SUPPLEMENTARY VERSE
The collection which follows is not intended to be taken exactly as containing the leavings of Keats's genius; there are verses in the previous groups which might be placed here, if the intention was to make a marked division between his well-defined poetry and his experiments and mere scintillations; doubtless, too, on any such principle it would be just to take back into the respectability of larger type some of the lines here included. But it seemed wise to put into a subordinate group the poet's fragmentary and posthumous poems, and those which were plainly the mere playthings of his muse.
I. HYPERION: A VISION
Contributed by Lord Houghton to the third volume of the Bibliographical and Historical Miscellanies of the Philobiblion Society, 1856-1857. Lord Houghton afterward included it in a new edition of The Life and Letters of John Keats, 1867. He also printed it in the Aldine edition of 1876, where he recorded it as an early version of the poem. But Mr. Colvin quotes from Brown's MS.: 'In the evenings [of November and December, 1819] at his own desire, he occupied a separate apartment, and was deeply engaged in remodeling the fragment of Hyperion into the form of a Vision.' This attempt may well have added to Keats's reluctance to permit the fragmentary Hyperion to appear in the 1820 volume. For a full discussion of the question see the Appendix in John Keats by Sidney Colvin.
Canto I
Fanatics have their dreams, wherewith they weave
A paradise for a sect; the savage, too,
From forth the loftiest fashion of his sleep
Guesses at heaven; pity these have not
Trac'd upon vellum or wild Indian leaf
The shadows of melodious utterance,
But bare of laurel they live, dream, and die;
For Poesy alone can tell her dreams,—
With the fine spell of words alone can save
Imagination from the sable chain10
And dumb enchantment. Who alive can say,
'Thou art no Poet—may'st not tell thy dreams'?
Since every man whose soul is not a clod
Hath visions and would speak, if he had loved,
And been well nurtured in his mother tongue.
Whether the dream now purpos'd to rehearse
Be poet's or fanatic's will be known
When this warm scribe, my hand, is in the grave.
Methought I stood where trees of every clime,
Palm, myrtle, oak, and sycamore, and beech,20
With plantane and spice-blossoms, made a screen,
In neighbourhood of fountains (by the noise
Soft-showering in mine ears), and (by the touch
Of scent) not far from roses. Twining round
I saw an arbour with a drooping roof
Of trellis vines, and bells, and larger blooms,
Like floral censers, swinging light in air;
Before its wreathed doorway, on a mound
Of moss, was spread a feast of summer fruits,
Which, nearer seen, seem'd refuse of a meal30
By angel tasted or our Mother Eve;
For empty shells were scatter'd on the grass,
And grapestalks but half-bare, and remnants more
Sweet-smelling, whose pure kinds I could not know.
Still was more plenty than the fabled horn
Thrice emptied could pour forth at banqueting,
For Proserpine return'd to her own fields,
Where the white heifers low. And appetite,
More yearning than on earth I ever felt,
Growing within, I ate deliciously,—40
And, after not long, thirsted; for thereby
Stood a cool vessel of transparent juice
Sipp'd by the wander'd bee, the which I took,
And pledging all the mortals of the world,
And all the dead whose names are in our lips,
Drank. That full draught is parent of my theme.
