Endymion is a long narrative poem in four books of about one thousand lines each, written mostly in heroic couplets. It is named after its hero, Endymion, a figure taken from Greek myth. According to the legend, Endymion was a shepherd who fell asleep on Mount Latmos and so entranced the goddess of the moon, Cynthia (also known as Diana or Phbe), that she fell in love with him. In Endymion, John Keats transforms this basic story into a lengthy and complicated quest in which Endymion desperately searches for a beautiful and mysterious goddess first glimpsed in a dream.
