Book III

.) quoted on p. 230 of the lecture. The hero is addressing the moon; and he says, to put it baldly, that from his boyhood everything that was beautiful to him was associated with his love of the moon's beauty. The passage continues thus:

On some bright essence could I lean, and lull Myself to immortality: I prest Nature's soft pillow in a wakeful rest. But, gentle Orb! there came a nearer bliss-- My strange love came--Felicity's abyss! She came, and thou didst fade, and fade away.

In spite of the dissimilarities, surely the 'wakeful rest' here corresponds to the condition of the poet in _Alastor_ prior to the dream. 'So long as it is possible for his desires to point towards objects thus infinite and unmeasured, he is joyous and tranquil and self-possessed'; but when his 'strange love' comes these objects, like the objects of Endymion's earlier desires, no longer suffice him.

There is, however, further evidence, indeed positive proof, of the effect of _Alastor_, and especially of its Preface, on Keats's mind. In the revised version of _Hyperion_,