Endymion

Endymion is John Keats’s long narrative poem adapting the classical story of a shepherd’s love for a moon goddess. Its opening meditation on beauty leads into a quest through changing landscapes and states of feeling. Sensuous description and flowing couplets give the journey a quality of continual imaginative transformation. Endymion’s aspirations are tested by encounters that draw him beyond solitary longing. The poem’s movement connects ideal beauty with the difficulty of recognizing love and responding to the suffering of others.