ength. One may add that a
combat would have been completely alien to the whole idea of the poem as
Keats conceived it, and as, in fact, it is universally interpreted from
the speech of Oceanus in the second book. The resistance of Enceladus
and the Giants, themselves rebels against an order already established,
would have been dealt with summarily, and the poem would have closed
with a description of the new age which had been inaugurated by the
triumph of the Olympians, and, in particular, of Apollo the god of light
and song.'

The central idea, then, of the poem is that the new age triumphs over
the old by virtue of its acknowledged superiority--that intellectual
supremacy makes physical force feel its power and yield. Dignity and
moral conquest lies, for the conquered, in the capacity to recognize the
truth and look upon the inevitable undismayed.

Keats broke the poem off because it was too 'Miltonic', and it is easy
to see what he meant. Not only does the treatment of the subject recall
that of _Paradise Lost_, the council of the fallen gods bearing special
resemblance to that of the fallen angels in Book II of Milton's epic,
but in its style and syntax the influence of Milton is everywhere
apparent. It is to be seen in the restraint and concentration of the
language, which is in marked contrast to the wordiness of Keats's early
work, as well as in the constant use of classical constructions,[247:1]
Miltonic inversions[247:2] and repetitions,[247:3] and in occasional
reminiscences of actual lines and phrases in _Paradise Lost_.[247:4]

In _Hyperion_ we see, too, the influence of the study of Greek
sculpture upon Keats's mind and art. This study had taught him that the
highest beauty is not incompatible with definiteness of form and
clearness of detail. To his romantic appreciation of mystery was now
added an equal sense of the importance of simplicity, form, and
proportion, these being, from its nature, inevitable characteristics of
the art of sculpture. So we see that again and again the figures
described in _Hyperion_ are like great statues--clear-cut, massive, and
motionless. Such are the pictures of Saturn and Thea in Book I, and of
each of the group of Titans at the opening of Book II.

Striking too is Keats's very Greek identification of the gods with the
powers of Nature which they represent. It is this attitude of mind which
has led some people--Shelley and Landor among them--to declare Keats, in
spite