Apollo

As the god of the sun, Apollo is said to drive his bright chariot across the sky each day bringing light, and comes also to be associated with intellectual light. He is furthermore the patron god of music and poetry–the laurels of the poet laureate and other victors come from his cult association with the laurel tree. Laurels may also represent medicine and prognosis or prophesy, thus affecting the mental, the physical and the divine. It is therefore no surprise that Keats finds Apollo an ideal figure through which to express and investigate his characteristic concerns about the ideal (represented as light) and about the roles of poetry and the poet.