Swinburne.

Hyperion, which also ranks among Keats’s great poems, is an unfinished epic.  In a far-off way the subject of the poem reminds us of Paradise Lost.  For here Keats sings of the overthrow of the Titans, or earlier Greek gods, by the Olympians, or later Greek gods, and in the majestic flow of the blank verse we sometimes seem to hear an echo of Milton.

Hyperion, who gives his name to the poem, was the Sun-god who was dethroned by Apollo.  When the poem opens we see the old god Saturn already fallen—­

            “Old Saturn lifted up
    His faded eyes, and saw his kingdom gone,
    And all the gloom and sorrow of the place,
    And that fair kneeling goddess; and then spake,
    As with a palsied tongue, and while his beard
    Shook horrid with such aspen-malady: 
    ’O tender spouse of gold Hyperion,
    Thea, I feel thee ere I see thy face;
    Look up, and let me see our doom in it;
    Look up, and tell me if this feeble shape
    Is Saturn’s; if thou hear’st the voice
    Of Saturn; tell me, if this wrinkled brow,
    Naked and bare of its great diadem,
    Peers like the front of Saturn.  Who had power
    To make me desolate? whence came the strength? 
    How was it nurtur’d to such bursting forth,
    While Fate seem’d strangled in my nervous grasp? 
    But it is so.’”

Saturn is king no more.  Fate willed it so.  But suddenly he rises and in helpless passion cries out against Fate—­

            “Saturn must be King. 
    Yes, there must be a golden victory;
    There must be gods thrown down and trumpets blown

Of triumph calm, and hymns of festival
Upon the gold clouds metropolitan,
Voices of soft proclaim, and silver stir
Of strings in hollow shells; and there shall be
Beautiful things made new, for the surprise
Of the sky-children; I will give command: 
Thea!  Thea!  Thea! where is Saturn?”

The volume containing these and other poems was published in 1820, little more than three years after Keats’s first volume, and never, perhaps, has poet made such strides in so short a time.  And this last book was kindly received.  Success had come to Keats, but young though he still was, the success was too late.  For soon it was seen that his health had gone and that his life’s work was done.  As a last hope his friends advised him to spend the winter in Italy.  So with a friend he set out.  He never returned, but died in Rome in the arms of his friend on the 23rd February 1821.  He was only twenty-six.  Before he died he asked that on his grave should be placed the words, “Here lies one whose name was writ in water.”  He had his wish:  but we, to whom he left his poetry, know that his name is written in the stars.

How Shelley mourned for him you have read.  How the friends who knew and loved him mourned we learn from what they say of him.  “I cannot afford to lose him,” wrote one.  “If I know what it is to love, I truly love John Keats.”  Another says,* “He was the most unselfish of human creatures,” and still another,** “a sweeter tempered man I never knew.”