ou exceedest all things in thy shine,
So every tale does this sweet tale of thine.
Oh for three words of honey that I might
Tell but one wonder of thy bridal night!
Where distant ships do seem to show their keels
Phoebus awhile delayed his mighty wheels,
And turned to smile upon thy bashful eyes
Ere he his unseen pomp would solemnize.
* * * * *
Cynthia, I cannot tell the greater blisses
That followed thine and thy dear shepherd's kisses:
Was there a poet born?"

Readers often go at a skating-pace over passages of this kind, without
very clearly realizing to themselves the gist of the whole matter. I
will therefore put the thing into the most prosaic form, and say that
what Keats substantially intimates here is as follows:--The inventor of
the myth of Artemis and Endymion must have been a poet and lover, who,
standing on the hill of Latmos, and hearing thence a sweet hymn wafted
from the low-lying temple of Artemis, while the pure maiden-like moon
was shining resplendently, felt a pang of pity for this loveless moon or
Artemis, and invented for her a lover in the person of Endymion; and
ever since then the myth has lent additional beauty to the effects,
beautiful as in themselves they are, of moonlight. Without tying down
Keats too rigidly to this view of the genesis of the myth, I may
nevertheless point out that he wholly ignores as participants both the
spirit of religious devoutness, and the device of allegorizing natural
phaenomena: the inventor is simply a poet and lover, who thinks it a
world of pities that such a sweet maiden as Artemis should not have a
lover sooner or later. Invention prompted by warmth of feeling is thus
the sole motive-power recognized. The final phrase "Was there a poet
born?" may without violence be understood as implying, "Ought not the
loves of Artemis and Endymion to beget their poet, and why should not I
be that poet?" At all events, Keats determined that he _would_ be that
poet; and, contemplating the original invention of the myth from the
point of view which we have just analysed, he not unnaturally treated it
from a like point of view. The tale of Diana and Endymion was not to be
a monument of classic antiquity re-stated in the timid, formal spirit of
a school-exercise, but an invention of a poet and lover, who, acting
under the spell of natural beauty, re-informs his theme with poetic
fancy, amorous ardour