After Reading Dante's Episode of Paolo and Francesca, A Dream

by John Keats

As Hermes once took to his feathers light,
When lulled Argus, baffled, swooned and slept,
So on a Delphic reed, my idle spright
So played, so charmed, so conquered, so bereft
The dragon-world of all its hundred eyes;
And seeing it asleep, so fled away,
Not to pure Ida with its snow-cold skies,
Nor unto Tempe, where Jove grieved a day;
But to that second circle of sad Hell,
Where in the gust, the whirlwind, and the flaw
Of rain and hail-stones, lovers need not tell
Their sorrows. Pale were the sweet lips I saw,
Pale were the lips I kissed, and fair the form
I floated with, about that melancholy storm.
 
Being a Dante fan, this poem is fascinating to me.  What is Keats point of writing a poem about a dream about the second circle of the Inferno?  This last semester we discussed somewhat the pitfalls of eros, and the considerable power in the dream of pagan love's beauty, yet so far from the consuming love of God.  I wonder what Keats take on the issue is?