This glorious company
would include no doubt, not only the recorders of great thoughts, or
performers of great deeds, which are still borne in memory although the
names of the authors are forgotten, but also many whose work is as
totally unknown as their names, but who exerted nevertheless a bright
and elevating ascendant over other minds, and who thus conduced to the
greatness of human-kind.
1. 6. _It was for thee_, &c. The synod of the inheritors of unfulfilled
renown here invite Keats to assume possession of a sphere, or
constellation, which had hitherto been 'kingless,' or unappropriated. It
had 'swung blind in unascended majesty': had not been assigned to any
radiant spirit, whose brightness would impart brilliancy to the sphere
itself.
1. 8. _Silent alone amid an heaven of song._ This phrase points
primarily to 'the music of the spheres': the sphere now assigned to
Keats had hitherto failed to take part in the music of its fellows, but
henceforward will chime in. Probably there is also a subsidiary, but in
its context not less prominent meaning--namely, that, while the several
poets (such as Chatterton, Sidney, and Lucan) had each a vocal sphere of
his own, apposite to his particular poetic quality, the sphere which
Keats is now to control had hitherto remained unoccupied because no poet
of that special type of genius which it demanded had as yet appeared.
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