways; like a dismal cirque
Of Druid stones, upon a forlorn moor,
When the chill rain begins at shut of eve,
In dull November, and their chancel vault,
The Heaven itself, is blinded throughout night.

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Each one kept shroud, nor to his neighbour gave
Or word, or look, or action of despair.
Creus was one; his ponderous iron mace

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Lay by him, and a shatter'd rib of rock
Told of his rage, ere he thus sank and pined.
Iäpetus another; in his grasp,

A serpent's plashy neck; its barbed tongue
Squeez'd from the gorge, and all its uncurl'd length
Dead; and because the creature could not spit
Its poison in the eyes of conquering Jove.
Next Cottus: prone he lay, chin uppermost,

Supine

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(41) Woodhouse's extracts from the manuscript of Hyperion are all from Book II, and consist of the first 17 lines, lines 32 to 35, 39 to 55, and 64 to 72. These extracts show no variation of consequence from the printed text, only a few pointings and spellings, such as Cræus for Creüs in line 41, and two verbal variations, venom for poison in line 48, and floor for flint in line 50. The two improvements are such as may readily have been made on proof sheets.

As though in pain; for still upon the flint
He ground severe his skull, with open mouth
And eyes at horrid working. Nearest him.
Asia, born of most enormous Caf,

Who cost her mother Tellus keener pangs,
Though feminine, than any of her sons:
More thought than woe was in her dusky face,
For she was prophesying of her glory;
And in her wide imagination stood

Palm-shaded temples, and high rival fanes,
By Oxus or in Ganges' sacred isles.

Even as Hope upon her anchor leans,

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(61) This is one of the few instances, in this poem of wondrous firmness and security, where one discerns in Keats the unschooled imagination of a boy-the inaptitude to reject an intrusive and inappropriate image. Up to this point there is the most complete reality of imagination, the most perfect earnestness in setting forth the titanic woes of the dramatis personæ ; but here one is suddenly checked by the thought, "What! is he only playing at Titans after all? Hope with that essentially British anchor of hers in this company? Then why not Faith shouldering her cross? Why not Britannia with her trident transferred from one of George the Third's fine old copper pence? Why not that straddle-kneed Erin with her harp from one of George the Second's?" In sober seriousness, it is matter of amazement that this single blot of any consequence should be here; and I presume we must attribute its presence to the fact that Keats was over-ruled as to the publication of the fragment, and had not, in his wretched state of health, the will to revise it thoroughly on giving in to its publication in 1820. Else one is fain to think that Hope and her anchor would have disappeared, together with two words not to be characterized as blots, but rather as survivals from the time of strain and strife after out of the way expressions whereof Endymion is so full a representation. I refer to two instances in which verbs are licentiously and as I think inartistically used instead of their cognate nouns, namely "Voices of soft proclaim" in line 130 of Book I, and "with fierce convulse" in line 129 of Book III. There is a third instance in line 64, Book II; but there the word shelf would not have served to express the idea involved in the use of shelve.

So leant she, not so fair, upon a tusk
Shed from the broadest of her elephants.
Above her, on a crag's uneasy shelve,
Upon his elbow rais'd, all prostrate else,
Shadow'd Enceladus; once tame and mild
As grazing ox unworried in the meads;
Now tiger-passion'd, lion-thoughted, wroth,
He meditated, plotted, and even now
Was hurling mountains in that second war,
Not long delay'd, that scar'd the younger Gods
To hide themselves in forms of beast and bird.
Not far hence Atlas; and beside him prone
Phorcus, the sire of Gorgons. Neighbour'd close
Oceanus, and Tethys, in whose lap

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Sobb'd Clymene among her tangled hair.

In midst of all lay Themis, at the feet

Of Ops the queen all clouded round from sight;
No shape distinguishable, more than when

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Thick night confounds the pine-tops with the clouds: 80
And many else whose names may not be told.
For when the Muse's wings are air-ward spread,
Who shall delay her flight? And she must chaunt
Of Saturn, and his guide, who now had climb'd
With damp and slippery footing from a depth
More horrid still. Above a sombre cliff
Their heads appear'd, and up their stature grew
Till on the level height their steps found ease:
Then Thea spread abroad her trembling arms
Upon the precincts of this nest of pain,
And sidelong fix'd her eye on Saturn's face:

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There saw she direst strife; the supreme God.
At war with all the frailty of grief,

Of rage, of fear, anxiety, revenge,

Remorse, spleen, hope, but most of all despair.

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Against these plagues he strove in vain; for Fate
Had pour'd a mortal oil upon his head,
A disanointing poison: so that Thea,
Affrighted, kept her still, and let him pass
First onwards in, among the fallen tribe.

As with us mortal men, the laden heart

Is persecuted more, and fever'd more,
When it is nighing to the mournful house
Where other hearts are sick of the same bruise;

So Saturn, as he walk'd into the midst,

Felt faint, and would have sunk among the rest,

But that he met Enceladus's eye,

Whose mightiness, and awe of him, at once

Came like an inspiration; and he shouted,

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"Titans, behold your God!" at which some groan'd; 110
Some started on their feet; some also shouted;
Some wept, some wail'd, all bow'd with reverence;
And Ops, uplifting her black folded veil,
Show'd her pale cheeks, and all her forehead wan,
Her eye-brows thin and jet, and hollow eyes.
There is a roaring in the bleak-grown pines
When Winter lifts his voice; there is a noise
Among immortals when a God gives sign,
With hushing finger, how he means to load

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His tongue with the full weight of utterless thought, 120
With thunder, and with music, and with pomp:
Such noise is like the roar of bleak-grown pines ;*
Which, when it ceases in this mountain'd world,
No other sound succeeds; but ceasing here,
Among these fallen, Saturn's voice therefrom
Grew up like organ, that begins anew
Its strain, when other harmonies, stopt short,
Leave the dinn'd air vibrating silverly.

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