SOURCE: Chayers, Irene H. “Dreamer, Poet, and Poem in The Fall of Hyperion.” Philological Quarterly 46, no. 4 (October 1967): 499-515.

In the following essay, Chayers considers Keats's thematic and stylistic use of the composition of poetry in The Fall of Hyperion. Chayers focuses on the dialogue between the first-person narrator and the priestess Moneta, as well as the passage which reflects on the poet versus dreamer, as a representative example.

                                                            How much toil! How many days! what desperate turmoil! … Ah, what a task! 

—“Sleep and Poetry”

Although Keats's other major poetry has been extensively reinterpreted and revalued in recent years, the critical view of his two unfinished Hyperion poems has been remarkably stable. Now as a generation ago, the earlier Hyperion is likely to be considered the better poem, and the chief attraction for commentators in The Fall of Hyperion continues to be a passage of some seventy-five lines which...