When this warm scribe, my hand, is in the grave.'

We may admit that the form of these lines is unfortunate; but we cannot
wish them away. They bear most closely upon the innermost argument of
the poem as Keats endeavoured to reshape it. All men, says Keats, have
their visions of reality; but the poet alone can express his, and the
poet himself may at the last prove to have been a fanatic, one who has
imagined 'a paradise for a sect' instead of a heaven for all humanity.

This discovery marks the point of crisis in Keats's development. He is
no longer content to be the singer; his poetry must be adequate to all
experience. No wonder then that the whole of the new Induction centres
about this thought. He describes his effort to fight against an invading
death and to reach the altar in the mighty dream palace. As his foot
touches the altar-step life returns, and the prophetic voice of the
veiled goddess reveals to him that he has been saved by his power 'to
die and live again before Thy fated hour.'

'"None can usurp this height," return'd that shade.
"But those to whom the miseries of the world
Are misery and will not let them rest.
All else who find a haven in the world
Where they may thoughtless sleep away their days,
If by a chance into this fane they come,
Rot on the pavement where thou rottedst half."'

Because he has been mindful of the pain in the world, the poet has been
saved. But the true lovers of humanity,--

'Who love their fellows even to the death,
Who feel the giant agony of the world,'

are greater than the poets; 'they are no dreamers weak.'

'They come not here, they have no thought to come,
And thou art here for thou are less than they.'

It is a higher thing to mitigate the pain of the world than to brood
upon the problem of it. And not only the lover of mankind, but man the
animal is pre-eminent above the poet-dreamer. His joy is joy; his pain,
pain. 'Only the dreamer venoms _all_ his days.' Yet the poet has his
reward; it is given to him to partake of the vision of the veiled
Goddess--memory, Moneta, Mnemosyne, the spirit of the eternal reality
made visible.

'Then saw I a wan face
Not pined by human sorrows, but bright-blanch'd
By an immortal sickness which kills not;
It works a constant change, which happy death
Can put no end to; deathwards progressing
To no death was that visage; it had past
The lily and the snow; and beyond these
I must