In Keats's magnificent fragment, _Hyperion_, there is a scene in which the whole overthrown race of Titanic gods hold counsel in a dark, underground cavern. Their chief, old Saturn, concludes his despondent speech with the words: "Yet ye are here, O'erwhelm'd and spurred, and batter'd, ye are here! O Titans, shall I say, 'Arise!'--Ye groan: Shall I say 'Crouch!'--Ye groan. What can I then? O Heaven wide! O unseen parent dear! What can I? Tell me, all ye brethren Gods, How we can war, how engine our great wrath!" [Illustration: JOHN KEATS] Then Oceanus, the thoughtful, meditative sea god, rises, shakes his locks, no longer watery, and, in the murmuring voice which his tongue has caught from the break of the waves on the shore, bids the passion-stung deities take comfort from the thought that they have fallen by the course of Nature's law, and not by the force of thunder or of Jove:-- "Great Saturn, thou Hast sifted well the atom-universe; But for this reason, that thou art the King, And only blind from sheer supremacy, One avenue was shaded from thine eyes, Through which I wandered to eternal truth. And first, as thou wast not the first of powers, So art thou not the last; it cannot be: Thou art not the beginning nor the end. From Chaos and parental Darkness came Light, the first fruits of that intestine broil, That sullen ferment, which for wondrous ends Was ripening in itself. The ripe hour came, And with it light, and light engendering Upon its own producer, forthwith touch'd The whole enormous matter into life. Upon that very hour, our parentage, The Heavens and the Earth, were manifest: Then thou first-born, and we the giant race, Found ourselves ruling new and beauteous realms. Now comes the pain of truth, to whom 'tis pain; O folly! for to bear all naked truths, And to envisage circumstance, all calm, That is the top of sovereignty. Mark well! As Heaven and Earth are fairer, fairer far Than Chaos and blank Darkness, though once chiefs; And as we show beyond that Heaven and Earth In form and shape compact and beautiful, In will, in action free, companionship, And thousand other signs of purer life; So on our heels a fresh perfection treads, A power more strong in beauty, born of us And fated to excel us, as we pass In glory that old Darkness: nor are we Thereby more conquer'd, than by us the rule Of shapeless Chaos. Say, doth the dull soil Quarrel with the proud forests it hath fed, And feedeth still, more comely than itself? Can it deny the chiefdom of green groves? Or shall the tree be envious of the dove Because it cooeth, and hath snowy wings To wander wherewithal and find its joys? We are such forest-trees, and our fair boughs Have bred forth, not pale solitary doves,