Hyperion

Deep in the shady sadness of a vale,
Far sunken from the healthy breath of morn,
Far from the fiery noon, and eve’s one star,
Sat gray-haired Saturn, quiet as a stone, Still as the silence round about his lair,
In a vast wilderness of thorny weeds, And of such bitter grapes, as were borne
By his great life, he has known the dark sea.

He sat as in a dream, upon a rock,
Admitting dark things from the deepening shade. It could not be, yet, conquer to have known
A softened beast, or beauty’s smile of grace.

— Hyperion

• John Keats