<div style="background:#fff;border:#bbb dashed 1px;padding:5px"><a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=420972" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><div style="margin:10px 0"><strong>Hyperion. Book I</strong></div><div style="margin:10px 0">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>'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.'</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>'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?'<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.--'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?'--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">'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.'<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: '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.'--<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 'Hush!'<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>'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.'--<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 /></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=420972" data-title="Hyperion. Book I de John Keats" data-description="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 his head ..."></div> </div> </div>

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