Her winter weeds outworn....
A brighter Hellas rears its mountains
From waves serener far;
A new Peneus rolls its fountains
Against the morning star;
Where fairer Tempes bloom, there sleep
Young Cyclads on a sunnier deep.
Keats never learned the Greek language. But he was read, as perhaps never Englishman was read before, in Greek legend and mythology. He devoured Lemprière’s Dictionary. His greatest poetry—his chief odes, as well as his Hyperion and Endymion—is based on subjects thence acquired. The manners and characters of Greek divinities pervade his writings. In heart and soul, in sensuous enjoyment of life, he was himself a pagan Greek. The life of the ancient world, idealized, was the world of his choice. Above all he loves the sounds uttered
In Grecian isles
By bards who died content on pleasant sward,