Chapter V: Part 5

11. 5, 6. _Great and mean Meet massed in death, who lends what life must borrow._ The meaning of the last words is far from clear to me. I think Shelley may intend to say that, in this our mortal state, death is the solid and permanent fact; it is rather a world of death than of life. The phenomena of life are but like a transitory loan from the great emporium, death. Shelley no doubt wanted a rhyme for 'morrow' and 'sorrow': he has made use of 'borrow' in a compact but not perspicuous phrase.

+Stanza 22,+ 1. 2. _'Wake thou,' cried Misery, 'childless mother!'_ We here return to Urania, of whom we had last heard in st. 6. See the passage translated by Shelley from Bion (p. 63), 'Sleep no more, Venus:... 'tis Misery calls,' &c.; but here the phrase, ''Tis Misery calls,' is Shelley's own. He more than once introduces Misery (in the sense of Unhappiness, Tribulation) as an emblematic personage. There is his lyric named _Misery_, written in 1818, which begins--

'Come, be happy,--sit by me, Shadow-vested Misery: Coy, unwilling, silent bride, Mourning in thy robe of pride, Desolation deified.'

There is also the briefer lyric named _Death_, 1817, which begins--

'They die--the dead return not. Misery Sits near an open grave, and calls them over, A youth with hoary hair and haggard eye.'

11. 3, 4. _'Slake in thy hearts core A wound--more fierce than his, with tears and sighs.'_ Construe: Slake with tears and sighs a wound in thy heart's core--a wound more fierce than his.' See (p. 101) the remarks, apposite to st. 4, upon the use of inversion by Shelley.

1. 5. _All the Dreams that watched Urania's eyes._ We had not hitherto heard of 'Dreams' in connexion with Urania, but only in connexion with Adonais himself. These 'Dreams that watched Urania's eyes' appear to be dreams in the more obvious sense of that word-visions which had haunted the slumbers of Urania.

1. 8. _Swift as a thought by the snake memory stung._ The context suggests that the 'thought' here in question is a grievous thought, and the term 'the snake memory' conveys therefore a corresponding impression of pain. Shelley however had not the usual feeling of repulsion or abhorrence for snakes and serpents. Various passages could be cited to prove this; more especially Canto 1 of _The Revolt of Islam,_ where the Spirit of Good is figured under the form of a serpent.

1. 9. _Front her ambrosial rest the fading Splendour sprung._ Urania. She is in her own nature a splendour, or celestial deity: at the present moment her brightness is 'fading,' as being overcast by sorrow and dismay. 'Her ambrosial rest' does not appear to signify anything more precise than 'her rest, proper to an immortal being.' The forms 'sprung, sung,' &c. are constantly used by Shelley instead of 'sprang, sang,' &c.

+Stanza 23,+ 1. 5. _Had left the Earth a corpse._ Shelley, in this quasi-Greek poem, takes no count of the fact that the sun, when it ceases to illumine one part of the earth, is shining upon another part. He treats the unillumined part as if it were the whole earth--which has hereby become 'a corpse.'

+Stanza 24,+ 1. 2, _Through camps and cities_, &c. In highly figurative language, this stanza pictures the passage of Urania from 'her secret paradise' to the death-chamber of Adonais in Rome, as if the spiritual essence and external form of the goddess were wounded by the uncongenial atmosphere of human malice and detraction through which she has to pass. The whole description is spiritualized from that of Bion (p. 63):--

'Wildered, ungirt, unsandalled--the thorns pierce Her hastening feet, and drink her sacred blood.'

11. 4,5. _The invisible Palms of her tender feet._ Shelley more than once uses 'palms' for 'soles' of the feet. See _Prometheus Unbound_, Act 4:--

'Our feet now, every palm, Are sandalled with calm';

and _The Triumph of Life_:--

'As she moved under the mass Of the deep cavern, and, with palms so tender Their tread broke not the mirror of the billow, Glided along the river.'

Perhaps Shelley got this usage from the Italian: in that language the web-feet of aquatic birds are termed 'palme.'

11. 8, 9. _Whose sacred blood, like the young tears of May, Paved with eternal flowers that undeserving way._ The tears of May are rain-drops; young, because the year is not far advanced. 'That undeserving way' seems a very poor expression. See (p. 64) the passage from Bion: 'A tear the Paphian sheds for each blood-drop of Adonis, and tears and blood on the earth are turned to flowers.'

+Stanza 25,+ 1. 3. _Death ... blushed to annihilation._ This very daring hyperbole will hardly bear--nor does it want--manipulation into prose. Briefly, the nature of Death is to be pallid: therefore Death, in blushing, abnegates his very nature, and almost ceases to be Death.

11. 3, 4. _The breath Revisited those lips_, &c. As Death tended towards 'annihilation,' so Adonais tended towards revival.

1. 7. _'Silent lightning.'_ This means, I suppose, lightning unaccompanied by thunder--summer lightning.

+Stanza 26,+ 1. 1. _'Stay yet awhile.'_ See Bion (p. 64): 'Stay, Adonis! stay, dearest one!'

1. 2, _'Kiss me, so long but as a kiss may live.'_ See as above:--

'That I may kiss thee now for the last time-- But for as long as one short kiss may live!'

1. 3. _'My heartless breast.'_ Urania's breast will henceforth be heartless, in the sense that, having bestowed her whole heart upon Adonais, she will have none to bestow upon any one else: so I understand the epithet.

1. 4. _'That word, that kiss, shall all thoughts else survive,'_ &c. See Bion (p. 64): 'This kiss will I treasure,' &c.

11. 7-9. _'I would give All that I am, to be as thou now art:--But I am chained to Time, and cannot thence depart.'_ Founded on Bion (p. 64): 'While wretched I yet live, being a goddess, and may not follow thee.' The alteration of phrase is somewhat remarkable. In Bion's Elegy the Cyprian Aphrodite is 'a goddess,' and therefore immortal. In Shelley's Elegy the Uranian Aphrodite does not speak of herself under any designation of immortality or eternity, but as 'chained to _Time_,' and incapable of departing from Time. As long as Time lives and operates, Urania must do the same. The dead have escaped from the dominion of Time: this Urania, cannot do. There is a somewhat similar train of thought in _Prometheus Unbound_,--where Prometheus the Titan, after enduring the torture of the Furies (Act 1), says--

'Peace is in the grave: The grave holds all things beautiful and good, I am a God, and cannot find it _there_.'

+Stanza 27,+ 11. 1-4. _'O gentle child, beautiful as thou wert, Why didst thou leave,'_ &c. This is founded on--and as usual spiritualized from--the passage in Bion (p. 64); 'For why, ah overbold! didst thou follow the chase, and, being so fair, why wert thou thus over-hardy to fight with beasts?'

1. 4. _'Dare the unpastured dragon in his den.'_ This phrase must no doubt be interpreted, not only in relation to the figurative Adonais. but also to the actual Keats, Keats had dared the unpastured dragon in his den, in the sense that he made a bold adventure into the poetical field, under conditions certain to excite the ire of adherents of the old school, whether in literature or in politics.

1. 6. _'Wisdom the mirrored shield, or scorn the spear.'_ Urania arraigns Keats for having made his inroad upon the dragon, unguarded by wisdom or by scorn. His want of wisdom was shown (we may assume) by the grave blemishes and defects in his _Endymion_, the wilful faults and perverse excesses and extravagances which mark its composition, and wantonly invited attack. His want of scorn was (according to Shelley's view of the facts), clear enough: he had not been equal to despising a spiteful attack, but had fretted himself to death under it. In terming these two defensive weapons, wisdom and scorn, a mirrored shield and a spear, Shelley was, I apprehend, thinking of the Orlando Furioso of Ariosto. In that poem we read of a magic shield which casts a supernatural and intolerable splendour, whereby every gazer is cast into a trance; and of a spear whose lightest touch overthrows every opponent. A sea-monster--not a dragon, so far as I recollect--becomes one of the victims of the 'mirrored shield.'

11. 7, 8. _'The full cycle when Thy spirit should have filled its crescent sphere.'_ The spirit of Keats is here assimilated to the moon, which grows from a crescent into a spherical form.

1. 9. _'The monsters of life's waste.'_ The noxious creatures which infest the wilderness of human life.

+Stanza 28,+ 1. 1. _'The herded wolves,'_ &c. These same 'monsters' are now pictured under three aspects. They are herded wolves, which will venture to pursue a traveller, but will not face him if he turns upon them boldly; and obscene ravens, which make an uproar over dead bodies, or dead reputations; and vultures, which follow in the wake of a conqueror, and gorge upon that which is already overthrown. In the succeeding stanza, 29, two other epithetal similes are bestowed upon the monsters--they become 'reptiles' and 'ephemeral insects.' All these repulsive images are of course here applied to critics of wilfully obtuse or malignant mind, such as Shelley accounted the _Quarterly_ reviewer of Keats to be.

1. 5, &c. _'How they fled When, like Apollo,'_ &c. The allusion is to perfectly well-known incidents in the opening poetic career of Lord Byron. His lordship, in earliest youth, published a very insignificant volume of verse named _Hours of Idleness_. The _Edinburgh Review_--rightly in substance, but with some superfluous harshness of tone--pronounced this volume to be poor stuff. Byron retaliated by producing his satire entitled _English Bards and Scotch Reviewers_. With this book he scored a success. His next publication was the generally and enthusiastically admired commencement of _Childe Harold_, 1812; after which date the critics justly acclaimed him as a poet--although in course of time they grew lavishly severe upon him from the point of view of morals and religion. I reproduce from the Pisan edition the punctuation--'When like Apollo, from his golden bow'; but I think the exact sense would be better brought out if we read--'When, like Apollo from his golden bow, The Pythian,' &c.

11. 7, 8. _'The Pythian of the age one arrow sped, And smiled.'_ Byron is here assimilated to Apollo Pythius--Apollo the Python-slayer. The statue named Apollo Belvedere is regarded as representing the god at the moment after he has discharged his arrow at the python (serpent), his countenance irradiated with a half-smile of divine scorn and triumph. The terms employed by Shelley seem to glance more particularly at that celebrated statue: this was the more appropriate as Byron had devoted to the same figure two famous stanzas in the 4th canto of _Childe Harold_--

'Or view the Lord of the unerring bow, The God of life and poesy and light,' &c.

1. 9. _'They fawn on the proud feet that spurn them lying low.'_ In the Pisan edition we read 'that spurn them as they go.' No doubt the change (introduced as in other instances named on pp. 105 and 113) must be Shelley's own. The picture presented to the mind is more consistent, according to the altered reading. The critics, as we are told in this stanza, had at first 'fled' from Byron's arrow; afterwards they 'fawned on his proud feet.' In order to do this, they must have paused in their flight, and returned; and, in the act of fawning on Byron's feet, they must have crouched down, or were 'lying low.' (Mr. Forman, in his edition of Shelley, pointed this out.) With the words 'as they go' the image was not self-consistent: for the critics could not be 'going,' or walking away, at the same time when they were fawning on the poet's feet. This last remark assumes that the words 'as they go' mean 'as the critics go ': but perhaps (and indeed I think this is more than probable) the real meaning was 'as the feet of Byron go'--as Byron proceeds disdainfully on his way. If this was Shelley's original meaning, he probably observed after a while that the words 'as _they_ go' seem to follow on with '_they_ fawn,' and not with 'the proud feet'; and, in order to remove the ambiguity, he substituted the expression 'lying low.'

+Stanza 29,+ 11. 1-3. _'The sun comes forth, and many reptiles spawn; He sets, and each ephemeral insect then Is gathered into death.'_ The spawning of a reptile (say a lizard or toad), and the death of an insect (say a beetle or gnat), are two things totally unconnected. Shelley however seems to link them together, as if this spawning were the origin of the life, the brief life, of the insect. He appears therefore to use 'reptile,' not in the defined sense which we commonly attach to the word, but in the general sense of 'a creeping creature,' such for instance as a grub or caterpillar, the first form of an insect, leading on to its final metamorphosis or development. Even so his natural history is curiously at fault: for no grub or caterpillar can spawn--which is the function of the fully-developed insect itself, whether 'ephemeral' or otherwise. Can Shelley have been ignorant of this?

1. 4. _'And the immortal stars awake again.'_ The imagery of this stanza (apart from the 'reptiles' and 'ephemeral insects') deserves a little consideration. The sun (says Shelley) arises, and then sets: when it sets, the immortal stars awake again. Similarly, a godlike mind (say the mind of Keats) appears, and its light illumines the earth, and veils the heaven: when it disappears, 'the spirit's awful night' is left to 'its kindred lamps.' This seems as much as to say that the splendour of a new poetic genius appears to contemporaries to throw preceding poets into obscurity; but this is only a matter of the moment, for, when the new genius sinks in death, the others shine forth again as stars of the intellectual zenith, to which the new genius is kindred indeed, but not superior. With these words concludes the speech of Urania, which began in stanza 25.

+Stanza 30,+ 1. 1. _The Mountain Shepherds_. These are contemporary British poets, whom Shelley represents as mourning the death of Keats. Shepherds are such familiar figures in poetry--utilized for instance in Milton's _Lycidas_, as well as by many poets of antiquity--that the introduction of them into Shelley's Elegy is no matter for surprise. Why they should be '_mountain_ shepherds' is not so clear. Perhaps Shelley meant to indicate a certain analogy between the exalted level at which the shepherds dwelt and the exalted level at which the poets wrote. As the shepherds do not belong to the low-country, so neither do the poets belong to the flats of verse. Shelley may have written with a certain degree of reference to that couplet in _Lycidas_--

'For we were nursed upon the self-same _hill_, Fed the same flock, by fountain, shade, and rill.'

1. 2. _Their garlands sere, their magic mantles rent._ The garlands or chaplets of the mountain shepherds have become sere because (it may be presumed) the wearers, in their grief for the mortal illness and death of Adonais, have for some little while left them unrenewed. Or possibly the garlands withered at the moment when Spring 'threw down her kindling buds' (stanza 16), I do not well understand the expression 'magic mantles.' There seems to be no reason why the mantles of the shepherds, considered as shepherds, should be magic. Even when we contemplate the shepherds as poets, we may fail to discern why any magical property should be assigned to their mantles. By the use of the epithet 'magic' Shelley must have intended to bridge over the gap between the nominal shepherds and the real poets, viewed as inspired singers: for this purpose he has adopted a bold verbal expedient, but not I think an efficient one. It may be noticed that the 'uncouth swain' who is represented in _Lycidas_ as singing the dirge (in other words, Milton himself) is spoken of as having a mantle--it is a 'mantle blue' (see the penultimate line of that poem).

1. 3. _The Pilgrim of Eternity._ This is Lord Byron. As inventor of the personage Childe Harold, the hero and so-called 'Pilgrim' of the poem _Childe Harold's Pilgrimage_, and as being himself to a great extent identical with his hero, Byron was frequently termed 'the Pilgrim.' Shelley adopts this designation, which he magnifies into 'the Pilgrim of Eternity,' He admired Byron most enthusiastically as a poet, and was generally on easy--sometimes on cordial--terms with him as a man. He has left us a fine and discriminating portrait of Byron in the 'Count Maddalo' of his poem _Julian and Maddalo_, written in 1818. At times however Shelley felt and expressed great indignation against Byron, especially in reference to the ungenerous and cruel conduct of the latter towards Miss Clairmont. See some brief reference to this matter at p. 9.

11. 3-5. _Whose fame Over his living head like heaven is bent, An early but enduring monument._ These phrases are not very definite. When fame is spoken of as being bent over Byron's head, we must conceive of fame as taking a form cognizable by the senses. I think Shelley means to assimilate it to the rainbow; saying substantially--Fame is like an arc bent over Byron's head, as the arc of the rainbow is bent over the expanse of heaven. The ensuing term 'monument' applies rather to fame in the abstract than to any image of fame as an arc.

11. 6, 7. _Came, veiling all the lightnings of his song In sorrow._ No doubt it would have been satisfactory to Shelley if he could have found that Byron entertained or expressed any serious concern at Keats's premature death, and at the hard measure which had been meted out to him by critics. Byron did in fact admire _Hyperion_; writing (in November 1821, not long after the publication of _Adonais_)--'His fragment of _Hyperion_ seems actually inspired by the Titans, and is as sublime as Aeschylus'; and other utterances of his show that--being with difficulty persuaded to suppose that Keats's health and life had succumbed to the attack in the _Quarterly_--he fittingly censured the want of feeling or want of reflection on the critic's part which had produced so deplorable a result. But on the whole Byron's feeling towards Keats was one of savage contempt during the young poet's life, and of bantering levity after his death. Here are some specimens. (From a letter to Mr. Murray, 12 October, 1820). 'There is such a trash of Keats and the like upon my tables that I am ashamed to look at them.... No more Keats, I entreat. Flay him alive: if some of you don't, I must skin him myself. There is no bearing the drivelling idiotism of the manikin.'

'"Who killed John Keats?"
"I," says the Quarterly,
So savage and Tartarly;
"'Twas one of my feats."'

'John Keats, who was killed off by one critique Just as he really promised something great If not intelligible, without Greek Contrived to talk about the gods of late, Much as they might have been supposed to speak. Poor fellow, his was an untoward fate! 'Tis strange the mind, that very fiery particle, Should let itself be snuffed out by an article.'

11. 7-9. _From her wilds Ierne sent The sweetest lyrist of her saddest wrong, And love taught grief to fall like music from his tongue._ Ierne (Ireland) sent Thomas Moore, the lyrist of her wrongs--an allusion to the _Irish Melodies_, and some other poems. There is not, I believe, any evidence to show that Moore took the slightest interest in Keats, his doings or his fate: Shelley is responsible for Moore's love, grief, and music, in this connexion. A letter from Keats has been published showing that at one time he expected to meet Moore personally (see p. 45). Whether he did so or not I cannot say for certain, but I apprehend not: the published Diary of Moore, of about the same date, suggests the negative.

+Stanza 31,+ 1. 1. _'Midst others of less note._ Shelley clearly means 'less note' than Byron and Moore--not less note than the 'one frail form.'

1. 2. _Came one frail form,_ &c. This personage represents Shelley himself. Shelley here describes himself under a profusion of characteristics, briefly defined: it may be interesting to summarize them, apart from the other details with which they are interspersed. He is a frail form; a phantom among men; companionless; one who had gazed Actaeon-like on Nature's naked loveliness, and who now fled with feeble steps, hounded by his own thoughts; a pard-like spirit beautiful and swift; a love masked in desolation; a power begirt with weakness, scarcely capable of lifting the weight of the hour; a breaking billow, which may even now be broken; the last of the company, neglected and apart--a herd-abandoned deer struck by the hunter's dart; in Keats's fate, he wept his own; his brow was branded and ensanguined. Most of these attributes can be summed up under one heading--that of extreme sensitiveness and susceptibility, which meet with no response or sustainment, but rather with misjudgment, repulse, and outrage. Some readers may think that Shelley insists upon this aspect of his character to a degree rather excessive, and dangerously near the confines of feminine sensibility, rather than virile fortitude. Apart from this predominant type of character, Shelley describes his spirit as 'beautiful and swift'--which surely it was: and he says that, having gazed upon Nature's naked loveliness, he had suffered the fate of a second Actseon, fleeing 'o'er the world's wilderness,' and pursued by his own thoughts like raging hounds. By this expression Shelley apparently means that he had over-boldly tried to fathom the depths of things and of mind, but, baffled and dismayed in the effort, suffered, as a man living among men, by the very tension and vividness of his thoughts, and their daring in expression. See what he says of himself, in prose, on p. 92.

11. 4, 5. _He, as I guess, Had gazed,_ &c. The use of the verb 'guess' in the sense of 'to surmise, conjecture, infer,' is now mostly counted as an Americanism. This is not correct; for the verb has often been thus used by standard English authors. Such a practice was not however common in Shelley's time, and he may have been guided chiefly by the rhyming.

+Stanza 32,+ 1. 4. _The weight of the superincumbent hour._ This line is scarcely rhythmical: to bring it within the ordinary scheme of ryhthm, one would have to lay an exaggerated stress on two of its feet--'thé supérincumbent.' Neither this treatment of the line, nor the line itself apart from this treatment, can easily be justified.

+Stanza 33,+ 11. 1, 2. _His head was bound with pansies overblown, And faded violets._ The pansy is the flower of thought, or memory: we commonly call it heartsease, but Shelley no doubt uses it here with a different, or indeed contrary, meaning. The violet indicates modesty. A stanza from one of his lyrics may be appropriately cited--_Remembrance_, dated 1821:--

'Lilies for a bridal bed, Roses for a matron's head, Violets for a maiden dead, Pansies let _my_ flowers be. On the living grave I bear Scatter them without a tear; Let no friend, however dear, Waste a hope, a fear, for me.'

1. 3. _A light spear topped with a cypress cone._ The funereal cypress explains itself.

1. 4. _Dark ivy tresses._ The ivy indicates constancy in friendship.

+Stanza 34,+ 1. 1. _His partial moan._ The epithet 'partial' is accounted for by what immediately follows--viz. that Shelley 'in another's fate now wept his own.' He, like Keats, was the object of critical virulence, and he was wont (but on very different grounds) to anticipate an early death. See (on p. 34) the expression in a letter from Shelley--'a writer who, however he may differ,' &c.

1. 4. _As in the accents of an unknown land He sang new sorrow._ It is not very clear why Shelley should represent that he, as one of the Mountain Shepherds, used a language different (as one might infer) from that of his companions. All those whom he particularizes were his compatriots. Perhaps however Shelley merely means that the language (English) was that of a land unknown to the Greek deity Aphrodite Urania. The phrase 'new sorrow' occurs in the Elegy by Moschus (p. 65). By the use of this phrase Shelley seems to mean not merely that the death of Keats was a recent and sorrowful event, but more especially that it constituted a new sorrow--one more sorrow--to Shelley himself.

11. 3, 5. I reproduce the punctuation of the Pisan edition, with a colon after 'his own,' and a semicolon after 'sorrow.' It appears to me however that the sense would rather require either a full stop after 'his own,' and a comma after 'sorrow,' or else a comma after 'his own,' and a full stop or colon after 'sorrow.' Yet it is possible that the phrase, 'As in the accents,' &c., forms a separate clause by itself, meaning, 'As _if_ in the accents of an unknown land, he sang new sorrow.'

11. 8, 9. _Made bare his branded and ensanguined brow, Which was like Cain's or Christ's._ Shelley represents his own brow as being branded like Cain's--stamped with the mark of reprobation; and ensanguined like Christ's--bleeding from a crown of thorns. This indicates the extreme repugnance with which he was generally regarded, and in especial perhaps the decree of the Court of Chancery which deprived him of his children by his first marriage--and generally the troubles and sufferings which he had undergone. The close coupling-together, in this line, of the names of Cain and Christ, was not likely to conciliate antagonists; and indeed one may safely surmise that it was done by Shelley more for the rather wanton purpose of exasperating them than with any other object.--In this stanza Urania appears for the last time.

+Stanza 35,+ 1, 1. _What softer voice is hushed over the dead?_ The personage here referred to is Leigh Hunt. See p. 45.

1. 6. _Gentlest of the wise._ It is apparent that Shelley entertained a very sincere affection and regard for Leigh Hunt. He dedicated to Hunt the tragedy of _The Cenci_, using the following expressions among others: 'Had I known a person more highly endowed than yourself with all that it becomes a man to possess, I had solicited for this work the ornament of his name. One more gentle, honourable, innocent, and brave; one of more exalted toleration for all who do and think evil, and yet himself more free from evil; one who knows better how to receive and how to confer a benefit, though he must ever confer far more than he can receive; one of simpler and (in the highest sense of the word) of purer life and manners, I never knew: and I had already been fortunate in friendships when your name was added to the list.'

1. 7. _Taught, soothed, loved, honoured, the departed one._ It has sometimes been maintained that Hunt, whatever may have been the personal friendship which he felt for Keats, did not, during the latter's lifetime, champion his literary cause with so much zeal as might have been expected from his professions. This is a point open to a good deal of discussion from both sides. Mr. Buxton Forman, who, as Editor of Keats, had occasion to investigate the matter attentively, pronounces decidedly in favour of Hunt.

+Stanza 36,+ 1. 1. _Our Adonais has drunk poison._ Founded on those lines of Moschus which appear as a motto to Shelley's Elegy. See also p. 49.

1. 2. _What deaf and viperous murderer._ Deaf, because insensible to the beauty of Keats's verse; and viperous, because poisonous and malignant. The juxtaposition of the two epithets may probably be also partly dependent on that passage in the Psalms (lviii. 4, 5) which has become proverbial: 'They are as venomous as the poison of a serpent: even like the deaf adder that stoppeth her ears; which refuseth to hear the voice of the charmer, charm he never so wisely.'

1. 4. _The nameless worm._ A worm, as being one of the lowest forms of life, is constantly used as a term implying contempt; but it may be assumed that Shelley here uses 'worm' in its original sense, that of any crawling creature, more especially of the snake kind. There would thus be no departure from the previous epithet 'viperous.' See the remarks as to 'reptiles,' St. 29.

11. 5, 6. _The magic tone Whose prelude,_ &c. Shelley, it will be perceived, here figures Keats as a minstrel striking the lyre, and preparing to sing. He strikes the lyre in a 'magic tone'; the very 'prelude' of this was enough to command silent expectation. This prelude is the poem of _Endymion_, to which the _Quarterly_ reviewer alone (according to Shelley) was insensitive, owing to feelings of 'envy, hate, and wrong.' The prelude was only an induction to the 'song,'--which was eventually poured forth in the _Lamia_ volume, and especially (as our poet opined) in _Hyperion_. But now Keats's hand is cold in death, and his lyre unstrung. As I have already observed--see p. 35, &c.--Shelley was mistaken in supposing that the _Quarterly Review_ had held a monopoly of 'envy, hate, and wrong'--or, as one might now term them, detraction, spite, and unfairness--in reference to Keats.

+Stanza 37,+ 1. 4. _But be thyself, and know thyself to be!_ The precise import of this line is not, I think, entirely plain at first sight. I conceive that we should take the line as immediately consequent upon the preceding words--'Live thou, live!' Premising this, one might amplify the idea as follows; 'While Keats is dead, be it thy doom, thou his deaf and viperous murderer, to live! But thou shalt live in thine own degraded identity, and shalt thyself be conscious how degraded thou art.' Another suggestion might be that the words 'But be thyself are equivalent to 'Be but thyself.'

11. 5, 6. _And ever at thy season be thou free To spill the venom when thy fangs o'erflow._ This keeps up the image of the 'viperous' murderer--the viper. 'At thy season' can be understood as a reference to the periodical issues of the _Quarterly Review_. The word 'o'erflow' is, in the Pisan edition, printed as two words--'o'er flow.'

1. 7. _Remorse and self-contempt._ Shelley frequently dwells upon self-contempt as one of the least tolerable of human distresses. Thus in the _Revolt of Islam_ (Canto 8, st. 20):

'Yes, it is Hate--that shapeless fiendly thing Of many names, all evil, some divine-- Whom self-contempt arms with a mortal sting,' &c.

And in _Prometheus Unbound_ (Act i)--

'Regard this earth Made multitudinous with thy slaves, whom thou Requitest for knee-worship, prayer, and praise? And toil, and hecatombs of broken hearts, With fear and self-contempt and barren hope.'

Again (Act ii, sc. 4)--

'And self-contempt, bitterer to drink than blood.'

+Stanza 38,+ 1. 1. _Nor let us weep,_ &c. So far as the broad current of sentiment is concerned, this is the turning-point of Shelley's Elegy. Hitherto the tone has been continuously, and through a variety of phases, one of mourning for the fact that Keats, the great poetical genius, is untimely dead. But now the writer pauses, checks himself, and recognises that mourning is not the only possible feeling, nor indeed the most appropriate one. As his thought expands and his rapture rises, he soon acknowledges that, so far from grieving for Keats who _is_ dead, it were far more relevant to grieve for himself who is _not_ dead. This paean of recantation and aspiration occupies the remainder of the poem.

1. 2. _These carrion kites._ A term of disparagement corresponding nearly enough to the 'ravens' and 'vultures' of st. 28.

1. 3. _He wakes or sleeps with the enduring dead._ With such of the dead as have done something which survives themselves. It will be observed that the phrase 'he wakes _or_ sleeps' leaves the question of personal or individual immortality quite open. As to this point see the remarks on p. 54, &c.

1. 4. Thou canst not soar where he is sitting now. This is again addressed to the 'deaf and viperous murderer,' regarded for the moment as a 'carrion kite.' As kites are eminently high flyers, the phrase here used becomes the more emphatic. This line of Shelley's is obviously adapted from a passage in Milton's _Paradise Lost_, where Satan addresses the angels in Eden (Book 4)--

'Ye knew me once, no mate
For you, there sitting where ye durst not soar.'

1. 5. _The pure spirit shall flow_, &c. The spirit which once was the vital or mental essence--the soul--of Adonais came from the Eternal Soul, and, now that he is dead, is re-absorbed into the Eternal Soul: as such, it is imperishable.

1. 9. _Whilst thy cold embers choke_, &c. The spirit of Adonais came as a flame from the 'burning fountain' of the Eternal, and has now reverted thither, he being one of the 'enduring dead.' But the 'deaf and viperous murderer' must not hope for a like destiny. His spirit, after death, will be merely like 'cold embers,' cumbering the 'hearth of shame.' As a rhetorical antithesis, this serves its purpose well: no doubt Shelley would not have pretended that it is a strictly reasoned antithesis as well, or furnishes a full account of the _post-mortem_ fate of the _Quarterly_ reviewer.

+Stanza 39,+ 11. 1, 2. _Peace, peace! he is not dead, he doth not sleep! He hath awakened from the dream of life._ Shelley now proceeds boldly to declare that the state which we call death is to be preferred to that which we call life. Keats is neither dead nor sleeping. He used to be asleep, perturbed and tantalized by the dream which is termed life. Having at last awakened from the dream, he is no longer asleep: and, if life is no more than a dream, neither does the cessation of life deserve to be named death. The transition from one emotion to another in this passage, and also in the preceding stanza, 'Nor let us weep,' &c., resembles the transition towards the close of _Lycidas_--

'Weep no more, woful shepherds, weep no more, For Lycidas, your sorrow, is not dead,' &c.

The general view has considerable affinity to that which is expounded in a portion of Plato's dialogue _Phaedo_, and which has been thus summarised. 'Death is merely the separation of soul and body. And this is the very consummation at which Philosophy aims: the body hinders thought,--the mind attains to truth by retiring into herself. Through no bodily sense does she perceive justice, beauty, goodness, and other ideas. The philosopher has a lifelong quarrel with bodily desires, and he should welcome the release of his soul.'

1. 3. _'Tis we who, lost in stormy visions_, &c. We, the so-called living, are in fact merely beset by a series of stormy visions which constitute life; all our efforts are expended upon mere phantoms, and are therefore profitless; our mental conflict is an act of trance, exercised upon mere nothings. The very energetic expression, 'strike with our spirit's knife invulnerable nothings,' is worthy of remark. It will be remembered that, according to Shelley's belief, 'nothing exists but as it is perceived': see p. 56. The view of life expressed with passionate force in this passage of _Adonais_ is the same which forms the calm and placid conclusion of _The Sensitive Plant_, a poem written in 1820;--

'But, in this life Of error, ignorance, and strife, Where nothing is but all things seem. And we the shadows of the dream,

It is a modest creed, and yet Pleasant if one considers it, To own that death itself must be, Like all the rest, a mockery.

That garden sweet, that Lady fair, And all sweet shapes and odours there, In truth have never passed away: 'Tis we, 'tis ours, are changed; not they.

For love, and beauty, and delight, There is no death nor change; their might Exceeds our organs, which endure No light, being themselves obscure.'

11. 6, 7. _We decay Like corpses in a charnel_, &c. Human life consists of a process of decay. While living, we are consumed by fear and grief; our disappointed hopes swarm in our living persons like worms in our corpses.

+Stanza 40,+ 1. 1. _He has outsoared the shadow of our night._ As human life was in the last stanza represented as a dream, so the state of existence in which it is enacted is here figured as night.

1. 5. _From the contagion of the world's slow stain._ It may be said that 'the world's slow stain'--the lowering influence of the aims and associations of all ordinary human life--is the main subject-matter of Shelley's latest important poem, _The Triumph of Life._

1. 9. _With sparkless ashes._ See the cognate expression, 'thy cold embers,' in st. 38.

+Stanza 41,+ 1. 1. _He lives, he wakes--'tis Death is dead, not he._ In the preceding three stanzas Adonais is contemplated as being alive, owing to the very fact that his death has awakened him 'from the dream of life'--mundane life. Death has bestowed upon him a vitality superior to that of mundane life. Death therefore has performed an act contrary to his own essence as death, and has practically killed, not Adonais, but himself.

1. 2. _Thou young Dawn._ We here recur to the image in st. 14, 'Morning sought her eastern watch-tower,' &c.

1. 5. _Ye caverns and ye forests_, &c. The poet now adjures the caverns, forests, flowers, fountains, and air, to 'cease to moan.' Of the flowers we had heard in st. 16: but the other features of Nature which are now addressed had not previously been individually mentioned--except, to some extent, by implication, in st. 15, which refers more directly to 'Echo.' The reference to the air had also been, in a certain degree, prepared for in stanza 23. The stars are said to smile on the Earth's despair. This does not, I apprehend, indicate any despair of the Earth consequent on the death of Adonais, but a general condition of woe. A reference of a different kind to stars--a figurative reference--appears in st. 29.

+Stanza 42,+ 1. 1. _He is made one with Nature._ This stanza ascribes to Keats the same phase of immortality which belongs to Nature. Having 'awakened from the dream of [mundane] life,' his spirit forms an integral portion of the universe. Those acts of intellect which he performed in the flesh remain with us, as thunder and the song of the nightingale remain with us.

11. 6, 7. _Where'er that power may move Which has withdrawn his being to its own._ This corresponds to the expression in st. 38--'The pure spirit shall flow Back to the burning fountain whence it came, A portion of the Eternal.'

1. 8. _Who wields the world with never wearied love_, &c. These two lines are about the nearest approach to definite Theism to be found in any writing of Shelley. The conception, which may amount to Theism, is equally consistent with Pantheism. Even in his most anti-theistic poem, _Queen Mab_, Shelley said in a note--'The hypothesis of a pervading Spirit, co-eternal with the universe, remains unshaken.'

+Stanza 43,+ 11. 1-3. _He is a portion of the loveliness Which ones he made more lovely. He doth bear his part_, &c. The conception embodied in this passage may become more clear to the reader if its terms are pondered in connexion with the passage of Shelley's prose extracted on p. 56--'The existence of distinct individual minds,' &c. Keats, while a living man, had made the loveliness of the universe more lovely by expressing in poetry his acute and subtle sense of its beauties--by lavishing on it (as we say) 'the colours of his imagination,' He was then an 'individual mind'--according to the current, but (as Shelley held) inexact terminology. He has now, by death, wholly passed out of the class of individual minds; and he forms a portion of the Universal Mind (the 'One Spirit') which is the animation of the universe.

11. 3, 4. _While the One Spirit's plastic stress Sweeps through the dull dense world_, &c. The function ascribed in these lines to the One Spirit is a formative or animating function: the Spirit constitutes the life of 'trees and beasts and men.' This view is strictly within the limits of Pantheism.

+Stanza 44,+ 1. 1. _The splendours of the firmament of time_, &c. As there are stars in the firmament of heaven, so are there splendours--luminous intellects--in the firmament of time. The stars, though at times eclipsed, are not extinguished; nor yet the mental luminaries. This asseveration may be considered in connexion with the passage in st. 5: 'Others more sublime, Struck by the envious wrath of man or God, Have sunk, extinct in their refulgent prime.'

11. 5, 6. _When lofty thought Lifts a young heart_, &c. The sense of this passage may be paraphrased thus:--When lofty thought lifts a young heart above its mundane environments, and when its earthly doom has to be determined by the conflicting influences of love, which would elevate it, and the meaner cares and interests of life, which would drag it downwards, then the illustrious dead live again in that heart--for its higher emotions are nurtured by their noble thoughts and aspirations,--and they move, like exhalations of light along dark and stormy air. This illustrates the previous proposition, that the splendours of the firmament of time are not extinguished; and, in the most immediate application of the proposition, Keats is not extinguished--he will continue an ennobling influence upon minds struggling towards the light.

+Stanza 45,+ 1. 2. _The inheritors of unfulfilled renown Rose from their thrones._ There is a grand abruptness in this phrase, which makes it--as a point of poetical or literary structure--one of the finest things in the Elegy. We are to understand (but Shelley is too great a master to formulate it in words) that Keats, as an 'inheritor of unfulfilled renown'--i.e. a great intellect cut off by death before its maturest fruits could be produced--has now arrived among his compeers: they rise from their thrones to welcome him. In this connexion Shelley chooses to regard Keats as still a living spiritual personality--not simply as 'made one with Nature.' He is one of those 'splendours of the firmament of time' who 'may be eclipsed, but are extinguished not.'

11. 3-5. _Chatterton Rose pale, his solemn agony had not Yet faded from him._ For precocity and exceptional turn of genius Chatterton was certainly one of the most extraordinary of 'the inheritors of unfulfilled renown'; indeed, the most extraordinary: he committed suicide by poison in 1770, before completing the eighteenth year of his age. His supposititious modern-antique _Poems of Rowley_ may, as actual achievements, have been sometimes overpraised: but at the lowest estimate they have beauties and excellences of the most startling kind. He wrote besides a quantity of verse and prose, of a totally different order. Keats admired Chatterton profoundly, and dedicated _Endymion_ to his memory. I cannot find that Shelley, except in _Adonais_, has left any remarks upon Chatterton: but he is said by Captain Medwin to have been, in early youth, very much impressed by his writings.

1. 5. _Sidney, as he fought_, &c. Sir Philip Sidney, author of _The Countess of Pembroke's Arcadia_, the _Apology for Poetry_, and the sonnets named _Astrophel and Stella_, died in his thirty-second year, of a wound received in the battle of Zutphen, 1586. Shelley intimates that Sidney maintained the character of being 'sublimely mild' in fighting, falling (dying), and loving, as well as generally in living. The special references appear to be these. (1) Sidney, observing that the Lord Marshal, the Earl of Leicester, had entered the field of Zutphen without greaves, threw off his own, and thus exposed himself to the cannon-shot which slew him. (2) Being mortally wounded, and receiving a cup of water, he handed it (according to a tradition which is not unquestionable) to a dying soldier. (3) His series of sonnets record his love for Penelope Devereux, sister to the Earl of Essex, who married Lord Rich. She had at one time been promised to Sidney. He wrote the sonnets towards 1581: in 1583 he married another lady, daughter of Sir Francis Walsingham. It has been said that Shelley was wont to make some self-parade in connexion with Sir Philip Sidney, giving it to be understood that he was himself a descendant of the hero--which was not true, although the Sidney blood came into a different line of the family. Of this story I have not found any tangible confirmation.

1. 8. _Lucan, by his death approved._ Lucan, the author of the _Pharsalia_, was condemned under Nero as being an accomplice in the conspiracy of Piso: he caused his veins to be opened, and died magnanimously, aged about twenty-six, A.D. 65. Shelley, in one instance, went so far as to pronounce Lucan superior to Vergil.

+Stanza 46,+ 11. 1, 2. _And many more, whose names on earth are dark, But whose transmitted effluence cannot die_, &c. This glorious company would include no doubt, not only the recorders of great thoughts, or performers of great deeds, which are still borne in memory although the names of the authors are forgotten, but also many whose work is as totally unknown as their names, but who exerted nevertheless a bright and elevating ascendant over other minds, and who thus conduced to the greatness of human-kind.

1. 6. _It was for thee_, &c. The synod of the inheritors of unfulfilled renown here invite Keats to assume possession of a sphere, or constellation, which had hitherto been 'kingless,' or unappropriated. It had 'swung blind in unascended majesty': had not been assigned to any radiant spirit, whose brightness would impart brilliancy to the sphere itself.

1. 8. _Silent alone amid an heaven of song._ This phrase points primarily to 'the music of the spheres': the sphere now assigned to Keats had hitherto failed to take part in the music of its fellows, but henceforward will chime in. Probably there is also a subsidiary, but in its context not less prominent meaning--namely, that, while the several poets (such as Chatterton, Sidney, and Lucan) had each a vocal sphere of his own, apposite to his particular poetic quality, the sphere which Keats is now to control had hitherto remained unoccupied because no poet of that special type of genius which it demanded had as yet appeared. Its affinity was for Keats, and for no one else. This is an implied attestation of Keats's poetic originality.

1. 9. _Assume thy wingèd throne, thou Vesper of our throng!_ The wingèd throne is, I think, a synonym of the 'sphere' itself--not a throne within the sphere: 'wingèd,' because the sphere revolves in space. Yet the statement in stanza 45 that 'the inheritors of unfulfilled renown rose from their thrones' (which cannot be taken to represent distinct spheres or constellations) suggests the opposite interpretation. Keats is termed 'thou Vesper of our throng' because he is the latest member of this glorified band--or, reckoning the lapse of ages as if they were but a day, its 'evening star.' The exceptional brilliancy of the Vesper star is not, I think, implied--though it may be remotely suggested.

+Stanza 47,+ 1. 3. _Clasp with thy panting soul_, &c. The significance of this stanza--perhaps a rather obscure one--requires to be estimated as a whole. Shelley summons any person who persists in mourning for Adonais to realise to his own mind what are the true terms of comparison between Adonais and himself. After this, he says in this stanza no more about Adonais, but only about the mourner. He calls upon the mourner to consider (1) the magnitude of the planet earth; then, using the earth as his centre, to consider (2) the whole universe of worlds, and the illimitable void of space beyond all worlds; next he is to consider (3) what he himself is--he is confined within the day and night of our planet, and, even within those restricted limits, he is but an infinitesimal point. After he shall have realised this to himself, and after the tension of his soul in ranging through the universe and through space shall have kindled hope after hope, wonderment and aspiration after aspiration and wonderment, then indeed will he need to keep his heart light, lest it make him sink at the contemplation of his own nullity.

1. 9. _And lured thee to the brink._ This phrase is not definitely accounted for in the preceding exposition. I think Shelley means that the successive hopes kindled in the mourner by the ideas of a boundless universe of space and of spirit will have lured him to the very brink of mundane life--to the borderland between life and death: he will almost have been tempted to have done with life, and to explore the possibilities of death.

+Stanza 48,+ 1. 1. _Or go to Rome._ This is still addressed to the mourner, the 'fond wretch' of the preceding stanza. He is here invited to adopt a different test for 'knowing himself and Adonais aright'; namely, he is to visit Rome, and muse over the grave of the youthful poet.

11. 1, 2. _Which is the sepulchre, Oh not of him, but of our joy._ Keats is not entombed in Rome: his poor mortal remains are there entombed, and, along with them, the joy which we felt in him as a living and breathing presence.

11. 2, 3. _'Tis nought That ages, empires, and religions, &c._ Keats, and others such as he, derive no adventitious honour from being buried in Rome, amid the wreck of ages, empires, and religions: rather they confer honour. He is among his peers, the kings of thought, who, so far from being dragged down in the ruin of institutions, contended against that ruin, and are alone immortal while all the rest of the past has come to nought. This consideration may be said to qualify, but not to reverse, that which is presented in stanza 7, that Keats 'bought, with price of purest breath, a grave among the eternal'; those eternal ones, buried in Rome, include many of the 'kings of thought.'

+Stanza 46,+ 11. 3, 4. _And where its wrecks like shattered mountains rise, And flowering weeds_, &c. These expressions point more especially, but not exclusively, to the Coliseum and the Baths of Caracalla. In Shelley's time (and something alike was the case in 1862, the year when the present writer saw them first) both these vast monuments were in a state wholly different from that which they now, under the hands of learned archaeologists and skilled restorers, present to the eye. Shelley began, probably in 1819, a romantic or ideal tale named _The Coliseum_; and, ensconced amid the ruins of the Baths of Caracalla, he composed, in the same year, a large part of _Promethens Unbound_. A few extracts from his letters may here be given appropriately. (To T.L. Peacock, 22 December, 18i8). 'The Coliseum is unlike any work of human hands I ever saw before. It is of enormous height and circuit, and the arches, built of massy stones, are piled, on one another, and jut into the blue air, shattered into the forms of overhanging rocks. It has been changed by time into the image of an amphitheatre of rocky hills overgrown by the wild olive, the myrtle, and the figtree, and threaded by little paths which wind among its ruined stairs and immeasurable galleries: the copsewood overshadows you as you wander through its labyrinths.'--(To the same, 23 March, 1819). 'The next most considerable relic of antiquity, considered as a ruin, is the Thermae of Caracalla. These consist of six enormous chambers, above 200 feet in height, and each enclosing a vast space like that of a field. There are in addition a number of towers and labyrinthine recesses, hidden and woven over by the wild growth of weeds and ivy. Never was any desolation so sublime and lovely.... At every step the aërial pinnacles of shattered stone group into new combinations of effect, and tower above the lofty yet level walls, as the distant mountains change their aspect to one travelling rapidly along the plain.... Around rise other crags and other peaks--all arrayed, and the deformity of their vast desolation softened down, by the undecaying investiture of Nature.'

1. 7. _A slope of green access._ The old Protestant Cemetery. Shelley described it thus in his letter to Mr. Peacock of 22 December, 1818. 'The English burying-place is a green slope near the walls, under the pyramidal tomb of Cestius, and is, I think, the most beautiful and solemn cemetery I ever beheld. To see the sun shining on its bright grass, fresh, when we visited it, with the autumnal dews, and hear the whispering of the wind among the leaves of the trees which have overgrown the tomb of Cestius, and the soil which is stirring in the sun-warm earth, and to mark the tombs, mostly of women and young people who were buried there, one might, if one were to die, desire the sleep they seem to sleep. Such is the human mind, and so it peoples with its wishes vacancy and oblivion.'--See also pp. 69, 70.