And yet, on casting about
for a reason, we can find that after all and in a certain sense there is
one forthcoming, of some considerable amount of relevancy. In the eyes
of Shelley, Keats was principally and above all the poet of _Hyperion_;
and _Hyperion_ is, strictly speaking, a poem about the sun. In like
manner, _Endymion_ is a poem about the moon. Thus, from one point of
view--I cannot see any other--Keats might be regarded as inspired by, or
a son of, the Muse of Astronomy. A subordinate point of some difficulty
arises from stanza 6, where Adonais is spoken of as 'the nursling of thy
[Urania's] widowhood'--which seems to mean, son of Urania, born after
the father's death. Urania is credited in mythology with the motherhood
of two sons--Linus, her offspring by Amphimacus, who was a son of
Poseidon, and Hymenaeus, her offspring by Apollo. It might be idle to
puzzle over this question of Urania's 'widowhood,' or to attempt to
found upon it (on the assumption that Urania the Muse is referred to)
any theory as to who her deceased consort could have been: for it is as
likely as not that the phrase which I have cited from the poem is not
really intended to define with any sort of precision the parentage of
the supposititious Adonais, but, practically ignoring Adonais, applies
to Keats himself, and means simply that Keats, as the son of the Muse,
was born out of time--born in an unpoetical and unappreciative age.
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