"
*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.
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