SOURCE: "The Mature Myth: From the Odes through 'The Fall of Hyperion: A Dream'," in From Innocence through Experience: Keats's Myth of the Poet, No. 34, edited by Dr. James Hogg, Institut fur Englische Sprache und Literatur, Universitat Salzburg, 1974, pp. 84-147.

In the following essay, Tate explores how Keats's later poems reinforce his "myth of the poet." Tate explains that several major themes—including identity, "soulmaking," the visionary nature of a poet's quest, the role of the imagination, and the relationship between beauty and truth—exemplify Keats's belief that the role of the poet is to achieve a "mythic understanding of human life."

In the last great year of his productivity, Keats was to write not only the great odes ("Ode to Psyche," "Ode to a Nightingale," "Ode on a Grecian Urn," "Ode on Melancholy," and "To Autumn") but "Lamia" and the fragmentary The Fall of Hyperion: A Dream...