<div style="background:#fff;border:#bbb dashed 1px;padding:5px"><a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=420971" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><div style="margin:10px 0"><strong>Hyperion</strong></div><div style="margin:10px 0">BOOK I<br> DEEP in the shady sadness of a vale<br>Far sunken from the healthy breath of morn,<br>Far from the fiery noon, and eve's one star,<br>Sat gray-hair'd Saturn, quiet as a stone,<br>Still as the silence round about his lair;<br>Forest on forest hung above his head<br>Like cloud on cloud. No stir of air was there,<br>Not so much life as on a summer's day<br>Robs not one light seed from the feather'd grass,<br>But where the dead leaf fell, there did it rest.<br>A stream went voiceless by, still deadened more<br>By reason of his fallen divinity<br>Spreading a shade: the Naiad 'mid her reeds<br>Press'd her cold finger closer to her lips.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"> Along the margin-sand large foot-marks went,<br>No further than to where his feet had stray'd,<br>And slept there since. Upon the sodden ground<br>His old right hand lay nerveless, listless, dead,<br>Unsceptred; and his realmless eyes were closed;<br>While his bow'd head seem'd list'ning to the Earth,<br>His ancient mother, for some comfort yet.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"> It seem'd no force could wake him from his place;<br>But there came one, who with a kindred hand<br>Touch'd his wide shoulders, after bending low<br>With reverence, though to one who knew it not.<br>She was a Goddess of the infant world;<br>By her in stature the tall Amazon<br>Had stood a pigmy's height: she would have ta'en<br>Achilles by the hair and bent his neck;<br>Or with a finger stay'd Ixion's wheel.<br>Her face was large as that of Memphian sphinx,<br>Pedestal'd haply in a palace court,<br>When sages look'd to Egypt for their lore.<br>But oh! how unlike marble was that face:<br>How beautiful, if sorrow had not made<br>Sorrow more beautiful than Beauty's self.<br>There was a listening fear in her regard,<br>As if calamity had but begun;<br>As if the vanward clouds of evil days<br>Had spent their malice, and the sullen rear<br>Was with its stored thunder labouring up.<br>One hand she press'd upon that aching spot<br>Where beats the human heart, as if just there,<br>Though an immortal, she felt cruel pain:<br>The other upon Saturn's bended neck<br>She laid, and to the level of his ear<br>Leaning with parted lips, some words she spake<br>In solemn tenor and deep organ tone:<br>Some mourning words, which in our feeble tongue<br>Would come in these like accents; O how frail<br>To that large utterance of the early Gods!<br>&quot;Saturn, look up!---though wherefore, poor old King?<br>I have no comfort for thee, no not one:<br>I cannot say, 'O wherefore sleepest thou?'<br>For heaven is parted from thee, and the earth<br>Knows thee not, thus afflicted, for a God;<br>And ocean too, with all its solemn noise,<br>Has from thy sceptre pass'd; and all the air<br>Is emptied of thine hoary majesty.<br>Thy thunder, conscious of the new command,<br>Rumbles reluctant o'er our fallen house;<br>And thy sharp lightning in unpractised hands<br>Scorches and burns our once serene domain.<br>O aching time! O moments big as years!<br>All as ye pass swell out the monstrous truth,<br>And press it so upon our weary griefs<br>That unbelief has not a space to breathe.<br>Saturn, sleep on:---O thoughtless, why did I<br>Thus violate thy slumbrous solitude?<br>Why should I ope thy melancholy eyes?<br>Saturn, sleep on! while at thy feet I weep.&quot;</div><div style="margin:10px 0"> As when, upon a tranced summer-night,<br>Those green-rob'd senators of mighty woods,<br>Tall oaks, branch-charmed by the earnest stars,<br>Dream, and so dream all night without a stir,<br>Save from one gradual solitary gust<br>Which comes upon the silence, and dies off,<br>As if the ebbing air had but one wave;<br>So came these words and went; the while in tears<br>She touch'd her fair large forehead to the ground,<br>Just where her fallen hair might be outspread<br>A soft and silken mat for Saturn's feet.<br>One moon, with alteration slow, had shed<br>Her silver seasons four upon the night,<br>And still these two were postured motionless,<br>Like natural sculpture in cathedral cavern;<br>The frozen God still couchant on the earth,<br>And the sad Goddess weeping at his feet:<br>Until at length old Saturn lifted up<br>His faded eyes, and saw his kingdom gone,<br>And all the gloom and sorrow ofthe place,<br>And that fair kneeling Goddess; and then spake,<br>As with a palsied tongue, and while his beard<br>Shook horrid with such aspen-malady:<br>&quot;O tender spouse of gold Hyperion,<br>Thea, I feel thee ere I see thy face;<br>Look up, and let me see our doom in it;<br>Look up, and tell me if this feeble shape<br>Is Saturn's; tell me, if thou hear'st the voice<br>Of Saturn; tell me, if this wrinkling brow,<br>Naked and bare of its great diadem,<br>Peers like the front of Saturn? Who had power<br>To make me desolate? Whence came the strength?<br>How was it nurtur'd to such bursting forth,<br>While Fate seem'd strangled in my nervous grasp?<br>But it is so; and I am smother'd up,<br>And buried from all godlike exercise<br>Of influence benign on planets pale,<br>Of admonitions to the winds and seas,<br>Of peaceful sway above man's harvesting,<br>And all those acts which Deity supreme<br>Doth ease its heart of love in.---I am gone<br>Away from my own bosom: I have left<br>My strong identity, my real self,<br>Somewhere between the throne, and where I sit<br>Here on this spot of earth. Search, Thea, search!<br>Open thine eyes eterne, and sphere them round<br>Upon all space: space starr'd, and lorn of light;<br>Space region'd with life-air; and barren void;<br>Spaces of fire, and all the yawn of hell.---<br>Search, Thea, search! and tell me, if thou seest<br>A certain shape or shadow, making way<br>With wings or chariot fierce to repossess<br>A heaven he lost erewhile: it must---it must<br>Be of ripe progress---Saturn must be King.<br>Yes, there must be a golden victory;<br>There must be Gods thrown down, and trumpets blown<br>Of triumph calm, and hymns of festival<br>Upon the gold clouds metropolitan,<br>Voices of soft proclaim, and silver stir<br>Of strings in hollow shells; and there shall be<br>Beautiful things made new, for the surprise<br>Of the sky-children; I will give command:<br>Thea! Thea! Thea! where is Saturn?&quot;<br>This passion lifted him upon his feet,<br>And made his hands to struggle in the air,<br>His Druid locks to shake and ooze with sweat,<br>His eyes to fever out, his voice to cease.<br>He stood, and heard not Thea's sobbing deep;<br>A little time, and then again he snatch'd<br>Utterance thus.---&quot;But cannot I create?<br>Cannot I form? Cannot I fashion forth<br>Another world, another universe,<br>To overbear and crumble this to nought?<br>Where is another Chaos? Where?&quot;---That word<br>Found way unto Olympus, and made quake<br>The rebel three.---Thea was startled up,<br>And in her bearing was a sort of hope,<br>As thus she quick-voic'd spake, yet full of awe.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"> &quot;This cheers our fallen house: come to our friends,<br>O Saturn! come away, and give them heart;<br>I know the covert, for thence came I hither.&quot;<br>Thus brief; then with beseeching eyes she went<br>With backward footing through the shade a space:<br>He follow'd, and she turn'd to lead the way<br>Through aged boughs, that yielded like the mist<br>Which eagles cleave upmounting from their nest.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"> Meanwhile in other realms big tears were shed,<br>More sorrow like to this, and such like woe,<br>Too huge for mortal tongue or pen of scribe:<br>The Titans fierce, self-hid, or prison-bound,<br>Groan'd for the old allegiance once more,<br>And listen'd in sharp pain for Saturn's voice.<br>But one of the whole mammoth-brood still kept<br>His sov'reigny, and rule, and majesy;---<br>Blazing Hyperion on his orbed fire<br>Still sat, still snuff'd the incense, teeming up<br>From man to the sun's God: yet unsecure:<br>For as among us mortals omens drear<br>Fright and perplex, so also shuddered he---<br>Not at dog's howl, or gloom-bird's hated screech,<br>Or the familiar visiting of one<br>Upon the first toll of his passing-bell,<br>Or prophesyings of the midnight lamp;<br>But horrors, portion'd to a giant nerve,<br>Oft made Hyperion ache. His palace bright,<br>Bastion'd with pyramids of glowing gold,<br>And touch'd with shade of bronzed obelisks,<br>Glar'd a blood-red through all its thousand courts,<br>Arches, and domes, and fiery galleries;<br>And all its curtains of Aurorian clouds<br>Flush'd angerly: while sometimes eagles' wings,<br>Unseen before by Gods or wondering men,<br>Darken'd the place; and neighing steeds were heard<br>Not heard before by Gods or wondering men.<br>Also, when he would taste the spicy wreaths<br>Of incense, breath'd aloft from sacred hills,<br>Instead of sweets, his ample palate took<br>Savor of poisonous brass and metal sick:<br>And so, when harbor'd in the sleepy west,<br>After the full completion of fair day,---<br>For rest divine upon exalted couch,<br>And slumber in the arms of melody,<br>He pac'd away the pleasant hours of ease<br>With stride colossal, on from hall to hall;<br>While far within each aisle and deep recess,<br>His winged minions in close clusters stood,<br>Amaz'd and full offear; like anxious men<br>Who on wide plains gather in panting troops,<br>When earthquakes jar their battlements and towers.<br>Even now, while Saturn, rous'd from icy trance,<br>Went step for step with Thea through the woods,<br>Hyperion, leaving twilight in the rear,<br>Came slope upon the threshold of the west;<br>Then, as was wont, his palace-door flew ope<br>In smoothest silence, save what solemn tubes,<br>Blown by the serious Zephyrs, gave of sweet<br>And wandering sounds, slow-breathed melodies;<br>And like a rose in vermeil tint and shape,<br>In fragrance soft, and coolness to the eye,<br>That inlet to severe magnificence<br>Stood full blown, for the God to enter in.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"> He enter'd, but he enter'd full of wrath;<br>His flaming robes stream'd out beyond his heels,<br>And gave a roar, as if of earthly fire,<br>That scar'd away the meek ethereal Hours<br>And made their dove-wings tremble. On he flared<br>From stately nave to nave, from vault to vault,<br>Through bowers of fragrant and enwreathed light,<br>And diamond-paved lustrous long arcades,<br>Until he reach'd the great main cupola;<br>There standing fierce beneath, he stampt his foot,<br>And from the basements deep to the high towers<br>Jarr'd his own golden region; and before<br>The quavering thunder thereupon had ceas'd,<br>His voice leapt out, despite of godlike curb,<br>To this result: &quot;O dreams of day and night!<br>O monstrous forms! O effigies of pain!<br>O spectres busy in a cold, cold gloom!<br>O lank-eared phantoms of black-weeded pools!<br>Why do I know ye? why have I seen ye? why<br>Is my eternal essence thus distraught<br>To see and to behold these horrors new?<br>Saturn is fallen, am I too to fall?<br>Am I to leave this haven of my rest,<br>This cradle of my glory, this soft clime,<br>This calm luxuriance of blissful light,<br>These crystalline pavilions, and pure fanes,<br>Of all my lucent empire? It is left<br>Deserted, void, nor any haunt of mine.<br>The blaze, the splendor, and the symmetry,<br>I cannot see but darkness, death, and darkness.<br>Even here, into my centre of repose,<br>The shady visions come to domineer,<br>Insult, and blind, and stifle up my pomp.---<br>Fall!---No, by Tellus and her briny robes!<br>Over the fiery frontier of my realms<br>I will advance a terrible right arm<br>Shall scare that infant thunderer, rebel Jove,<br>And bid old Saturn take his throne again.&quot;---<br>He spake, and ceas'd, the while a heavier threat<br>Held struggle with his throat but came not forth;<br>For as in theatres of crowded men<br>Hubbub increases more they call out &quot;Hush!&quot;<br>So at Hyperion's words the phantoms pale<br>Bestirr'd themselves, thrice horrible and cold;<br>And from the mirror'd level where he stood<br>A mist arose, as from a scummy marsh.<br>At this, through all his bulk an agony<br>Crept gradual, from the feet unto the crown,<br>Like a lithe serpent vast and muscular<br>Making slow way, with head and neck convuls'd<br>From over-strained might. Releas'd, he fled<br>To the eastern gates, and full six dewy hours<br>Before the dawn in season due should blush,<br>He breath'd fierce breath against the sleepy portals,<br>Clear'd them of heavy vapours, burst them wide<br>Suddenly on the ocean's chilly streams.<br>The planet orb of fire, whereon he rode<br>Each day from east to west the heavens through,<br>Spun round in sable curtaining of clouds;<br>Not therefore veiled quite, blindfold, and hid,<br>But ever and anon the glancing spheres,<br>Circles, and arcs, and broad-belting colure,<br>Glow'd through, and wrought upon the muffling dark<br>Sweet-shaped lightnings from the nadir deep<br>Up to the zenith,---hieroglyphics old,<br>Which sages and keen-eyed astrologers<br>Then living on the earth, with laboring thought<br>Won from the gaze of many centuries:<br>Now lost, save what we find on remnants huge<br>Of stone, or rnarble swart; their import gone,<br>Their wisdom long since fled.---Two wings this orb<br>Possess'd for glory, two fair argent wings,<br>Ever exalted at the God's approach:<br>And now, from forth the gloom their plumes immense<br>Rose, one by one, till all outspreaded were;<br>While still the dazzling globe maintain'd eclipse,<br>Awaiting for Hyperion's command.<br>Fain would he have commanded, fain took throne<br>And bid the day begin, if but for change.<br>He might not:---No, though a primeval God:<br>The sacred seasons might not be disturb'd.<br>Therefore the operations of the dawn<br>Stay'd in their birth, even as here 'tis told.<br>Those silver wings expanded sisterly,<br>Eager to sail their orb; the porches wide<br>Open'd upon the dusk demesnes of night<br>And the bright Titan, phrenzied with new woes,<br>Unus'd to bend, by hard compulsion bent<br>His spirit to the sorrow of the time;<br>And all along a dismal rack of clouds,<br>Upon the boundaries of day and night,<br>He stretch'd himself in grief and radiance faint.<br>There as he lay, the Heaven with its stars<br>Look'd down on him with pity, and the voice<br>Of Coelus, from the universal space,<br>Thus whisper'd low and solemn in his ear:<br>&quot;O brightest of my children dear, earth-born<br>And sky-engendered, son of mysteries<br>All unrevealed even to the powers<br>Which met at thy creating; at whose joys<br>And palpitations sweet, and pleasures soft,<br>I, Coelus, wonder, how they came and whence;<br>And at the fruits thereof what shapes they be,<br>Distinct, and visible; symbols divine,<br>Manifestations of that beauteous life<br>Diffus'd unseen throughout eternal space:<br>Of these new-form'd art thou, O brightest child!<br>Of these, thy brethren and the Goddesses!<br>There is sad feud among ye, and rebellion<br>Of son against his sire. I saw him fall,<br>I saw my first-born tumbled from his throne!<br>To me his arms were spread, to me his voice<br>Found way from forth the thunders round his head!<br>Pale wox I, and in vapours hid my face.<br>Art thou, too, near such doom? vague fear there is:<br>For I have seen my sons most unlike Gods.<br>Divine ye were created, and divine<br>In sad demeanour, solemn, undisturb'd,<br>Unruffled, like high Gods, ye liv'd and ruled:<br>Now I behold in you fear, hope, and wrath;<br>Actions of rage and passion; even as<br>I see them, on the mortal world beneath,<br>In men who die.---This is the grief, O son!<br>Sad sign of ruin, sudden dismay, and fall!<br>Yet do thou strive; as thou art capable,<br>As thou canst move about, an evident God;<br>And canst oppose to each malignant hour<br>Ethereal presence:---I am but a voice;<br>My life is but the life of winds and tides,<br>No more than winds and tides can I avail:---<br>But thou canst.---Be thou therefore in the van<br>Of circumstance; yea, seize the arrow's barb<br>Before the tense string murmur.---To the earth!<br>For there thou wilt find Saturn, and his woes.<br>Meantime I will keep watch on thy bright sun,<br>And of thy seasons be a careful nurse.&quot;---<br>Ere half this region-whisper had come down,<br>Hyperion arose, and on the stars<br>Lifted his curved lids, and kept them wide<br>Until it ceas'd; and still he kept them wide:<br>And still they were the same bright, patient stars.<br>Then with a slow incline of his broad breast,<br>Like to a diver in the pearly seas,<br>Forward he stoop'd over the airy shore,<br>And plung'd all noiseless into the deep night.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br>BOOK II<br>JUST at the self-same beat of Time's wide wings<br>Hyperion slid into the rustled air,<br>And Saturn gain'd with Thea that sad place<br>Where Cybele and the bruised Titans mourn'd.<br>It was a den where no insulting light<br>Could glimmer on their tears; where their own groans<br>They felt, but heard not, for the solid roar<br>Of thunderous waterfalls and torrents hoarse,<br>Pouring a constant bulk, uncertain where.<br>Crag jutting forth to crag, and rocks that seem'd<br>Ever as if just rising from a sleep,<br>Forehead to forehead held their monstrous horns;<br>And thus in thousand hugest phantasies<br>Made a fit roofing to this nest of woe.<br>Instead of thrones, hard flint they sat upon,<br>Couches of rugged stone, and slaty ridge<br>Stubborn'd with iron. All were not assembled:<br>Some chain'd in torture, and some wandering.<br>Caus, and Gyges, and Briareus,<br>Typhon, and Dolor, and Porphyrion,<br>With many more, the brawniest in assault,<br>Were pent in regions of laborious breath;<br>Dungeon'd in opaque element, to keep<br>Their clenched teeth still clench'd, and all their limbs<br>Lock'd up like veins of metal, crampt and screw'd;<br>Without a motion, save of their big hearts<br>Heaving in pain, and horribly convuls'd<br>With sanguine feverous boiling gurge of pulse.<br>Mnemosyne was straying in the world;<br>Far from her moon had Phoebe wandered;<br>And many else were free to roam abroad,<br>But for the main, here found they covert drear.<br>Scarce images of life, one here, one there,<br>Lay vast and edgeways; like a dismal cirque<br>Of Druid stones, upon a forlorn moor,<br>When the chill rain begins at shut of eve,<br>In dull November, and their chancel vault,<br>The Heaven itself, is blinded throughout night.<br>Each one kept shroud, nor to his neighbour gave<br>Or word, or look, or action of despair.<br>Creus was one; his ponderous iron mace<br>Lay by him, and a shatter'd rib of rock<br>Told of his rage, ere he thus sank and pined.<br>Iapetus another; in his grasp,<br>A serpent's plashy neck; its barbed tongue<br>Squeez'd from the gorge, and all its uncurl'd length<br>Dead: and because the creature could not spit<br>Its poison in the eyes of conquering Jove.<br>Next Cottus: prone he lay, chin uppermost,<br>As though in pain; for still upon the flint<br>He ground severe his skull, with open mouth<br>And eyes at horrid working. Nearest him<br>Asia, born of most enormous Caf,<br>Who cost her mother Tellus keener pangs,<br>Though feminine, than any of her sons:<br>More thought than woe was in her dusky face,<br>For she was prophesying of her glory;<br>And in her wide imagination stood<br>Palm-shaded temples, and high rival fanes<br>By Oxus or in Ganges' sacred isles.<br>Even as Hope upon her anchor leans,<br>So leant she, not so fair, upon a tusk<br>Shed from the broadest of her elephants.<br>Above her, on a crag's uneasy shelve,<br>Upon his elbow rais'd, all prostrate else,<br>Shadow'd Enceladus; once tame and mild<br>As grazing ox unworried in the meads;<br>Now tiger-passion'd, lion-thoughted, wroth,<br>He meditated, plotted, and even now<br>Was hurling mountains in that second war,<br>Not long delay'd, that scar'd the younger Gods<br>To hide themselves in forms of beast and bird.<br>Not far hence Atlas; and beside him prone<br>Phorcus, the sire of Gorgons. Neighbour'd close<br>Oceanus, and Tethys, in whose lap<br>Sobb'd Clymene among her tangled hair.<br>In midst of all lay Themis, at the feet<br>Of Ops the queen; all clouded round from sight,<br>No shape distinguishable, more than when<br>Thick night confounds the pine-tops with the clouds:<br>And many else whose names may not be told.<br>For when the Muse's wings are air-ward spread,<br>Who shall delay her flight? And she must chaunt<br>Of Saturn, and his guide, who now had climb'd<br>With damp and slippery footing from a depth<br>More horrid still. Above a sombre cliff<br>Their heads appear'd, and up their stature grew<br>Till on the level height their steps found ease:<br>Then Thea spread abroad her trembling arms<br>Upon the precincts of this nest of pain,<br>And sidelong fix'd her eye on Saturn's face:<br>There saw she direst strife; the supreme God<br>At war with all the frailty of grief,<br>Of rage, of fear, anxiety, revenge,<br>Remorse, spleen, hope, but most of all despair.<br>Against these plagues he strove in vain; for Fate<br>Had pour'd a mortal oil upon his head,<br>A disanointing poison: so that Thea,<br>Affrighted, kept her still, and let him pass<br>First onwards in, among the fallen tribe.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"> As with us mortal men, the laden heart<br>Is persecuted more, and fever'd more,<br>When it is nighing to the mournful house<br>Where other hearts are sick of the same bruise;<br>So Saturn, as he walk'd into the midst,<br>Felt faint, and would have sunk among the rest,<br>But that he met Enceladus's eye,<br>Whose mightiness, and awe of him, at once<br>Came like an inspiration; and he shouted,<br>&quot;Titans, behold your God!&quot; at which some groan'd;<br>Some started on their feet; some also shouted;<br>Some wept, some wail'd, all bow'd with reverence;<br>And Ops, uplifting her black folded veil,<br>Show'd her pale cheeks, and all her forehead wan,<br>Her eye-brows thin and jet, and hollow eyes.<br>There is a roaring in the bleak-grown pines<br>When Winter lifts his voice; there is a noise<br>Among immortals when a God gives sign,<br>With hushing finger, how he means to load<br>His tongue with the filll weight of utterless thought,<br>With thunder, and with music, and with pomp:<br>Such noise is like the roar of bleak-grown pines;<br>Which, when it ceases in this mountain'd world,<br>No other sound succeeds; but ceasing here,<br>Among these fallen, Saturn's voice therefrom<br>Grew up like organ, that begins anew<br>Its strain, when other harmonies, stopt short,<br>Leave the dinn'd air vibrating silverly.<br>Thus grew it up---&quot;Not in my own sad breast,<br>Which is its own great judge and searcher out,<br>Can I find reason why ye should be thus:<br>Not in the legends of the first of days,<br>Studied from that old spirit-leaved book<br>Which starry Uranus with finger bright<br>Sav'd from the shores of darkness, when the waves<br>Low-ebb'd still hid it up in shallow gloom;---<br>And the which book ye know I ever kept<br>For my firm-based footstool:---Ah, infirm!<br>Not there, nor in sign, symbol, or portent<br>Of element, earth, water, air, and fire,---<br>At war, at peace, or inter-quarreling<br>One against one, or two, or three, or all<br>Each several one against the other three,<br>As fire with air loud warring when rain-floods<br>Drown both, and press them both against earth's face,<br>Where, finding sulphur, a quadruple wrath<br>Unhinges the poor world;---not in that strife,<br>Wherefrom I take strange lore, and read it deep,<br>Can I find reason why ye should be thus:<br>No, nowhere can unriddle, though I search,<br>And pore on Nature's universal scroll<br>Even to swooning, why ye, Divinities,<br>The first-born of all shap'd and palpable Gods,<br>Should cower beneath what, in comparison,<br>Is untremendous might. Yet ye are here,<br>O'erwhelm'd, and spurn'd, and batter'd, ye are here!<br>O Titans, shall I say 'Arise!'---Ye groan:<br>Shall I say 'Crouch!'---Ye groan. What can I then?<br>O Heaven wide! O unseen parent dear!<br>What can I? Tell me, all ye brethren Gods,<br>How we can war, how engine our great wrath!<br>O speak your counsel now, for Saturn's ear<br>Is all a-hunger'd. Thou, Oceanus,<br>Ponderest high and deep; and in thy face<br>I see, astonied, that severe content<br>Which comes of thought and musing: give us help!&quot;</div><div style="margin:10px 0"> So ended Saturn; and the God of the sea,<br>Sophist and sage, from no Athenian grove,<br>But cogitation in his watery shades,<br>Arose, with locks not oozy, and began,<br>In murmurs, which his first-endeavouring tongue<br>Caught infant-like from the far-foamed sands.<br>&quot;O ye, whom wrath consumes! who, passion-stung,<br>Writhe at defeat, and nurse your agonies!<br>Shut up your senses, stifle up your ears,<br>My voice is not a bellows unto ire.<br>Yet listen, ye who will, whilst I bring proof<br>How ye, perforce, must be content to stoop:<br>And in the proof much comfort will I give,<br>If ye will take that comfort in its truth.<br>We fall by course of Nature's law, not force<br>Of thunder, or of Jove. Great Saturn, thou<br>Hast sifted well the atom-universe;<br>But for this reason, that thou art the King,<br>And only blind from sheer supremacy,<br>One avenue was shaded from thine eyes,<br>Through which I wandered to eternal truth.<br>And first, as thou wast not the first of powers,<br>So art thou not the last; it cannot be:<br>Thou art not the beginning nor the end.<br>From Chaos and parental Darkness came<br>Light, the first fruits of that intestine broil,<br>That sullen ferment, which for wondrous ends<br>Was ripening in itself. The ripe hour came,<br>And with it Light, and Light, engendering<br>Upon its own producer, forthwith touch'd<br>The whole enormous matter into life.<br>Upon that very hour, our parentage,<br>The Heavens and the Earth, were manifest:<br>Then thou first born, and we the giant race,<br>Found ourselves ruling new and beauteous realms.<br>Now comes the pain of truth, to whom 'tis pain;<br>O folly! for to bear all naked truths,<br>And to envisage circumstance, all calm,<br>That is the top of sovereignty. Mark well!<br>As Heaven and Earth are fairer, fairer far<br>Than Chaos and blank Darkness, though once chiefs;<br>And as we show beyond that Heaven and Earth<br>In form and shape compact and beautiful,<br>In will, in action free, companionship,<br>And thousand other signs of purer life;<br>So on our heels a fresh perfection treads,<br>A power more strong in beauty, born of us<br>And fated to excel us, as we pass<br>In glory that old Darkness: nor are we<br>Thereby more conquer'd, than by us the rule<br>Of shapeless Chaos. Say, doth the dull soil<br>Quarrel with the proud forests it hath fed,<br>And feedeth still, more comely than itself?<br>Can it deny the chiefdom of green groves?<br>Or shall the tree be envious of the dove<br>Because it cooeth, and hath snowy wings<br>To wander wherewithal and find its joys?<br>We are such forest-trees, and our fair boughs<br>Have bred forth, not pale solitary doves,<br>But eagles golden-feather'd, who do tower<br>Above us in their beauty, and must reign<br>In right thereof; for 'tis the eternal law<br>That first in beauty should be first in might:<br>Yea, by that law, another race may drive<br>Our conquerors to mourn as we do now.<br>Have ye beheld the young God of the seas,<br>My dispossessor? Have ye seen his face?<br>Have ye beheld his chariot, foam'd along<br>By noble winged creatures he hath made?<br>I saw him on the calmed waters scud,<br>With such a glow of beauty in his eyes,<br>That it enforc'd me to bid sad farewell<br>To all my empire: farewell sad I took,<br>And hither came, to see how dolorous fate<br>Had wrought upon ye; and how I might best<br>Give consolation in this woe extreme.<br>Receive the truth, and let it be your balm.&quot;</div><div style="margin:10px 0"> Whether through pos'd conviction, or disdain,<br>They guarded silence, when Oceanus<br>Left murmuring, what deepest thought can tell?<br>But so it was, none answer'd for a space,<br>Save one whom none regarded, Clymene;<br>And yet she answer'd not, only complain'd,<br>With hectic lips, and eyes up-looking mild,<br>Thus wording timidly among the fierce:<br>&quot;O Father! I am here the simplest voice,<br>And all my knowledge is that joy is gone,<br>And this thing woe crept in among our hearts,<br>There to remain for ever, as I fear:<br>I would not bode of evil, if I thought<br>So weak a creature could turn off the help<br>Which by just right should come of mighty Gods;<br>Yet let me tell my sorrow, let me tell<br>Of what I heard, and how it made me weep,<br>And know that we had parted from all hope.<br>I stood upon a shore, a pleasant shore,<br>Where a sweet clime was breathed from a land<br>Of fragrance, quietness, and trees, and flowers.<br>Full of calm joy it was, as I of grief;<br>Too full of joy and soft delicious warmth;<br>So that I felt a movement in my heart<br>To chide, and to reproach that solitude<br>With songs of misery, music of our woes;<br>And sat me down, and took a mouthed shell<br>And murmur'd into it, and made melody---<br>O melody no more! for while I sang,<br>And with poor skill let pass into the breeze<br>The dull shell's echo, from a bowery strand<br>Just opposite, an island of the sea,<br>There came enchantment with the shifting wind,<br>That did both drown and keep alive my ears.<br>I threw my shell away upon the sand,<br>And a wave fill'd it, as my sense was fill'd<br>With that new blissful golden melody.<br>A living death was in each gush of sounds,<br>Each family of rapturous hurried notes,<br>That fell, one after one, yet all at once,<br>Like pearl beads dropping sudden from their string:<br>And then another, then another strain,<br>Each like a dove leaving its olive perch,<br>With music wing'd instead of silent plumes,<br>To hover round my head, and make me sick<br>Of joy and grief at once. Grief overcame,<br>And I was stopping up my frantic ears,<br>When, past all hindrance of my trembling hands,<br>A voice came sweeter, sweeter than all tune,<br>And still it cried, 'Apollo! young Apollo!<br>The morning-bright Apollo! young Apollo!'<br>I fled, it follow'd me, and cried 'Apollo!'<br>O Father, and O Brethren, had ye felt<br>Those pains of mine; O Saturn, hadst thou felt,<br>Ye would not call this too indulged tongue<br>Presumptuous, in thus venturing to be heard.&quot;</div><div style="margin:10px 0"> So far her voice flow'd on, like timorous brook<br>That, lingering along a pebbled coast,<br>Doth fear to meet the sea: but sea it met,<br>And shudder'd; for the overwhelming voice<br>Of huge Enceladus swallow'd it in wrath:<br>The ponderous syllables, like sullen waves<br>In the half-glutted hollows of reef-rocks,<br>Came booming thus, while still upon his arm<br>He lean'd; not rising, from supreme contempt.<br>&quot;Or shall we listen to the over-wise,<br>Or to the over-foolish, Giant-Gods?<br>Not thunderbolt on thunderbolt, till all<br>That rebel Jove's whole armoury were spent,<br>Not world on world upon these shoulders piled,<br>Could agonize me more than baby-words<br>In midst of this dethronement horrible.<br>Speak! roar! shout! yell! ye sleepy Titans all.<br>Do ye forget the blows, the buffets vile?<br>Are ye not smitten by a youngling arm?<br>Dost thou forget, sham Monarch of the waves,<br>Thy scalding in the seas? What! have I rous'd<br>Your spleens with so few simple words as these?<br>O joy! for now I see ye are not lost:<br>O joy! for now I see a thousand eyes<br>Wide-glaring for revenge!&quot;---As this he said,<br>He lifted up his stature vast, and stood,<br>Still without intermission speaking thus:<br>&quot;Now ye are flames, I'll tell you how to burn,<br>And purge the ether of our enemies;<br>How to feed fierce the crooked stings of fire,<br>And singe away the swollen clouds of Jove,<br>Stifling that puny essence in its tent.<br>O let him feel the evil he hath done;<br>For though I scorn Oceanus's lore,<br>Much pain have I for more than loss of realms:<br>The days of peace and slumbrous calm are fled;<br>Those days, all innocent of scathing war,<br>When all the fair Existences of heaven<br>Carne open-eyed to guess what we would speak:---<br>That was before our brows were taught to frown,<br>Before our lips knew else but solemn sounds;<br>That was before we knew the winged thing,<br>Victory, might be lost, or might be won.<br>And be ye mindful that Hyperion,<br>Our brightest brother, still is undisgraced---<br>Hyperion, lo! his radiance is here!&quot;</div><div style="margin:10px 0"> All eyes were on Enceladus's face,<br>And they beheld, while still Hyperion's name<br>Flew from his lips up to the vaulted rocks,<br>A pallid gleam across his features stern:<br>Not savage, for he saw full many a God<br>Wroth as himself. He look'd upon them all,<br>And in each face he saw a gleam of light,<br>But splendider in Saturn's, whose hoar locks<br>Shone like the bubbling foam about a keel<br>When the prow sweeps into a midnight cove.<br>In pale and silver silence they remain'd,<br>Till suddenly a splendor, like the morn,<br>Pervaded all the beetling gloomy steeps,<br>All the sad spaces of oblivion,<br>And every gulf, and every chasm old,<br>And every height, and every sullen depth,<br>Voiceless, or hoarse with loud tormented streams:<br>And all the everlasting cataracts,<br>And all the headlong torrents far and near,<br>Mantled before in darkness and huge shade,<br>Now saw the light and made it terrible.<br>It was Hyperion:---a granite peak<br>His bright feet touch'd, and there he stay'd to view<br>The misery his brilliance had betray'd<br>To the most hateful seeing of itself.<br>Golden his hair of short Numidian curl,<br>Regal his shape majestic, a vast shade<br>In midst of his own brightness, like the bulk<br>Of Memnon's image at the set of sun<br>To one who travels from the dusking East:<br>Sighs, too, as mournful as that Memnon's harp<br>He utter'd, while his hands contemplative<br>He press'd together, and in silence stood.<br>Despondence seiz'd again the fallen Gods<br>At sight of the dejected King of day,<br>And many hid their faces from the light:<br>But fierce Enceladus sent forth his eyes<br>Among the brotherhood; and, at their glare,<br>Uprose Iapetus, and Creus too,<br>And Phorcus, sea-born, and together strode<br>To where he towered on his eminence.<br>There those four shouted forth old Saturn's name;<br>Hyperion from the peak loud answered, &quot;Saturn!&quot;<br>Saturn sat near the Mother of the Gods,<br>In whose face was no joy, though all the Gods<br>Gave from their hollow throats the name of &quot;Saturn!&quot;</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br>BOOK III<br>THUS in altemate uproar and sad peace,<br>Amazed were those Titans utterly.<br>O leave them, Muse! O leave them to their woes;<br>For thou art weak to sing such tumults dire:<br>A solitary sorrow best befits<br>Thy lips, and antheming a lonely grief.<br>Leave them, O Muse! for thou anon wilt find<br>Many a fallen old Divinity<br>Wandering in vain about bewildered shores.<br>Meantime touch piously the Delphic harp,<br>And not a wind of heaven but will breathe<br>In aid soft warble from the Dorian flute;<br>For lo! 'tis for the Father of all verse.<br>Flush everything that hath a vermeil hue,<br>Let the rose glow intense and warm the air,<br>And let the clouds of even and of morn<br>Float in voluptuous fleeces o'er the hills;<br>Let the red wine within the goblet boil,<br>Cold as a bubbling well; let faint-lipp'd shells,<br>On sands, or in great deeps, vermilion turn<br>Through all their labyrinths; and let the maid<br>Blush keenly, as with some warm kiss surpris'd.<br>Chief isle of the embowered Cyclades,<br>Rejoice, O Delos, with thine olives green,<br>And poplars, and lawn-shading palms, and beech,<br>In which the Zephyr breathes the loudest song,<br>And hazels thick, dark-stemm'd beneath the shade:<br>Apollo is once more the golden theme!<br>Where was he, when the Giant of the sun<br>Stood bright, amid the sorrow of his peers?<br>Together had he left his mother fair<br>And his twin-sister sleeping in their bower,<br>And in the morning twilight wandered forth<br>Beside the osiers of a rivulet,<br>Full ankle-deep in lilies of the vale.<br>The nightingale had ceas'd, and a few stars<br>Were lingering in the heavens, while the thrush<br>Began calm-throated. Throughout all the isle<br>There was no covert, no retired cave,<br>Unhaunted by the murmurous noise of waves,<br>Though scarcely heard in many a green recess.<br>He listen'd, and he wept, and his bright tears<br>Went trickling down the golden bow he held.<br>Thus with half-shut suffused eyes he stood,<br>While from beneath some cumbrous boughs hard by<br>With solemn step an awful Goddess came,<br>And there was purport in her looks for him,<br>Which he with eager guess began to read<br>Perplex'd, the while melodiously he said:<br>&quot;How cam'st thou over the unfooted sea?<br>Or hath that antique mien and robed form<br>Mov'd in these vales invisible till now?<br>Sure I have heard those vestments sweeping o'er<br>The fallen leaves, when I have sat alone<br>In cool mid-forest. Surely I have traced<br>The rustle of those ample skirts about<br>These grassy solitudes, and seen the flowers<br>Lift up their heads, as still the whisper pass'd.<br>Goddess! I have beheld those eyes before,<br>And their eternal calm, and all that face,<br>Or I have dream'd.&quot;---&quot;Yes,&quot; said the supreme shape,<br>&quot;Thou hast dream'd of me; and awaking up<br>Didst find a lyre all golden by thy side,<br>Whose strings touch'd by thy fingers, all the vast<br>Unwearied ear of the whole universe<br>Listen'd in pain and pleasure at the birth<br>Of such new tuneful wonder. Is't not strange<br>That thou shouldst weep, so gifted? Tell me, youth,<br>What sorrow thou canst feel; for I am sad<br>When thou dost shed a tear: explain thy griefs<br>To one who in this lonely isle hath been<br>The watcher of thy sleep and hours of life,<br>From the young day when first thy infant hand<br>Pluck'd witless the weak flowers, till thine arm<br>Could bend that bow heroic to all times.<br>Show thy heart's secret to an ancient Power<br>Who hath forsaken old and sacred thrones<br>For prophecies of thee, and for the sake<br>Of loveliness new born.&quot;---Apollo then,<br>With sudden scrutiny and gloomless eyes,<br>Thus answer'd, while his white melodious throat<br>Throbb'd with the syllables.---&quot;Mnemosyne!<br>Thy name is on my tongue, I know not how;<br>Why should I tell thee what thou so well seest?<br>Why should I strive to show what from thy lips<br>Would come no mystery? For me, dark, dark,<br>And painful vile oblivion seals my eyes:<br>I strive to search wherefore I am so sad,<br>Until a melancholy numbs my limbs;<br>And then upon the grass I sit, and moan,<br>Like one who once had wings.---O why should I<br>Feel curs'd and thwarted, when the liegeless air<br>Yields to my step aspirant? why should I<br>Spurn the green turf as hateful to my feet?<br>Goddess benign, point forth some unknown thing:<br>Are there not other regions than this isle?<br>What are the stars? There is the sun, the sun!<br>And the most patient brilliance of the moon!<br>And stars by thousands! Point me out the way<br>To any one particular beauteous star,<br>And I will flit into it with my lyre,<br>And make its silvery splendor pant with bliss.<br>I have heard the cloudy thunder: Where is power?<br>Whose hand, whose essence, what divinity<br>Makes this alarum in the elements,<br>While I here idle listen on the shores<br>In fearless yet in aching ignorance?<br>O tell me, lonely Goddess, by thy harp,<br>That waileth every morn and eventide,<br>Tell me why thus I rave about these groves!<br>Mute thou remainest---Mute! yet I can read<br>A wondrous lesson in thy silent face:<br>Knowledge enormous makes a God of me.<br>Names, deeds, gray legends, dire events, rebellions,<br>Majesties, sovran voices, agonies,<br>Creations and destroyings, all at once<br>Pour into the wide hollows of my brain,<br>And deify me, as if some blithe wine<br>Or bright elixir peerless I had drunk,<br>And so become immortal.&quot;---Thus the God,<br>While his enkindled eyes, with level glance<br>Beneath his white soft temples, steadfast kept<br>Trembling with light upon Mnemosyne.<br>Soon wild commotions shook him, and made flush<br>All the immortal fairness of his limbs;<br>Most like the struggle at the gate of death;<br>Or liker still to one who should take leave<br>Of pale immortal death, and with a pang<br>As hot as death's is chill, with fierce convulse<br>Die into life: so young Apollo anguish'd:<br>His very hair, his golden tresses famed,<br>Kept undulation round his eager neck.<br>During the pain Mnemosyne upheld<br>Her arms as one who prophesied. At length<br>Apollo shriek'd;---and lo! from all his limbs<br>Celestial</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br /></a><br />poem by <a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/by.php?a=John+Keats">John Keats</a><div class=q> <img src="https://www.citatepedia.ro/g/32share.png" style="float:left" alt="Share"> <script type="text/javascript" src="//s7.addthis.com/js/300/addthis_widget.js#pubid=citatepedia" async="async"></script><div style="display:inline-block" class="addthis_sharing_toolbox" data-url="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=420971" data-title="Hyperion de John Keats" data-description="BOOK I 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, Sat gray-hair'd Saturn, quiet as a stone, Still as the silence round about his lair; Forest on forest hung above h..."></div> </div> </div>

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