Poems of John Keats. 23 



It will be observed, that throughout this admirable description there 

 is no labour whatever. The thoughts flow from the poet's pen calmly 

 and naturally ; yet every one has its own place. But what does this 

 divinity say to the fallen monarch? 



'* Saturn, look up ; though wherefore, poor old king? 

 I have no comfort for thee, no, not one : 

 I cannot say, * Oh wherefore sleepest thou ?' 

 For heaven is parted from thee, and the earth 



Knows thee not, thus afflicted, for a god i 



* * * * * 



Saturn, sleep on : oh thoughtless, why did I 

 Thus violate thy slumbrous solitude ? 

 Why should I ope thy melancholy eyes ? 

 Saturn, sleep on, while at thy feet I weep." 



How beautiful is fidelity ! All other attachments but this partake more 

 or less of worldliness, or grow feebler in their decline. Friendship is 

 too often a social compact, based upon self-interest, but forgotten when 

 the links of a mutual advantage are torn asunder. Parental attach- 

 ments lose much of their first tenderness and strength in advancing 

 years, and are gradually obliterated when absence has removed the 

 objects of them. Even love itself, so worshipped, so deified, without 

 which life would become a wilderness, and the heart an aching vo ; d, 

 is never so pure, because devoid of all selfishness, as when it becomes 

 fidelity. And fidelity in distress ! what a proof is it of spiritual devo- 

 tion! superior to all other considerations, unfettered by conventional 

 bonds, unextinguished by poverty, captivity, or pain, and rising 

 higher and firmer in its passive courage, as the breath of misfortune 

 falls heaviest upon it! This noble attachment makes a moralist in 

 love with human nature. For the example of one Malesherbes 

 pleading a persecuted monarch's cause before a set of maniacs, 

 already sharpening the knife for his destruction, or of one Edgeworth, 

 following that monarch to the death, and, in the midst of his savage 

 murderers, calmly offering him the last consolations of religion ; for 

 such an example, who would not pardon all the weakness, and selfish- 

 ness, and vice, of his fellow-creatures? And thus Keats's impersona- 

 tion of fidelity strikes in this instance to the heart. But to return to 

 the picture ; the following is very beautiful : 



" As when upon a tranced summer-night, 

 Those green-rob'd senators of mighty woods, 

 Tall oaks, branch-charmed by the earnest stars, 

 Dream and so dream all night without a stir 

 Save from one gradual solitary gust 

 Which comes upon the silence, and dies off 

 As if the ebbing air had but one wave ; 

 So came these words, and went : the while in tears 

 She bent her fair large forehead to the ground, 

 Just where her fallen hair might be outspread 

 A soft and silken mat for Saturn's feet !" 



Here we shall pause for the present. The remainder of " Hyperion" is 

 an unconnected fragment, apparently intended as the opening of a 

 longer poem, which, if we may judge from the quotations we hava 



