Also Read
Golden his hair.....silence stood. (Book II, Lines 371—378)
Summary
These lines contain a picture of Hyperion, the sun-god. The only dethroned Titan looks majestic when he stands on a granite peak among the fallen gods. His hair are golden. They are curly like the hair of the negroes. His shadow is like the shadow of Memnon’s statue at sunset, a statue that is believed to produce sweet melodies as the first rays of sun touch it, but by sunset the sounds become sad. Hyperion, as he resembles. the Memnon’s statue at sunset, is uttering mournful sighs at the fall of Titans and at his own fast-approaching doom.
Critical Analysis
This picture of Hyperion is one of the masterpieces of Keats’s word-paintings, but Herbert Read feels that this is not the true voice of Keats’s feeling, and that Keats has - borrowed the voice of another poet to give a panorama of such jeweled epithets in this vivid word-painting.
Note: Numidian curl: the curly pair of the? negroes, Numidia being the name of a country in North Africa.