"I ask'd to see what things the hollow brain / Behind environed: what high tragedy / In the dark secret chambers of her skull / Was acting"
— Keats, John (1795-1821)
Author
Work Title
Date
1857
Metaphor
"I ask'd to see what things the hollow brain / Behind environed: what high tragedy / In the dark secret chambers of her skull / Was acting"
Metaphor in Context
Then saw I a wan face,
Not pin'd by human sorrows, but bright-blanch'd
By an immortal sickness which kills not;
It works a constant change, which happy death
Can put no end to; deathwards progressing
To no death was that visage; it had past
The lilly and the snow; and beyond these
I must not think now, though I saw that face--
But for her eyes I should have fled away.
They held me back, with a benignant light,
Soft mitigated by divinest lids
Half-closed, and visionless entire they seem'd
Of all external things;--they saw me not,
But in blank splendor, beam'd like the mild moon,
Who comforts those she sees not, who knows not
What eyes are upward cast. As I had found
A grain of gold upon a mountain's side,
And twing'd with avarice strain'd out my eyes
To search its sullen entrails rich with ore,
So at the view of sad Moneta's brow,
I ask'd to see what things the hollow brain
Behind environed: what high tragedy
In the dark secret chambers of her skull
Was acting, that could give so dread a stress
To her cold lips, and fill with such a light
Her planetary eyes; and touch her voice
With such a sorrow--"Shade of Memory!"--
Cried I, with act adorant at her feet,
"By all the gloom hung round thy fallen house,
"By this last temple, by the golden age,
"By great Apollo, thy dear Foster Child,
"And by thyself, forlorn divinity,
"The pale Omega of a withered race,
"Let me behold, according as thou saidst,
"What in thy brain so ferments to and fro!"
No sooner had this conjuration pass'd
My devout lips, than side by side we stood
(Like a stunt bramble by a solemn pine)
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.
Onward I look'd beneath the gloomy boughs,
And saw, what first I thought an image huge,
Like to the image pedestal'd so high
In Saturn's temple. Then Moneta's voice
Came brief upon mine ear--"So Saturn sat
When he had lost his Realms--" whereon there grew
A power within me of enormous ken
To see as a god sees, and take the depth
Of things as nimbly as the outward eye
Can size and shape pervade. The lofty theme
At those few words hung vast before my mind ,
With half-unravel'd web. I set myself
Upon an eagle's watch, that I might see,
And seeing ne'er forget.
(Canto I, ll. 256-310)
Not pin'd by human sorrows, but bright-blanch'd
By an immortal sickness which kills not;
It works a constant change, which happy death
Can put no end to; deathwards progressing
To no death was that visage; it had past
The lilly and the snow; and beyond these
I must not think now, though I saw that face--
But for her eyes I should have fled away.
They held me back, with a benignant light,
Soft mitigated by divinest lids
Half-closed, and visionless entire they seem'd
Of all external things;--they saw me not,
But in blank splendor, beam'd like the mild moon,
Who comforts those she sees not, who knows not
What eyes are upward cast. As I had found
A grain of gold upon a mountain's side,
And twing'd with avarice strain'd out my eyes
To search its sullen entrails rich with ore,
So at the view of sad Moneta's brow,
I ask'd to see what things the hollow brain
Behind environed: what high tragedy
In the dark secret chambers of her skull
Was acting, that could give so dread a stress
To her cold lips, and fill with such a light
Her planetary eyes; and touch her voice
With such a sorrow--"Shade of Memory!"--
Cried I, with act adorant at her feet,
"By all the gloom hung round thy fallen house,
"By this last temple, by the golden age,
"By great Apollo, thy dear Foster Child,
"And by thyself, forlorn divinity,
"The pale Omega of a withered race,
"Let me behold, according as thou saidst,
"What in thy brain so ferments to and fro!"
No sooner had this conjuration pass'd
My devout lips, than side by side we stood
(Like a stunt bramble by a solemn pine)
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.
Onward I look'd beneath the gloomy boughs,
And saw, what first I thought an image huge,
Like to the image pedestal'd so high
In Saturn's temple. Then Moneta's voice
Came brief upon mine ear--"So Saturn sat
When he had lost his Realms--" whereon there grew
A power within me of enormous ken
To see as a god sees, and take the depth
Of things as nimbly as the outward eye
Can size and shape pervade. The lofty theme
At those few words hung vast before my mind ,
With half-unravel'd web. I set myself
Upon an eagle's watch, that I might see,
And seeing ne'er forget.
(Canto I, ll. 256-310)
Provenance
HDIS
Citation
Keats, John. Complete Poems. Ed. Jack Stillinger. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1982.
Date of Entry
09/19/2003
