64 Thorpe, op. cit., and G. R. Elliot, “The Real Tragedy of Keats—A Post Centenary View,” PMLA, xxxvi (1921), 315–331.—John Hawley Roberts, in his article, “Poetry of Sensation or of Thought?” PMLA xlv (1930), 1129 ff., expresses the view that Hyperion reflects this conflict, and concludes, also, that Keats' real reason for stopping it was “that he did not honestly believe the idea he was expressing.” But Roberts accepts Garrod's interpretation of Apollo as symbolizing “the humanitarian” in contrast with “the visionary” and takes the meaning of the poem to be “that the poetry of philosophic humanitarianism is better than the poetry of sensation.” This interpretation seems to depend upon a few lines near the end of the poem:
Knowledge enormous makes a God of me,
Names, deeds, grey legends, dire events, rebellions,
(etc. to … hollows of my brain)
The body of the poem, with its careful contrast between the Titan's nature and Apollo's is not taken into account. Moreover, the view requires a rather special reading even of these few lines.
Names, deeds, grey legends, dire events, rebellions
Majesties, sovran voices, agonies,
Creations and destroyings
must be read as signifying solely poetry of thought. Keats' list would hardly appear as exclusive as this. “Grey legends,” for example, would include such poems as The Eve of St. Agnes, and La Belle Dame, and these are specifically cited by Roberts as poems “full of sensuous appeal” and “not humanitarian poems.” The power which makes a God of Apollo is the power of Poetry, not of a special and limited kind of poetry. The conflict reflected in the poem is not so much between two types of poetry (though perhaps this is implied) as between two types of being, and the resolution of the conflict is to an effect quite opposite from what Roberts and others have held it to be. Cf. also his article “The Significance of Lamia,” PMLA, l (1935), 550 ff.
