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+The fall of Hyperion - a Dream
+John Keats
+
+
+CANTO I
+
+Fanatics have their dreams, wherewith they weave
+A paradise for a sect; the savage too
+From forth the loftiest fashion of his sleep
+Guesses at Heaven; pity these have not
+Trac'd upon vellum or wild Indian leaf
+The shadows of melodious utterance.
+But bare of laurel they live, dream, and die;
+For Poesy alone can tell her dreams,
+With the fine spell of words alone can save
+Imagination from the sable charm
+And dumb enchantment. Who alive can say,
+'Thou art no Poet may'st not tell thy dreams?'
+Since every man whose soul is not a clod
+Hath visions, and would speak, if he had loved
+And been well nurtured in his mother tongue.
+Whether the dream now purpos'd to rehearse
+Be poet's or fanatic's will be known
+When this warm scribe my hand is in the grave.
+
+Methought I stood where trees of every clime,
+Palm, myrtle, oak, and sycamore, and beech,
+With plantain, and spice blossoms, made a screen;
+In neighbourhood of fountains, by the noise
+Soft showering in my ears, and, by the touch
+Of scent, not far from roses. Turning round
+I saw an arbour with a drooping roof
+Of trellis vines, and bells, and larger blooms,
+Like floral censers swinging light in air;
+Before its wreathed doorway, on a mound
+Of moss, was spread a feast of summer fruits,
+Which, nearer seen, seem'd refuse of a meal
+By angel tasted or our Mother Eve;
+For empty shells were scattered on the grass,
+And grape stalks but half bare, and remnants more,
+Sweet smelling, whose pure kinds I could not know.
+Still was more plenty than the fabled horn
+Thrice emptied could pour forth, at banqueting
+For Proserpine return'd to her own fields,
+Where the white heifers low. And appetite
+More yearning than on earth I ever felt
+Growing within, I ate deliciously;
+And, after not long, thirsted, for thereby
+Stood a cool vessel of transparent juice
+Sipp'd by the wander'd bee, the which I took,
+And, pledging all the mortals of the world,
+And all the dead whose names are in our lips,
+Drank. That full draught is parent of my theme.
+No Asian poppy nor elixir fine
+Of the soon fading jealous Caliphat,
+No poison gender'd in close monkish cell
+To thin the scarlet conclave of old men,
+Could so have rapt unwilling life away.
+Among the fragrant husks and berries crush'd,
+Upon the grass I struggled hard against
+The domineering potion; but in vain:
+The cloudy swoon came on, and down I sunk
+Like a Silenus on an antique vase.
+How long I slumber'd 'tis a chance to guess.
+When sense of life return'd, I started up
+As if with wings; but the fair trees were gone,
+The mossy mound and arbour were no more:
+I look'd around upon the carved sides
+Of an old sanctuary with roof august,
+Builded so high, it seem'd that filmed clouds
+Might spread beneath, as o'er the stars of heaven;
+So old the place was, I remember'd none
+The like upon the earth: what I had seen
+Of grey cathedrals, buttress'd walls, rent towers,
+The superannuations of sunk realms,
+Or Nature's rocks toil'd hard in waves and winds,
+Seem'd but the faulture of decrepit things
+To that eternal domed monument.
+Upon the marble at my feet there lay
+Store of strange vessels and large draperies,
+Which needs had been of dyed asbestos wove,
+Or in that place the moth could not corrupt,
+So white the linen, so, in some, distinct
+Ran imageries from a sombre loom.
+All in a mingled heap confus'd there lay
+Robes, golden tongs, censer and chafing dish,
+Girdles, and chains, and holy jewelries.
+
+Turning from these with awe, once more I rais'd
+My eyes to fathom the space every way;
+The embossed roof, the silent massy range
+Of columns north and south, ending in mist
+Of nothing, then to eastward, where black gates
+Were shut against the sunrise evermore.
+Then to the west I look'd, and saw far off
+An image, huge of feature as a cloud,
+At level of whose feet an altar slept,
+To be approach'd on either side by steps,
+And marble balustrade, and patient travail
+To count with toil the innumerable degrees.
+Towards the altar sober paced I went,
+Repressing haste, as too unholy there;
+And, coming nearer, saw beside the shrine
+One minist'ring; and there arose a flame.
+When in mid May the sickening East wind
+Shifts sudden to the south, the small warm rain
+Melts out the frozen incense from all flowers,
+And fills the air with so much pleasant health
+That even the dying man forgets his shroud;
+Even so that lofty sacrificial fire,
+Sending forth Maian incense, spread around
+Forgetfulness of everything but bliss,
+And clouded all the altar with soft smoke,
+From whose white fragrant curtains thus I heard
+Language pronounc'd: 'If thou canst not ascend
+'These steps, die on that marble where thou art.
+'Thy flesh, near cousin to the common dust,
+'Will parch for lack of nutriment thy bones
+'Will wither in few years, and vanish so
+'That not the quickest eye could find a grain
+'Of what thou now art on that pavement cold.
+'The sands of thy short life are spent this hour,
+'And no hand in the universe can turn
+'Thy hourglass, if these gummed leaves be burnt
+'Ere thou canst mount up these immortal steps.'
+I heard, I look'd: two senses both at once,
+So fine, so subtle, felt the tyranny
+Of that fierce threat and the hard task proposed.
+Prodigious seem'd the toil, the leaves were yet
+Burning when suddenly a palsied chill
+Struck from the paved level up my limbs,
+And was ascending quick to put cold grasp
+Upon those streams that pulse beside the throat:
+I shriek'd; and the sharp anguish of my shriek
+Stung my own ears I strove hard to escape
+The numbness; strove to gain the lowest step.
+Slow, heavy, deadly was my pace: the cold
+Grew stifling, suffocating, at the heart;
+And when I clasp'd my hands I felt them not.
+One minute before death, my iced foot touch'd
+The lowest stair; and as it touch'd, life seem'd
+To pour in at the toes: I mounted up,
+As once fair angels on a ladder flew
+From the green turf to Heaven. 'Holy Power,'
+Cried I, approaching near the horned shrine,
+'What am I that should so be saved from death?
+'What am I that another death come not
+'To choke my utterance sacrilegious here?'
+Then said the veiled shadow 'Thou hast felt
+'What 'tis to die and live again before
+'Thy fated hour. That thou hadst power to do so
+'Is thy own safety; thou hast dated on
+'Thy doom.' 'High Prophetess,' said I, 'purge off,
+'Benign, if so it please thee, my mind's film.'
+'None can usurp this height,' return'd that shade,
+'But those to whom the miseries of the world
+'Are misery, and will not let them rest.
+'All else who find a haven in the world,
+'Where they may thoughtless sleep away their days,
+'If by a chance into this fane they come,
+'Rot on the pavement where thou rottedst half.'
+'Are there not thousands in the world,' said I,
+Encourag'd by the sooth voice of the shade,
+'Who love their fellows even to the death;
+'Who feel the giant agony of the world;
+'And more, like slaves to poor humanity,
+'Labour for mortal good? I sure should see
+'Other men here; but I am here alone.'
+'Those whom thou spak'st of are no vision'ries,'
+Rejoin'd that voice; 'they are no dreamers weak;
+'They seek no wonder but the human face,
+'No music but a happy noted voice;
+'They come not here, they have no thought to come;
+'And thou art here, for thou art less than they:
+'What benefit canst thou do, or all thy tribe,
+'To the great world? Thou art a dreaming thing,
+'A fever of thyself think of the Earth;
+'What bliss even in hope is there for thee?
+'What haven? every creature hath its home;
+'Every sole man hath days of joy and pain,
+'Whether his labours be sublime or low
+'The pain alone; the joy alone; distinct:
+'Only the dreamer venoms all his days,
+'Bearing more woe than all his sins deserve.
+'Therefore, that happiness be somewhat shar'd,
+'Such things as thou art are admitted oft
+'Into like gardens thou didst pass erewhile,
+'And suffer'd in these temples: for that cause
+'Thou standest safe beneath this statue's knees.'
+'That I am favour'd for unworthiness,
+'By such propitious parley medicin'd
+'In sickness not ignoble, I rejoice,
+'Aye, and could weep for love of such award.'
+So answer'd I, continuing, 'If it please,
+'Majestic shadow, tell me: sure not all
+'Those melodies sung into the world's ear
+'Are useless: sure a poet is a sage;
+'A humanist, physician to all men.
+'That I am none I feel, as vultures feel
+'They are no birds when eagles are abroad.
+'What am I then? Thou spakest of my tribe:
+'What tribe?' The tall shade veil'd in drooping white
+Then spake, so much more earnest, that the breath
+Moved the thin linen folds that drooping hung
+About a golden censer from the hand
+Pendent. 'Art thou not of the dreamer tribe?
+'The poet and the dreamer are distinct,
+'Diverse, sheer opposite, antipodes.
+'The one pours out a balm upon the world,
+'The other vexes it.' Then shouted I
+Spite of myself, and with a Pythia's spleen,
+'Apollo! faded! O far flown Apollo!
+'Where is thy misty pestilence to creep
+'Into the dwellings, through the door crannies
+'Of all mock lyrists, large self worshipers,
+'And careless Hectorers in proud bad verse.
+'Though I breathe death with them it will be life
+'To see them sprawl before me into graves.
+'Majestic shadow, tell me where I am,
+'Whose altar this; for whom this incense curls;
+'What image this whose face I cannot see,
+'For the broad marble knees; and who thou art,
+'Of accent feminine so courteous?'
+
+Then the tall shade, in drooping linens veil'd,
+Spoke out, so much more earnest, that her breath
+Stirr'd the thin folds of gauze that drooping hung
+About a golden censer from her hand
+Pendent; and by her voice I knew she shed
+Long treasured tears. 'This temple, sad and lone,
+'Is all spar'd from the thunder of a war
+'Foughten long since by giant hierarchy
+'Against rebellion: this old image here,
+'Whose carved features wrinkled as he fell,
+'Is Saturn's; I Moneta, left supreme
+'Sole priestess of this desolation.'
+I had no words to answer, for my tongue,
+Useless, could find about its roofed home
+No syllable of a fit majesty
+To make rejoinder to Moneta's mourn.
+There was a silence, while the altar's blaze
+Was fainting for sweet food: I look'd thereon,
+And on the paved floor, where nigh were piled
+Faggots of cinnamon, and many heaps
+Of other crisped spice wood then again
+I look'd upon the altar, and its horns
+Whiten'd with ashes, and its lang'rous flame,
+And then upon the offerings again;
+And so by turns till sad Moneta cried,
+'The sacrifice is done, but not the less
+'Will I be kind to thee for thy good will.
+'My power, which to me is still a curse,
+'Shall be to thee a wonder; for the scenes
+'Still swooning vivid through my globed brain
+'With an electral changing misery
+'Thou shalt with those dull mortal eyes behold,
+'Free from all pain, if wonder pain thee not.'
+As near as an immortal's sphered words
+Could to a mother's soften, were these last:
+And 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.
+This saw that G-ddess, and with sacred hand
+Parted the veils. Then saw I a wan face,
+Not pin'd by human sorrows, but bright blanch'd
+By an immortal sickness which kills not;
+It works a constant change, which happy death
+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.
+They held me back, with a benignant light
+Soft mitigated by divinest lids
+Half closed, and visionless entire they seem'd
+Of all external things; they saw me not,
+But in blank splendour beam'd like the mild moon,
+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 side,
+And twing'd with avarice strain'd out my eyes
+To search its sullen entrails rich with ore,
+So at the view of sad Moneta's brow
+I ach'd 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
+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,
+'By 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 g-d 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 G-ddess 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 G-ds!
+'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 G-d;
+'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 G-d still bending to the earth,
+And the sad G-ddess 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 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 G-ddess at his feet.
+As the moist scent of flowers, and grass, and leaves
+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 of the foxes' hole,
+With sad low tones, while thus he spake, and sent
+Strange musings to the solitary Pan.
+'Moan, brethren, moan; for we are swallow'd up
+'And buried from all G-dlike exercise
+'Of influence benign on planets pale,
+'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 ancient courses keep,
+'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 death Moan, moan,
+'Moan, Cybele, moan; for thy pernicious babes
+'Have changed a G-d 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.
+'Moan, moan, for still I thaw or give me help;
+'Throw down those imps, 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;
+'Voices of soft proclaim, and silver stir
+'Of strings in hollow shells; and let there be
+'Beautiful things made new, for the surprise
+'Of the sky children.' So he feebly ceas'd,
+With such a poor and sickly sounding pause,
+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
+With large limb'd visions. 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
+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 mid day fleece of clouds. Thea arose,
+And stretched 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.
+They melted from my sight into the woods;
+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
+'And darkness, for no hope.' And she spake on,
+As ye may read who can unwearied pass
+Onward from the antechamber of this dream,
+Where even at the open doors awhile
+I must delay, and glean my memory
+Of her high phrase: perhaps no further dare.
+
+
+CANTO II
+
+'Mortal, that thou may'st understand aright,
+'I humanize my sayings to thine ear,
+'Making comparisons of earthly things;
+'Or thou might'st better listen to the wind,
+'Whose language is to thee a barren noise,
+'Though it blows legend laden through the trees.
+'In melancholy realms big tears are shed,
+'More sorrow like to this, and such like woe,
+'Too huge for mortal tongue, or pen of scribe.
+'The Titans fierce, self hid or prison bound,
+'Groan for the old allegiance once more,
+'Listening in their doom for Saturn's voice.
+'But one of our whole eagle brood still keeps
+'His sov'reignty, and rule, and majesty;
+'Blazing Hyperion on his orbed fire
+'Still sits, still snuffs the incense teeming up
+'From man to the sun's G-d: yet unsecure,
+'For as upon the earth dire prodigies
+'Fright and perplex, so also shudders he:
+'Nor at dog's howl or gloom bird's Even screech,
+'Or the familiar visitings of one
+'Upon the first toll of his passing bell:
+'But horrors, portioned to a giant nerve,
+'Make great Hyperion ache. His palace bright,
+'Bastion'd with pyramids of glowing gold,
+'And touch'd with shade of bronzed obelisks,
+'Glares a blood red through all the thousand courts,
+'Arches, and domes, and fiery galleries:
+'And all its curtains of Aurorian clouds
+'Flush angerly; when he would taste the wreaths
+'Of incense breath'd aloft from sacred hills,
+'Instead of sweets his ample palate takes
+'Savour of poisonous brass and metals sick.
+'Wherefore when harbour'd in the sleepy West,
+'After the full completion of fair day,
+'For rest divine upon exalted couch
+'And slumber in the arms of melody,
+'He paces through the pleasant hours of ease
+'With strides colossal, on from hall to hall;
+'While far within each aisle and deep recess
+'His winged minions in close clusters stand
+'Amaz'd, and full of fear; like anxious men,
+'Who on a wide plain gather in sad troops,
+'When earthquakes jar their battlements and towers.
+'Even now, while Saturn, roused from icy trance,
+'Goes step for step with Thea from yon woods,
+'Hyperion, leaving twilight in the rear,
+'Is sloping to the threshold of the West.
+'Thither we tend.' Now in clear light I stood,
+Reliev'd from the dusk vale. Mnemosyne
+Was sitting on a square edg'd polish'd stone,
+That in its lucid depth reflected pure
+Her priestess garments. My quick eyes ran on
+From stately nave to nave, from vault to vault,
+Through bow'rs of fragrant and enwreathed light
+And diamond paved lustrous long arcades.
+Anon rush'd by the bright Hyperion;
+His flaming robes stream'd out beyond his heels,
+And gave a roar, as if of earthly fire,
+That scared away the meek ethereal hours
+And made their dove wings tremble. On he flared.
+
+
+THE END