And the Covenantal Ark, With its many mysteries, Cherubim and golden mice.

Bertha was a maiden fair,
Dwelling in th' old Minster-square;
From her fireside she could see,
Sidelong, its rich antiquity,
Far as the' Bishop's garden-wall;
Where sycamores and elm-trees tall,
Full-leaved, the forest had outstript,
By no sharp north-wind ever nipt,
So shelter'd by the mighty pile.
Bertha arose, and read awhile,
With forehead 'gainst the window-pane.
Again she tried, and then again,
Until the dusk eve left her dark
Upon the legend of St. Mark.
From plaited lawn-frill, fine and thin,
She lifted up her soft warm chin,
With aching neck and swimming eyes,
And dazed with saintly imag'ries.

All was gloom, and silent all,
Save now and then the still foot-fall
Of one returning homewards late,
Past the echoing minster-gate.
The clamorous daws, that all the day
Above tree-tops and towers play,
Pair by pair had gone to rest,
Each in its ancient belfry-nest,
Where asleep they fall betimes,
To music and the drowsy chimes.

40

50

60

All was silent, all was gloom,
Abroad and in the homely room:
Down she sat, poor cheated soul!
And struck a lamp from the dismal coal; 70
Lean'd forward, with bright drooping hair
And slant book, full against the glare.
Her shadow, in uneasy guise,
Hover'd about, a giant size,
On ceiling-beam and old oak chair,
The parrot's cage, and panel-square;

And the warm angled winter-screen,
On which were many monsters seen,
Call'd doves of Siam, Lima mice,
And legless birds of Paradise,
Macaw, and tender Avadavat,
And silken-furr'd Angora cat.

Untired she read, her shadow still
Glower'd about, as it would fill

The room with wildest forms and shades,
As though some ghostly queen of spades
Had come to mock behind her back,
And dance, and ruffle her garments black.
Untired she read the legend page,
Of holy Mark, from youth to age,
On land, on sea, in pagan chains,
Rejoicing for his many pains..
Sometimes the learned eremite,
With golden star, or dagger bright,
Referr'd to pious poesies

Written in smallest crow-quill size
Beneath the text; and thus the rhyme
Was parcell'd out from time to time:
'Als writith he of swevenis,

Men han beforne they wake in bliss,

80

90

100

The first mention of Hyperion in Keats's letters occurs in that written on Christmas day, 1818, to his brother and sister in America, in which he says: 'I think you knew before you left England that my next subject would be "the fall of Hyperion." I went on a little with it last night, but it will take some time to get into the vein again. I will not give you any extracts because I wish the whole to make an impression.' He speaks of it a week later as scarce begun.' Again, February 14, 1819, he writes to the same: 'I have not gone on with Hyperion for to tell the truth I have not been in great cue for writing lately I must wait for the spring to rouse me up a little.' In August he told Bailey that he had been writing parts of Hyperion, but it is quite plain that he did little continuous work on it, but was drawn off by his tales and tragedy. From Winchester, September 22, 1819, he writes to Reynolds: 'I have given up Hyperion

there were too many Miltonic inversions in it Miltonic verse cannot be written but in an artful, or, rather, artist's humour. I wish to give myself up to other sensations. English ought to be kept up. It may be interesting to you to pick out some lines from Hyperion, and put a mark to the false beauty proceeding from art, and one to the true voice of feeling. Upon my soul 't was imagination - I cannot make the distinction every now and then there is a Miltonic intonation — but I cannot make the division properly.' From the silence regarding the poem in his after letters, it would appear that he left it at this stage.

That Keats designed a large epic in Hyperion, which was to be in ten books, is plain, but it is also tolerably clear that he abandoned his purpose, for he did not actually forbid the publication of the fragment, though it is doubtful if the whole reason for his action is given in the Publishers' Advertisement to the 1820 volume, containing the poem. 'If any apology be thought necessary,' it is there said, 'for the

appearance of the unfinished poem of Hyperion, the publishers beg to state that they alone are responsible, as it was printed at their particular request, and contrary to the wish of the author. The poem was intended to have been of equal length with Endymion, but the reception given to that work discouraged the author from proceeding.'

Keats's friend Woodhouse, in his interleaved and annotated copy of Endymion, says of Hyperion: The poem if completed would have treated of the dethronement of Hyperion, the former God of the Sun, by Apollo, and incidentally of those of Oceanus by Neptune, of Saturn by Jupiter, etc., and of the war of the Giants for Saturn's reëstablishment, with other events, of which we have but very dark hints in the mythological poets of Greece and Rome.'

It is not impossible that besides the inertia produced by diminution of physical powers, another reason existed for Keats's failure to complete his poem. In the two full books which we have, he had stated so fully and explicitly the underlying thought in his interpretation of the myth that his interest in any delineation of a hopeless struggle might well have been unequal to the task. The speeches successively of Oceanus and Clymene which so enraged Enceladus were the masculine and feminine confessions that as their own supremacy over the antecedent chaos had been due to the law which made order expel disorder, so the supremacy of the new race of gods over them was due to the still further law

'That first in beauty should be first in might.' Nay, more, the vision they have is not of a restoration of the old order, but of the defeat of the new by some still more distant evolution. Another race may drive

Our conquerors to mourn as we do now.'

Of the relation of this poem to Hyperion, a Vision, see the Appendix, where the other fragment is printed.

Had stood a pigmy's height: she would

have ta'en

30

Achilles by the hair and bent his neck;
Or with a finger stay'd Ixion's wheel.
Her face was large as that of Memphian
sphinx,

Pedestal'd haply in a palace-court,
When sages look'd to Egypt for their lore.
But oh! how unlike marble was that face;
How beautiful, if sorrow had not made
Sorrow more beautiful than Beauty's self.
There was a listening fear in her regard,
As if calamity had but begun;
As if the vanward clouds of evil days
Had spent their malice, and the sullen rear
Was with its stored thunder labouring up.
One hand she press'd upon that aching
spot

39

Where beats the human heart, as if just there,

Is Saturn's; tell me, if thou hear'st the voice

101

Of Saturn; tell me, if this wrinkling 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 nurtured to such bursting forth, While Fate seem'd strangled in my nervous grasp?

But it is so; and I am smother'd up,
And buried from all godlike exercise
Of influence benign on planets pale,
Of admonitions to the winds and seas, 109
Of peaceful sway above man's harvesting,
And all those acts which Deity supreme
Doth ease its heart of love in. I am gone
Away from my own bosom: I have left
My strong identity, my real self,
Somewhere between the throne, and where
I sit

Here on this spot of earth. Search, Thea, search!

89

Like natural sculpture in cathedral cavern;
The frozen God still couchant on the earth,
And the sad Goddess weeping at his feet:
Until at length 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

round

Upon all space: space starr'd, and lorn of

light;

Space region'd with life-air, and barren

void;

Spaces of fire, and all the yawn of hell. 120 Search, Thea, search! and tell me if thou

seest

A certain shape or shadow, making way
With wings or chariot fierce to repossess
A heaven he lost erewhile: it must it
must

Be of ripe progress 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 130 Of strings in hollow shells; and there shall be

Beautiful things made new, for the sur

prise

heart;

I know the covert, for thence came I