Chapter IV: Part 4

1. 21. _John Keats died ... in his twenty-fourth year, on the [23rd] of [February]_ 1821. Keats, at the time of his death, was not really in his twenty-fourth, but in his twenty-sixth year: the date of his birth was 31 October, 1795. In the Pisa edition of _Adonais_ the date of death is given thus--'the----of----1821': for Shelley, when he wrote his preface, had no precise knowledge of the facts. In some later editions, 'the 27th of December 1820' was erroneously substituted. Shelley's mistake in supposing that Keats, in 1821, was aged only twenty-three, may be taken into account in estimating his previous observation, 'I consider the fragment of _Hyperion_ as second to nothing that was ever produced by a writer of the same years.' Keats, writing in August, 1820, had told Shelley (see p. 17) that some of his poems, perhaps including _Hyperion_, had been written 'above two years' preceding that date. If Shelley supposed that Keats was twenty-three years old at the beginning of 1821, and that _Hyperion_ had been written fully two years prior to August, 1820, he must have accounted that poem to be the product of a youth of twenty, or at most twenty-one, which would indeed be a marvellous instance of precocity. As a matter of fact, _Hyperion_ was written by Keats when in his twenty-fourth year. This diminishes the marvel, but does not make Shelley's comment on the poem any the less correct.

1. 22. _Was buried in the romantic and lonely cemetery of the Protestants in that city, under the pyramid which is the tomb of Cestius._ As to the burial of the ashes of Shelley himself in a separate portion of the same cemetery, see p. 23. Shelley lies nearer than Keats to the pyramid of C. Cestius.

1. 33. _The savage criticism on his_ Endymion _which appeared in the_ Quarterly Review. As to this matter see the prefatory Memoirs of Shelley and of Keats, and especially, at p. 39 &c., a transcript of the criticism.

1. 35. _The agitation thus originated ended in the rupture of a blood vessel in the lungs._ See pp. 27 and 37, The _Quarterly_ critique was published in September 1818, and the first rupture of a blood-vessel occurred in February 1820. Whether the mortification felt by Keats at the critique was small (as is now generally opined) or great (as Shelley thought), it cannot reasonably be propounded that this caused, or resulted in, the rupture of the pulmonary blood-vessel. Keats belonged to a consumptive family; his mother died of consumption, and also his younger brother: and the preliminaries of his mortal illness (even if we do not date them farther back, for which some reason appears) began towards the middle of July 1818, when, in very rough walking in the Island of Mull, he caught a severe and persistent attack of sore throat.

1. 37. _The succeeding acknowledgments, from more candid critics, of the true greatness of his powers._ The notice here principally referred to is probably that which appeared in the _Edinburgh Review_ in August 1820, written by Lord Jeffrey.

1. 42. _Whether the poisoned shaft lights on a heart made callous by many blows._ Shelley, in this expression, has no doubt himself in view. He had had serious reason for complaining of the treatment meted out to him by the _Quarterly Review_: see the opening (partially cited at p. 17) of his draft-letter to the Editor.

1. 44. _One of their associates is, to my knowledge, a most base and unprincipled calumniator._ Shelley here refers to the writer of the critique in the _Quarterly Review_ of his poem _Laon and Cythna (The Revolt of Islam)_. At first he supposed the writer to be Southey; afterwards, the Rev. Mr. (Dean) Milman. His indignant phrase is therefore levelled at Milman. But Shelley was mistaken, for the article was in fact written by Mr. (afterwards Judge) Coleridge.

1. 46. _Those who had celebrated with various degrees of complacency and panegyric_ Paris, _and_ Woman, _and_ A Syrian Tale, _and Mrs. Lefanu, and Mr. Barrett, and Mr. Howard Payne._ I presume that most readers of the present day are in the same position as I was myself--that of knowing nothing about these performances and their authors. In order to understand Shelley's allusion, I looked up the _Quarterly Review_ from April 1817 to April 1821, and have ascertained as follows, (1) The _Quarterly_ of April 1817 contains a notice of _Paris in 1815, a Poem_. The author's name is not given, nor do I know it. The poem, numbering about a thousand lines, is in the Spenserian stanza, varied by the heroic metre, and perhaps by some other rhythms. Numerous extracts are given, sufficient to show that the poem is at any rate a creditable piece of writing. Some of the critical dicta are the following:--'The work of a powerful and poetic imagination.... The subject of the poem is a desultory walk through Paris, in which the author observes, with very little regularity but--with great force, on the different objects which present themselves.... Sketching with the hand of a master.... In a strain of poetry and pathos which we have seldom seen equalled.... An admirable mirable poet.' (2) _Woman_ is a poem by the Mr. Barrett whom Shelley names, termed on the title-page 'the Author of _The Heroine._' It was noticed in the _Quarterly_ for April 1818, the very same number which contained the sneering critique of _Endymion_. This poem is written in the heroic metre; and the extracts given do certainly comprise some telling and felicitous lines. Such are--

'The beautiful rebuke that looks surprise. The gentle vengeance of averted eyes;'

also (a line which has borne, and may yet bear, frequent re-quoting)

'Last at his cross, and earliest at his grave.'

For critical utterances we have the ensuing:--'A strain of patriotism pure, ardent, and even sublime.... Versification combining conciseness and strength with a considerable degree of harmony.... Both talent and genius.... Some passages of it, and those not a few, are of the first order of the pathetic and descriptive.' (3) _A Syrian Tale._ Of this book I have failed to find any trace in the _Quarterly Review_, or in the Catalogue of the British Museum. (4) Mrs. Lefanu. Neither can I trace this lady in the _Quarterly_. Mrs. Alicia Lefanu, who is stated to have been a sister of Richard Brinsley Sheridan, and also her daughter, Miss Alicia Lefanu, published books during the lifetime of Shelley. The former printed _The Flowers, a Fairy Tale_, 1810, and _The Sons of Erin, a Comedy_, 1812. To the latter various works are assigned, such as _Rosard's Chain, a Poem_. (5) Mr. John Howard Payne was author of _Brutus, or the Fall of Tarquin, an Historical Tragedy_, criticized in the _Quarterly_ for April, 1820. I cannot understand why Shelley should have supposed this criticism to be laudatory: it is in fact unmixed censure. As thus:--'He appears to us to have no one quality which we should require in a tragic poet.... We cannot find in the whole play a single character finely conceived or rightly sustained, a single incident well managed, a single speech--nay a single sentence--of good poetry.' It is true that the same article which reviews Payne's _Brutus_ notices also, and with more indulgence, Sheil's _Evadne_: possibly Shelley glanced at the article very cursorily, and fancied that any eulogistic phrases which he found in it applied to Payne.

1. 51. _A parallel between the Rev. Mr. Milman and Lord Byron._ I have not succeeded in finding this parallel. The _Quarterly_ _Review_ for July 1818 contains a critique of Milman's poem, _Samor, Lord of the Bright City_; and the number for May 1820, a critique of Milman's _Fall of Jerusalem_. Neither of these notices draws any parallel such as Shelley speaks of.

1. 52. _What gnat did they strain at here_. The word 'here' will be perceived to mean 'in _Endymion_,' or 'in reference to _Endymion_'; but it is rather far separated from its right antecedent.

1. 59. _The circumstances of the closing scene of poor Keats's life were not made known to me until the Elegy was ready for the press_. See p. 22.

1. 63. _The poor fellow seems to have been hooted from the stage of life, no less by those on whom he had wasted the promise of his genius than those on whom he had lavished his fortune and his care_. This statement of Shelley is certainly founded upon a passage in the letter (see p. 22) addressed by Colonel Finch to Mr. Gisborne. Colonel Finch said that Keats had reached Italy, 'nursing a deeply rooted disgust to life and to the world, owing to having been infamously treated by the very persons whom his generosity had rescued from want and woe.' The Colonel's statement seems (as I have previously intimated) to be rather haphazard; and Shelley's recast of it goes to a further extreme.

1. 68. _'Almost risked his own life'_ &c. The substance of the words in inverted commas is contained in Colonel Finch's letter, but Shelley does not cite verbatim.

* * * * *

+Stanza 1,+ 1. 1. _I weep for Adonais--he is dead._ Modelled on the opening of Bion's Elegy for Adonis. See p. 63.

1. 3. _The frost which binds so dear a head_: sc. the frost of death.

11. 4, 5. _And thou, sad Hour,... rouse thy obscure compeers._ The compeers are clearly the other Hours. Why they should be termed 'obscure' is not quite manifest. Perhaps Shelley means that the weal or woe attaching to these Hours is obscure or uncertain; or perhaps that they are comparatively obscure, undistinguished, as not being marked by any such conspicuous event as the death of Adonais.

11. 8, 9. _His fate and fame shall be An echo and a light unto eternity._ By 'eternity' we may here understand, not absolute eternity as contradistinguished from time, but an indefinite space of time, the years and the centuries. His fate and fame shall be echoed on from age to age, and shall be a light thereto.

+Stanza 2,+ 1. 1. _Where wert thou, mighty Mother._ Aphrodite Urania. See pp. 51, 52. Shelley constantly uses the form 'wert' instead of 'wast.' This phrase may be modelled upon two lines near the opening of Milton's _Lycidas_--

'Where were ye, nymphs, when the remorseless deep Closed o'er the head of your loved Lycidas?'

1. 2. _The shaft which flies In darkness._ As Adonis was mortally wounded by a boar's tusk, so (it is here represented) was Adonais slain by an insidiously or murderously launched dart: see p. 49. The allusion is to the truculent attack made upon Keats by the _Quarterly Review_. It is true that 'the shaft which flies in darkness' might be understood in merely a general sense, as the mysterious and unforeseen arrow of Death: but I think it clear that Shelley used the phrase in a more special sense.

1. 4. _With veiled eyes_, &c. Urania is represented as seated in her paradise (pleasure-ground, garden-bower), with veiled eyes-- downward-lidded, as in slumber: an Echo chaunts or recites the 'melodies,' or poems, which Adonais had composed while Death was rapidly advancing towards him: Urania is surrounded by other Echoes, who hearken, and repeat the strain. A hostile reviewer might have been expected to indulge in one of the most familiar of cheap jokes, and to say that Urania had naturally fallen asleep over Keats's poems: but I am not aware that any critic of _Adonais_ did actually say this. The phrase, 'one with soft enamoured breath,' means 'one of the Echoes'; this is shown in stanza 22, 'all the Echoes whom _their sister's song_.'

+Stanza 3,+ 11. 6, 7. _For he is gone where all things wise and fair Descend._ Founded on Bion (p. 64), 'Persephone,... all lovely things drift down to thee.'

1. 7, _The amorous deep._ The depth of earth, or region of the dead; amorous, because, having once obtained possession of Adonais, it retains him in a close embrace, and will not restore him to the land of the living. This passage has a certain analogy to that of Bion (p. 65), 'Not that he is loth to hear, but that the maiden of Hades will not let him go.'

+Stanza 4,+ 1. 1. _Most musical of mourners._ This phrase, applying to Urania, is one of those which might seem to favour the assumption that the deity here spoken of is the Muse Urania, and not Aphrodite Urania, But on this point see pp. 50 to 52.

1. 1. _Weep again._ The poem seems to indicate that Urania, slumbering, is not yet aware of the death of Adonais. Therefore she cannot as yet have wept for his death: but she may have wept in anticipation that he would shortly die, and thus can be now adjured to 'weep _again_.' (See also p. 143.)

1. 2. _He died._ Milton.

1. 4. _When his country's pride,_ &c. Construe: When the priest, the slave, and the liberticide, trampled his country's pride, and mocked [it] with many a loathèd rite of lust and blood. This of course refers to the condition of public affairs and of court-life in the reign of Charles II. The inversion in this passage is not a very serious one, although, for the sense, slightly embarrassing. Occasionally Shelley conceded to himself great latitude in inversion: as for instance in the _Revolt of Islam_, canto 3, st. 34,

'And the swift boat the little waves which bore Were cut by its keen keel, though slantingly,'

which means 'And the little waves, which bore the swift boat, were cut,' &c.; also in the _Ode to Naples_, strophe 4,

'Florence, beneath the sun,
Of cities fairest one,
Blushes within her bower for Freedom's expectation.'

1. 8. _His clear sprite._ To substitute the word 'sprite' for 'spirit,' in an elevated passage referring to Milton, appears to me one of the least tolerable instances of make-rhyme in the whole range of English poetry. 'Sprite' is a trivial and distorted misformation of 'spirit'; and can only, I apprehend, be used with some propriety (at any rate, in modern poetry) in a more or less bantering sense. The tricksy elf Puck may be a sprite, or even the fantastic creation Ariel; but neither Milton's Satan nor Milton's Ithuriel, nor surely Milton himself, could possibly be a sprite, while the limits of language and of common sense are observed.

1. 9. _The third among the Sons of Light._ At first sight this phrase might seem to mean 'the third-greatest poet of the world': in which case one might suppose Homer and Shakespear to be ranked as the first and second. But it may be regarded as tolerably clear that Shelley is here thinking only of _epic_ poets; and that he ranges the epic poets according to a criterion of his own, which is thus expressed in his _Defence of Poetry_ (written in the same year as _Adonais_, 1821): 'Homer was the first and Dante the second epic poet; that is, the second poet the series of whose creations bore a defined and intelligible relation to the knowledge and sentiment and religion of the age in which he lived, and of the ages which followed it--developing itself in correspondence with their development....Milton was the third epic poet.' The poets whom Shelley admired most were probably Homer, Aeschylus, Sophocles, Lucretius, Dante, Shakespear, and Milton; he took high delight in the _Book of Job_, and presumably in some other poetical books of the Old Testament; Calderon also he prized greatly; and in his own time Goethe, Byron, and (on some grounds) Wordsworth and Coleridge.

+Stanza 5,+ 1. 2. _Not all to that bright station dared to climb._ The conception embodied in the diction of this stanza is not quite so clear as might be wished. The first statement seems to amount to this--That some poets, true poets though they were, did not aspire so high, nor were capable of reaching so high, as Homer, Dante, and Milton, the typical epic poets. A statement so obviously true that it hardly extends, in itself, beyond a truism. But it must be read as introductory to what follows.

1. 3. _And happier they their happiness who knew._ Clearly a recast of the phrase of Vergil,

'O fortunati nimium sua si bona nôrint Agricolae.'

But Vergil speaks of men who did not adequately appreciate their own happiness; Shelley (apparently) of others who did so. He seems to intimate that the poetical temperament is a happy one, in the case of those poets who, unconcerned with the greatest ideas and the most arduous schemes of work, pour forth their 'native wood-notes wild.' I think it possible however that Shelley intended, his phrase to be accepted with the same meaning as Vergil's--'happier they, supposing they had known their happiness.' In that case, the only reason implied why these minor poets were the happier is that their works have endured the longer.

11. 4, 5. _Whose tapers yet burn through that night of time In which suns perished._ Shelley here appears to say that the minor poets have left works which survive, while some of the works of the very greatest poets have disappeared: as, for instance, his own lyrical models in _Adonais_, Bion and Moschus, are still known by their writings, while many of the master-pieces of Aeschylus and Sophocles are lost. Some _tapers_ continue to burn; while some _suns_ have perished.

11. 5-7. _Others more sublime, Struck by the envious wrath of man or God, Have sunk, extinct in their refulgent prime._ These others include Keats (Adonais) himself, to whom the phrase, 'struck by the envious wrath of man,' may be understood as more peculiarly appropriated. And generally the 'others' may be regarded as nearly identical with 'the inheritors of unfulfilled renown' who appear (some of them pointed out by name) in stanza 45. The word God is printed in the Pisan edition with a capital letter: it may be questioned whether Shelley meant to indicate anything more definite than 'some higher power--Fate.'

11. 8, 9. _And some yet live, treading the thorny road Which leads, through toil and hate, to Fame's serene abode._ Byron must be supposed to be the foremost among these; also Wordsworth and Coleridge; and doubtless Shelley himself should not he omitted.

+Stanza 6,+ 1. 2. _The nursling of thy widowhood._ As to this expression see p. 51. I was there speaking only of the Muse Urania; but the observations are equally applicable to Aphrodite Urania, and I am unable to carry the argument any further.

11. 3, 4. _Like a pale flower by some sad maiden cherished, And fed with true love tears instead of dew._ It seems sufficiently clear that Shelley is here glancing at a leading incident in Keats's poem of _Isabella, or the Pot of Basil_, founded upon a story in Boccaccio's _Decameron_. Isabella unburies her murdered lover Lorenzo; preserves his head in a pot of basil; and (as expressed in st. 52 of the poem)

'Hung over her sweet basil evermore, And moistened it with tears unto the core.'

I give Shelley's words 'true love tears' as they appear in the Pisan edition: 'true-love tears' might be preferable.

1. 9. _The broken lily lies--the storm is overpast._ As much as to say: the storm came, and shattered the lily; the storm has now passed away, but the lily will never revive.

+Stanza 7,+ 1. i. _To that high Capital where kingly Death_, &c. The Capital is Rome (where Keats died). Death is figured as the King of Rome, who there 'keeps his pale court in beauty and decay,'--amid the beauties of nature and art, and amid the decay of monuments and institutions.

11. 3, 4. _And bought, with price of purest breath, A grave among the eternal._ Keats, dying in Rome, secured sepulture among the many illustrious persons who are there buried. This seems to be the only meaning of 'the eternal' in the present passage: the term does not directly imply (what is sufficiently enforced elsewhere) Keats's own poetic immortality.

1. 4. _Come away!_ This call is addressed in fancy to any persons present in the chamber of death. They remain indefinite both to the poet and to the reader. The conclusion of the stanza, worded with great beauty and delicacy, amounts substantially to saying--'Take your last look of the dead Adonais while he may still seem to the eye to be rather sleeping than dead.'

1. 7. _He lies as if in dewy sleep he lay._ See Bion (p. 64), 'Beautiful in death, as one that hath fallen on sleep.' The term 'dewy sleep' means probably 'sleep which refreshes the body as nightly dew refreshes the fields.' This phrase is followed by the kindred expression 'liquid rest.'

+Stanza 8,+ 1. 3. _The shadow of white Death_, &c. The use of 'his' and 'her' in this stanza is not wholly free from ambiguity. In st. 7 Death was a male impersonation--'kingly Death' who 'keeps his pale court.' It may be assumed that he is the same in the present stanza. Corruption, on the other hand, is a female impersonation: she (not Death) must be the same as 'the eternal Hunger,' as to whom it is said that 'pity and awe soothe _her_ pale rage.' Premising this, we read:--'Within the twilight chamber spreads apace the shadow of white Death, and at the door invisible Corruption waits to trace his [Adonais's] extreme way to her [Corruption's] dim dwelling-place; the eternal Hunger [Corruption] sits [at the door], but pity and awe soothe her pale rage, nor dares she,' &c. The unwonted phrase 'his extreme way' seems to differ in meaning little if at all from the very ordinary term 'his last journey.' The statement in this stanza therefore is that corruption does not assail Adonais lying on his deathbed; but will shortly follow his remains to the grave, the dim [obscure, lightless] abode of corruption itself.

11. 8, 9. _Till darkness and the law Of change shall o'er his sleep the mortal curtain draw._ Until the darkness of the grave and the universal law of change and dissolution shall draw the curtain of death over his sleep--shall prove his apparent sleep to be veritable death. The prolonged interchange in _Adonais_ between the ideas of death and of sleep may remind us that Shelley opened with a similar contrast or approximation his first considerable (though in part immature) poem _Queen Mab_--

'How wonderful is Death,-- Death, and his brother Sleep!' &c.

The mind may also revert to the noble passage in Byron's _Giaour_--

'He who hath bent him o'er the dead Ere the first day of death is fled,' &c.--

though the idea of actual sleep is not raised in this admirably beautiful and admirably realistic description. Perhaps the poem, of all others, in which the conception of death is associated with that of sleep with the most poignant pathos, is that of Edgar Poe entitled _For Annie_--

'Thank Heaven, the crisis,
The danger, is past,
And the lingering illness
Is over at last,
And the fever called living
Is conquered at last,' &c.--

where real death is spoken of throughout, in a series of exquisite and thrilling images, as being real sleep. In Shelley's own edition of _Adonais_, the lines which we are now considering are essentially different. They run

'Till darkness and the law
Of mortal change shall fill the grave which is her maw.'

This is comparatively poor and rude. The change to the present reading was introduced by Mrs. Shelley in her edition of Shelley's Poems in 1839. She gives no information as to her authority: but there can be no doubt that at some time or other Shelley himself made the improvement. See p. 33.

+Stanza 9,+ 1. i. _The quick Dreams._ With these words begins a passage of some length, which is closely modelled upon the passage of Bion (p. 64), 'And around him the Loves are weeping,' &c.: modelled upon it, and also systematically transposed from it. The transposition goes on the same lines as that of Adonis into Adonais, and of the Cyprian into the Uranian Aphrodite; i.e. the personal or fleshly Loves are spiritualized into Dreams (musings, reveries, conceptions) and other faculties or emotions of the mind. It is to be observed, moreover, that the trance of Adonis attended by Cupids forms an incident in Keats's own poem of _Endymion_, book ii--

'For on a silken couch of rosy pride, In midst of all, there lay a sleeping youth Of fondest beauty; fonder, in fair sooth, Than sighs could fathom or contentment reach.

* * * * *

... Hard by Stood serene Cupids, watching silently. One, kneeling to a lyre, touched the strings, Muffling to death the pathos with his wings, And ever and anon uprose to look At the youth's slumber; while another took A willow-bough distilling odorous dew, And shoot it on his hair; another flew In through the woven roof, and fluttering-wise Rained violets upon his sleeping eyes.'

1. 2. _The passion-winged ministers of thought._ The 'Dreams' are here defined as being thoughts (or ministers of thought) winged with passion; not mere abstract cogitations, but thoughts warm with the heart's blood, emotional conceptions--such thoughts as subserve the purposes of poetry, and enter into its structure: in a word, poetic thoughts.

1. 3. _Who were his flocks_, &c. These Dreams were in fact the very thoughts of Adonais, as conveyed in his poems. He being dead, they cannot assume new forms of beauty in any future poems, and cannot be thus diffused from mind to mind, but they remain mourning round their deceased herdsman, or master. It is possible that this image of a flock and a herdsman is consequent upon the phrase in the Elegy of Moschus for Bion--'Bion the herdsman is dead' (p. 65).

+Stanza 10,+ 1. 2. _And fans him with her moonlight wings._ See Bion (p. 65), 'and another, from behind him, with his wings is fanning Adonis.' The epithet 'moonlight' may indicate either delicacy of colour, or faint luminosity--rather the latter,

1. 6. _A tear some Dream has loosened from his brain._ I follow Shelley's edition in printing Dream with a capital letter. I do not however think this helpful to the right sense. The capitalized Dream might appear to be one of those impersonated Dreams to whom these stanzas relate: but in the present line the word 'dream' would be more naturally construed as meaning simply 'thought, mental conception.'

1. 7. _Lost angel of a ruined paradise._ The ruined paradise is the mind, now torpid in death, of Adonais. The 'Dream' which has been speaking is a lost angel of this paradise, in the sense of being a messenger or denizen of the mind of Adonais, incapacitated for exercising any further action: indeed, the Dream forthwith fades, and is for ever extinct.

1. 8. _With no stain._ Leaving no trace behind. The rhyme has entailed the use of the word 'stain,' which is otherwise a little arbitrary in this connexion.

1. 9. _She faded, like a cloud which had outwept its rain._ A rain-cloud which has fully discharged its rain would no longer constitute a cloud--it would be dispersed and gone. The image is therefore a very exact one for the Dream which, having accomplished its function and its life, now ceases to be. There appears to be a further parallel intended--between the Dream whose existence closes in a _tear_, and the rain-cloud which has discharged its _rain_: this is of less moment, and verges upon a conceit. This passage in _Adonais_ is not without some analogy to one in Keats's _Endymion_ (quoted on p. 42)--

'Therein A melancholy spirit well might win Oblivion, and melt out his essence fine Into the winds.'

Stanza 11+ 11. 1, 2. _One from a lucid urn of starry dew Washed his light limbs, as if embalming them._ See the passage from Bion (p. 64), 'One in a golden vessel bears water, and another laves the wound.' The expression 'starry dew' is rather peculiar: the dew may originally have 'starred' the grass, but, when collected into an urn, it must have lost this property: perhaps we should rather understand, nocturnal dew upon which the stars had been shining. It is difficult to see how the act of washing the limbs could simulate the process of embalming.

1. 3. _Another clipt her profuse locks._ See Bion (p. 64), 'clipping their locks for Adonis.' 'Profuse' is here accented on the first syllable; although indeed the line can be read with the accent, as is usual, on the second syllable.

11. 3-5. _And threw The wreath upon him like an anadem Which frozen tears instead of pearls begem._ The wreath is the lock of hair--perhaps a plait or curl, for otherwise the term wreath is rather wide of the mark. The idea that the tears shed by this Dream herself (or perhaps other Dreams) upon the lock are 'frozen,' and thus stand in lieu of pearls upon an anadem or circlet, seems strained, and indeed incongruous: one might wish it away.

11. 6, 7. _Another in her wilful grief would break Her bow and wingèd reeds._ Follows Bion closely--'And one upon his shafts, another on his bow, is treading' (p. 64). This is perfectly appropriate for the Loves, or Cupids: not equally so for the Dreams, for it is not so apparent what concern they have with bows and arrows. These may however be 'winged thoughts' or 'winged words'--[Greek: epea pteroenta]. Mr. Andrew Lang observes (Introduction to his Theocritus volume), 'In one or other of the sixteen Pompeian pictures of Venus and Adonis, the Loves are breaking their bows and arrows for grief, as in the hymn of Bion.'

11. 7, 8. _As if to stem A greater loss with one which was more weak._ 'To stem a loss' is a very lax phrase--and more especially 'to stem a loss with another loss.' 'To stem a torrent--or, the current of a river,' is a well-known expression, indicating one sort of material force in opposition to another. Hence we come to the figurative expression, 'to stem the torrent of his grief,' &c. Shelley seems to have yielded to a certain analogy in the sentiment, and also to the convenience of a rhyme, and thus to have permitted himself a phrase which is neither English nor consistent with sense. Line 8 seems to me extremely feeble throughout.

1. 9. _And dull the barbèd fire against his frozen cheek._ The construction runs--'Another would break, &c., and [would] dull, &c.' The term 'the barbèd fire' represents of course 'the winged reeds,' or arrows: actual reeds or arrows are now transmuted into flame-tipped arrows (conformable to the spiritual or immaterial quality of the Dreams): the fire is to be quenched against the frost of the death-cold cheek of Adonais. 'Frozen tears--frozen cheek:' Shelley would scarcely, I apprehend, have allowed this repetition, but for some inadvertence. I am free to acknowledge that I think the whole of this stanza bad. Its _raison d'être_ is a figurative but perfectly appropriate and straightforward passage in Bion: Shelley has attempted to turn that into a still more figurative passage suitable for _Adonais_, with a result anything but happy. He fails to make it either straightforward or appropriate, and declines into the super-subtle or wiredrawn.

+Stanza 12,+ 1. 1. _Another Splendour._ Another luminous Dream.

1. 2. _That mouth whence it was wont to draw the breath,_ &c. Adonais (Keats), as a poet, is here figured as if he were a singer; consequently we are referred to his 'mouth' as the vehicle of his thoughts or poetic imaginings--not to his hand which recorded them.

1. 3. _To pierce the guarded wit._ To obtain entry into the otherwise unready minds of others--the hearers (or readers) of the poet.

11. 5, 6. _The damp death Quenched its caress upon his icy lips._ This phrase is not very clear. I understand it to mean--The damps of death [upon the visage of Adonais] quenched the caress of the Splendour [or Dream] imprinted on his icy lips. It might however be contended that the term 'the damp death' is used as an energetic synonym for the 'Splendour' itself. In this case the sense of the whole passage may be amplified thus: The Splendour, in imprinting its caress upon the icy lips of Adonais, had its caress quenched by the cold, and was itself converted into dampness and deathliness: it was no longer a luminous Splendour, but a vaporous and clammy form of death. The assumption that 'the damp death' stands as a synonym for the 'Splendour' obtains some confirmation from the succeeding phrase about the '_dying_ meteor'--for this certainly seems used as a simile for the 'Splendour.'

1. 7. _'And, as a dying meteor,'_ &c. The dying meteor, in this simile, must represent the Splendour; the wreath of moonlight vapour stands for the pale limbs of Adonais; the cold night may in a general way symbolize the night of death.

1. 9. _It flushed through his pale limbs, and passed to its eclipse._ The Splendour flushed through the limbs of Adonais, and so became eclipsed,--faded into nothingness. This terminates the episode of the 'quick Dreams,' beginning with stanza 9.

+Stanza 13,+ 1. 1. _And others came,--Desires and Adorations,_ &c. This passage is the first in which Shelley has direct recourse, no longer to the Elegy of Bion for Adonis, but to the Elegy of Moschus for Bion. As he had spiritualized the impersonations of Bion, so he now spiritualizes those of Moschus. The Sicilian lyrist gives us (see p. 65) Apollo, Satyrs, Priapi, Panes, and Fountain-fairies. Shelley gives us Desires, Adorations, Persuasions, Destinies, Splendours, Glooms, Hopes, Fears, Phantasies, Sorrow, Sighs, and Pleasure. All these 'lament Adonais' (stanza 14): they are such emotional or abstract beings as 'he had loved, and moulded into thought from shape and hue and odour and sweet sound.' The adjectival epithets are worth noting for their poetic felicity: wingèd Persuasions (again hinting at [Greek: epea pteroenta]), veiled Destinies, glimmering Hopes and Fears, twilight Phantasies.

1. 6. _And Pleasure, blind with tears_, &c. The Rev. Stopford Brooke, in an eloquent Lecture delivered to the Shelley Society in June, 1889, dwelt at some length upon the singular mythopoeic gift of the poet. These two lines are an instance in point, of a very condensed kind. Pleasure, heart-struck at the death of Adonais, has abrogated her own nature, and has become blinded with tears; her eyes can therefore serve no longer to guide her steps. Her smile too is dying, but not yet dead; it emits a faint gleam which, in default of eyes, serves to distinguish the path. If one regards this as a mere image, it may be allowed to approach close to a conceit; but it suggests a series of incidents and figurative details which may rather count as a compendious myth.

1. 8. _Came in slow pomp:--the moving pomp might seem._ The repetition of the word 'pomp' gives a certain poverty to the sound of this line; it can hardly, I think, have been deliberately intended. In other respects this stanza is one of the most melodious in the poem.

+Stanza 14+, 11. 3, 4. _Morning sought Her eastern watch-tower, and her hair unbound_, &c. Whether Shelley wished the reader to attribute any distinct naturalistic meaning to the 'hair' of Morning is a question which may admit of some doubt. If he did so, the 'hair unbound' is probably to be regarded as streaks of rain-cloud; these cloudlets ought to fertilize the soil with their moisture; but, instead of that, they merely dim the eyes of Morning, and dull the beginnings of day. In this instance, and in many other instances ensuing, Shelley represents natural powers or natural objects--morning, echo, flowers, &c.--as suffering some interruption or decay of essence or function, in sympathy with the stroke which has cut short the life of Adonais. It need hardly be said that, in doing this, he only follows a host of predecessors. He follows, for example, his special models Bion and Moschus. They probably followed earlier models; but I have failed in attempting to trace how far back beyond them this scheme of symbolism may have extended; something of it can be found in Theocritus. The legend--doubtless a very ancient one--that the sisters of Phaeton wept amber for his fall belongs to the same order of ideas (as a learned friend suggests to me).

1. 8. _Pale Ocean_. As not only the real Keats, but also the figurative Adonais, died in Rome, the ocean cannot be a feature in the immediate scene; it lies in the not very remote distance, felt rather than visible to sight. Of course too, Ocean (as well as Thunder and Winds) is personated in this passage; he is a cosmic deity, lying pale in unquiet slumber.

+Stanza 15+, 1. 1. _Lost Echo sits_, &c. Echo is introduced into both the Grecian elegies, that of Moschus as well as that of Bion. Bion (p. 64) simply says that 'Echo resounds, "Adonis dead!"' But Moschus (p. 65), whom Shelley substantially follows, sets forth that 'Echo in the rocks laments that thou [Bion] art silent, and no more she mimics thy voice'; also, 'Echo, among the reeds, doth still feed upon thy songs.' It will be observed that in this stanza Echo is a single personage--the Nymph known to mythological fable: but in stanza 2 we had various 'Echoes,' spirits of minor account, who, in the paradise of Urania, were occupied with the poems of Adonais.

11. 6-8. _His lips, more dear Than those for whose disdain she pined away Into a shadow of all sounds._ Echo is, in mythology, a Nymph who was in love with Narcissus. He, being enamoured of his own beautiful countenance, paid no heed to Echo, who consequently 'pined away into a shadow of all sounds.' In this expression one may discern a delicate double meaning. (1) Echo pined away into (as the accustomed phrase goes) 'a mere shadow of her former self.' (2) Just as a solid body, lighted by the sun, casts, as a necessary concomitant, a shadow of itself, so a sound, emitted under the requisite conditions, casts an echo of itself; echo is, in relation to sound, the same sort of thing as shadow in relation to substance.

11. 8, 9. _A drear Murmur, between their songs, is all the woodmen hear._ Echo will not now repeat the songs of the woodmen; she merely murmurs some snatches of the 'remembered lay' of Adonais.

+Stanza 16+, 1. 1. _Grief made the young Spring wild._ This introduction of Spring may be taken as implying that Shelley supposed Keats to have died in the Spring: but in fact he died in the Winter--23 February. As to this point see pp. 30 and 96.

11. 1-3. _And she threw down Her kindling buds, as if she Autumn were, Or they dead leaves._ This corresponds to a certain extent with the phrases in Bion, 'the flowers are withered up with grief,' and 'yea all the flowers are faded' (p. 64); and in Moschus, 'and in sorrow for thy fall the trees cast down their fruit, and all the flowers have faded' (p. 65). It may be worth observing that Shelley says--'As if she Autumn were, _or_ they dead leaves' (not '_and_ they dead leaves'). He therefore seems to present the act of Spring from two separate points of view: (1) She threw down the buds, as if she had been Autumn, whose office it is to throw down, and not to cherish and develope; (2) she threw down the buds as if they had been, not buds of the nascent year, but such dead leaves of the olden year as still linger on the spray when Spring arrives,

1. 4. _For whom should she have waked the sullen Year?_ The year, beginning on 1 January, may in a certain sense be conceived as sleeping until roused by the call of Spring. But more probably Shelley here treats the year as beginning on 25 March--which date would witness its awakening, and practically its first existence.

11. 5-7. _To Phoebus was not Hyacinth so dear, Nor to himself Narcissus, as to both Thou, Adonais; wan they stand and sere_, &c. This passage assimilates two sections in the Elegy of Moschus, p. 65: 'Now, thou hyacinth, whisper the letters on thee graven, and add a deeper ai ai to thy petals: he is dead, the beautiful singer.... Nor so much did pleasant Lesbos mourn for Alcaeus,' &c. The passage of Shelley is rather complicated in its significance, because it mixes up the personages Hyacinthus and Narcissus with the flowers hyacinth and narcissus. The beautiful youth Hyacinthus was dear to Phoebus; on his untimely death (he was slain by a quoit which Phoebus threw, and which the jealous Zephyrus blew aside so that it struck Hyacinthus on the head), the god changed his blood into the flower hyacinth, which bears markings interpreted by the Grecian fancy into the lettering [Greek: ai ai] (alas, alas!). The beautiful youth Narcissus, contemplating himself in a streamlet, became enamoured of his own face; and pining away, was converted into the flower narcissus. This accounts for the lines, 'To Phoebus was not Hyacinth so dear, nor to himself Narcissus.' But, when we come to the sequence, 'as to both thou, Adonais.' we have to do, no longer with the youths Hyacinthus and Narcissus, but with the flowers hyacinth and narcissus: it is the flowers which (according to Shelley) loved Adonais better than the youths were loved, the one by Phoebus and the other by himself. These flowers--being some of the kindling buds which Spring had thrown down--stand 'wan and sere.' (This last point is rather the reverse of a phrase in Bion's Elegy, p. 64, 'The flowers flush red for anguish.') It may perhaps be held that the transition from the youths to the flowers, and from the emotions of Phoebus and of Narcissus to those assigned to the flowers, is not very happily managed by Shelley: it is artificial, and not free from confusion. As to the hyacinth, the reader will readily perceive that a flower which bears markings read off into [Greek: ai ai] (or [Greek: AI AI] seems more correct) cannot be the same which we now call hyacinth. Ovid says that in form the hyacinth resembles a lily, and that its colour is 'purpureus,' or deep red. John Martyn, who published in 1755 _The Georgicks of Virgil with an English Translation_, has an elaborate note on the subject. He concludes thus: 'I am pretty well satisfied that the flower celebrated by the poets is what we now are acquainted with under the name 'Lilium floribus reflexis,' or Martagon, and perhaps may be that very species which we call Imperial Martagon. The flowers of most sorts of martagons have many spots of a deeper colour: and sometimes I have seen these spots run together in such a manner as to form the letters AI in several places.' Shelley refers to the hyacinth in another passage (_Prometheus Unbound_, act 2, sc. 1) which seems to indicate that he regarded the antique hyacinth as being the same as the modern hyacinth,--

'As the _blue bells_
Of hyacinth tell Apollo's written grief.'

1. 8. _Amid the faint companions of their youth._ In Shelley's edition the words are 'Amid the drooping comrades,' &c. The change was made under the same circumstances as noted on p. 105. Whether it is a change for the better may admit of some question. The faint companions of the youth of the hyacinth and the narcissus must be other flowers, such as Spring had thrown down.

1. 9. _With dew all turned to tears,--odour, to sighing ruth._ The dew upon the hyacinth and narcissus is converted into tears: they exhale sighs, instead of fragrance. All this is in rather a _falsetto_ tone. It has some resemblance to the more simple and touching phrase in the Elegy by Moschus (p. 65): 'Ye flowers, now in sad clusters breathe yourselves away.'

+Stanza 17+, 1. 1. _Thy spirits sister, the lorn nightingale, Mourns not her mate_, &c. The reason for calling the nightingale the sister of the spirit of Keats (Adonais) does not perhaps go beyond this--that, as the nightingale is a supreme songster among birds, so was Keats a supreme songster among men. It is possible however--and one willingly supposes so--that Shelley singled out the nightingale for mention, in recognition of the consummate beauty of Keats's _Ode to the Nightingale_, published in the same volume with _Hyperion_. The epithet 'lorn' may also be noted in the same connexion; as Keats's Ode terminates with a celebrated passage in which 'forlorn' is the leading word (but not as an epithet for the nightingale itself)--

'Forlorn!--the very word is as a knell,' &c.

The nightingale is also introduced into the Elegy of Moschus for Bion; 'Ye nightingales that lament,' &c. (p. 65), and 'Nor ever sang so sweet the nightingale on the cliffs.' Poets are fond of speaking of the nightingale as being the hen-bird, and Shelley follows this precedent. It is a fallacy, for the songster is always the cock-bird.

1. 3. _Not so the eagle_, &c. The general statement in these lines is that Albion wails for the death of Keats more melodiously than the nightingale mourning for her lost mate, and more passionately than the eagle robbed of her young. This statement has proved true enough in the long run: when Shelley wrote, it was only prospectively or potentially true, for the death of Keats excited no immediate widespread concern in England. It should be observed that, by introducing Albion as a figurative personage in his Elegy, Shelley disregards his emblematic Grecian youth Adonais, and goes straight to the actual Englishman Keats. This passage, taken as a whole, is related to that of Moschus (p. 65) regarding the nightingale, the sea-bird, and the bird of Memnon; see also the passage, 'and not for Sappho, but still for thee,' &c.

11. 4, 5. _Could nourish in the sun's domain Her mighty youth with morning._ This phrase seems to have some analogy to that of Milton in his _Areopagitica_: 'Methinks I see in my mind a noble and puissant nation rousing herself like a strong man after sleep and shaking her invincible locks. Methinks I see her as an eagle muing her mighty youth, and kindling her undazzled eyes at the full mid-day beam--purging and unsealing her long-abused sight at the fountain itself of heavenly radiance.'

11. 7, 8. _The curse of Cain Light on his head_, &c. An imprecation against the critic of Keats's _Endymion_ in the _Quarterly Review_: see especially p. 39, &c. The curse of Cain was that he should be 'a fugitive and a vagabond,' as well as unsuccessful in tilling the soil. Shelley probably pays no attention to these details, but simply means 'the curse of murder.'

+Stanza 18,+ 11. 1, 2. _Ah woe is me! Winter is come and gone, But grief returns with the revolving year_, &c. See the passage in Moschus (p. 65): 'Ah me! when the mallows wither,' &c. The phrase in Bion has also a certain but restricted analogy to this stanza: 'Thou must again bewail him, again must weep for him another year' (p. 65). As to the phrase 'Winter is come and gone,' see the note (p. 111) on 'Grief made the young Spring wild.'

1. 5. _Fresh leaves and flowers deck the dead Seasons' bier._ This phrase is barely consistent with the statement (st. 16) as to Spring throwing down her kindling buds. Perhaps, moreover, it was an error of print to give 'Seasons' in the plural: 'Season's' (meaning winter) would seem more accurate. A somewhat similar idea is conveyed in one of Shelley's lyrics, _Autumn, a Dirge_, written in 1820:--

'And the Year
On the earth her death-bed, in a shroud of leaves dead,
Is lying.'

1. 7. _Brere._ An antiquated form of the word briar.

1. 9. _Like unimprisoned flames._ Flames which, after being pent up within some substance or space, finally find a vent.

+Stanza 19,+ 1. 2. _A quickening life_, &c. The present stanza is generally descriptive of the effects of Springtime upon the earth. This reawakening of Nature (Shelley says) has always taken place, in annual recurrence, since 'the great morning of the world when first God dawned on chaos.' This last expression must be construed with a certain latitude. The change from an imagined chaos into a divinely-ordered cosmos is not necessarily coincident with the interchange of seasons, and especially the transition from Winter to Spring, upon the planet Earth. All that can be safely propounded on such a subject is that the sequence of seasons is a constant and infallible phenomenon of Nature in that condition of our planet with which alone we have, or can have, any acquaintance.

1. 5. _In its steam immersed_: i.e. in the steam--or vapour or exhalation--of the 'quickening life.'

+Stanza 20,+ 11. 1, 2. _The leprous corpse, touched by this spirit tender, Exhales itself in flowers of gentle breath._ 'This spirit tender' is the 'quickening life' of the renascent year; or briefly the Spring. By 'the leprous corpse' Shelley may mean, not the corpse of an actual leper, but any corpse in a loathsome state of decay. Even so abhorrent an object avails to fertilize the soil, and thus promotes the growth of odorous flowers.

1. 3. _Like incarnations of the stars_, &c. These flowers--star-like blossoms--illumine death and the grave: the light which would belong to them as stars is converted into the fragrance proper to them as flowers. This image is rather confused, and I think rather stilted: moreover, 'incarnation' (or embodiment in _flesh_) is hardly the right word for the vegetative nature of flowers. As forms of life, the flowers mock or deride the grave-worm which battens or makes merry on corruption. The appropriateness of the term 'merry worm' seems very disputable.

1. 6. _Nought we know dies._ This affirmation springs directly out of the consideration just presented to us--that even the leprous corpse does not, through various stages of decay, pass into absolute nothingness: on the contrary, its constituents take new forms, and subserve a re-growth of life, as in the flowers which bedeck the grave. From this single and impressive instance the poet passes to the general and unfailing law--No material object of which we have cognizance really dies: all such objects are in a perpetual cycle of change. This conception has been finely developed in a brace of early poems of Lord Tennyson, _All Things will Die_, and _Nothing will Die_:--

'The stream will cease to flow, The wind will cease to blow, The clouds will cease to fleet, The heart will cease to beat-- For all things must die.

* * * * *

'The stream flows,
The wind blows,
The cloud fleets,
The heart beats,
Nothing will die.
Nothing will die;
All things will change
Through eternity.'

11. 6-8. _Shall that alone which knows Be as a sword consumed before the sheath By sightless lightning?_ From the axiom 'Nought we know dies'--an axiom which should be understood as limited to what we call material objects (which Shelley however considered to be indistinguishable, in essence, from ideas, see p, 56)--he proceeds to the question, 'Shall that alone which knows'--i.e. shall the mind alone--die and be annihilated? If the mind were to die, while the body continues extant (not indeed in the form of a human body, but in various phases of ulterior development), then the mind would resemble a sword which, by the action of lightning, is consumed (molten, dissolved) within its sheath, while the sheath itself remains unconsumed. This is put as a question, and Shelley does not supply an answer to it here, though the terms in which his enquiry is couched seem intended to suggest a reply to the effect that the mind shall _not_ die. The meaning of the epithet 'sightless,' as applied to lightning, seems disputable. Of course the primary sense of this word is 'not-seeing, blind'; but Shelley would probably not have scrupled to use it in the sense of 'unseen.' I incline to suppose that Shelley means 'unseen'; not so much that the lightning is itself unseen as that its action in fusing the sword, which remains concealed within the sheath, is unseen. But the more obvious sense of 'blind, unregardful,' could also be justified.

11. 8, 9. _Th' intense atom glows A moment, then is quenched in a most cold repose._ The term 'th' intense atom' is a synonym for 'that which knows,' or the mind. By death it is 'quenched in a most cold repose': but the repose is not necessarily extinction.

+Stanza 21,+ 11. 1, 2. _Alas that all we loved of him should be, But for our grief, as if it had not been._ 'All we loved of him' must be the mind and character--the mental and personal endowments--of Adonais: his bodily frame is little or not at all in question here. By these lines therefore Shelley seems to intimate that the mind or soul of Adonais is indeed now and for ever extinct: it lives no longer save in the grief of the survivors. But it does not follow that this is a final expression of Shelley's conviction on the subject: the passage should be read as in context with the whole poem.