HYPERION. 'Hyperion,' a fragmentary epic in blank verse, published in 1820, was begun while Keats was caring for his dying brother and was continued during his strug gles with grief and hopeless love. It is a fragment, yet a masterpiece. The theme, the triumph of the Gods over the Titans, is one of the most august in Greek myth, and the poem, in intensity of feeling and beauty of form, rises to its subject. The poem breaks off in the third book, leaving the hero, ((blazing Hyperion," still unconquered, facing the in evitable triumph of the young Apollo. But in its very incompleteness the fragment is perfect; to end it would have been to weaken it. For the Titans have fallen before °a power more strong in beauty .° In a poem that makes the old myth a symbol of the °eternal law' of the evolution of higher beauty, no such dramatic conflict as that of 'Paradise Lost,' no such triumphant consummation as that of 'Pro metheus Unbound' is possible. Keats made one quickly abandoned attempt to recast the story. 'Hyperion, a Vision' is but a groping
beginning; but the noble lines recording the poet's search for the deeper vision born of suffering remain a poignant promise of the Keats that might have been. Shelley wrote: *If the be not grand poetry, none has been produced by our contemporaries.' It is poetry of an unescapable grandeur. The random course of (Endymion> has given way to clear-cut structure; the romantic heroic couplet to a blank verse Miltonic in stateliness, lovely in melody; the misty fantastic scenes to imagery that is reality wrought of the poet's °natural magic.° And the conquered Titans are depicted with a nobility, a humanity that alone would place at the height of the poetry of Keats. Consult Colvin, Sidney, 'John Keats' (New York 1917) ; de Selincourt, E, Introduction and notes in 'The Poems of John Keats' (London) ; bibliography in (Cambridge History of English Literature' (Vol. XD).