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Home  »  The English Poets  »  Extracts from Hyperion: Oceanus

Thomas Humphry Ward, ed. The English Poets. 1880–1918.rnVol. IV. The Nineteenth Century: Wordsworth to Rossetti

John Keats (1795–1821)

Extracts from Hyperion: Oceanus

(From Book II.)

SO ended Saturn; and the God of the Sea,

Sophist and sage, from no Athenian grove,

But cogitation in his watery shades,

Arose, with locks not oozy, and began,

In murmurs, which his first endeavouring tongue

Caught infant-like from the far-foamed sands.

‘O ye, whom wrath consumes! who, passion-stung,

Writhe at defeat, and nurse your agonies!

Shut up your senses, stifle up your ears,

My voice is not a bellows unto ire.

Yet listen, ye who will, whilst I bring proof

How ye, perforce, must be content to stoop:

And in the proof much comfort will I give,

If ye will take that comfort in its truth.

We fall by course of Nature’s law, not force

Of thunder, or of Jove. Great Saturn, thou

Hast sifted well the atom-universe;

But for this reason, that thou art the King,

And only blind from sheer supremacy,

One avenue was shaded from thine eyes,

Through which I wandered to eternal truth.

And first, as thou wast not the first of powers,

So art thou not the last; it cannot be.

Thou art not the beginning nor the end.

From chaos and parental darkness came

Light, the first fruits of that intestine broil,

That sullen ferment, which for wondrous ends

Was ripening in itself. The ripe hour came,

And with it light, and light engendering

Upon its own producer, forthwith touched

The whole enormous matter into life.

Upon that very hour, our parentage,

The Heavens and the Earth, were manifest:

Then thou first-born, and we the giant-race,

Found ourselves ruling new and beauteous realms.

Now comes the pain of truth, to whom ’tis pain;

O folly! for to bear all naked truths,

And to envisage circumstance, all calm,

That is the top of sovereignty. Mark well!

As Heaven and Earth are fairer, fairer far

Than Chaos and blank Darkness, though once chiefs;

And as we show beyond that Heaven and Earth

In form and shape compact and beautiful,

In will, in action free, companionship,

And thousand other signs of purer life;

So on our heels a fresh perfection treads,

A power more strong in beauty, born of us

And fated to excel us, as we pass

In glory that old Darkness: nor are we

Thereby more conquered than by us the rule

Of shapeless Chaos. Say, doth the dull soil

Quarrel with the proud forests it hath fed,

And feedeth still, more comely than itself?

Can it deny the chiefdom of green groves?

Or shall the tree be envious of the dove

Because it cooeth, and hath snowy wings

To wander wherewithal and find its joys?

We are such forest-trees, and our fair boughs

Have bred forth, not pale solitary doves,

But eagles golden-feathered, who do tower

Above us in their beauty, and must reign

In right thereof; for ’tis the eternal law

That first in beauty should be first in might:

Yea, by that law, another race may drive

Our conquerors to mourn as we do now.

Have ye beheld the young God of the Seas,

My dispossessor? Have ye seen his face?

Have ye beheld his chariot, foam’d along

By noble winged creatures he hath made?

I saw him on the calmed waters scud,

With such a glow of beauty in his eyes,

That it enforced me to bid sad farewell

To all my empire: farewell sad I took,

And hither came, to see how dolorous fate

Had wrought upon ye; and how I might best

Give consolation in this woe extreme.

Receive the truth, and let it be your balm.’