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Adonais.
By Percy Bysshe Shelley
1.
I weep for Adonais--he is dead!
Oh weep for Adonais, though our tears
Thaw not the frost which binds so dear a head!
And thou, sad Hour selected from all years
To mourn our loss, rouse thy obscure compeers,
And teach them thine own sorrow! Say: 'With me
Died Adonais! Till the future dares
Forget the past, his fate and fame shall be
An echo and a light unto eternity.'
2.
Where wert thou, mighty Mother, when he lay,
When thy son lay, pierced by the shaft which flies
In darkness? Where was lorn Urania
When Adonais died? With veilèd eyes,
'Mid listening Echoes, in her paradise
She sate, while one, with soft enamoured breath,
Rekindled all the fading melodies
With which, like flowers that mock the corse beneath,
He had adorned and hid the coming bulk of Death.
3.
Oh weep for Adonais--he is dead!
Wake, melancholy Mother, wake and weep!--
Yet wherefore? Quench within their burning bed
Thy fiery tears, and let thy loud heart keep,
Like his, a mute and uncomplaining sleep;
For he is gone where all things wise and fair
Descend. Oh dream not that the amorous deep
Will yet restore him to the vital air;
Death feeds on his mute voice, and laughs at our despair.
4.
Most musical of mourners, weep again!
Lament anew, Urania!--He died
Who was the sire of an immortal strain,
Blind, old, and lonely, when his country's pride
The priest, the slave, and the liberticide,
Trampled and mocked with many a loathèd rite
Of lust and blood. He went unterrified
Into the gulf of death; but his clear sprite
Yet reigns o'er earth, the third among the Sons of Light.
5.
Most musical of mourners, weep anew!
Not all to that bright station dared to climb:
And happier they their happiness who knew,
Whose tapers yet burn through that night of time
In which suns perished. Others more sublime,
Struck by the envious wrath of man or God,
Have sunk, extinct in their refulgent prime;
And some yet live, treading the thorny road
Which leads, through toil and hate, to Fame's serene abode.
6.
But now thy youngest, dearest one has perished,
The nursling of thy widowhood, who grew,
Like a pale flower by some sad maiden cherished,
And fed with true love tears instead of dew.
Most musical of mourners, weep anew!
Thy extreme hope, the loveliest and the last,
The bloom whose petals, nipt before they blew,
Died on the promise of the fruit, is waste;
The broken lily lies--the storm is overpast.
7.
To that high Capital where kingly Death
Keeps his pale court in beauty and decay
He came; and bought, with price of purest breath,
A grave among the eternal.--Come away!
Haste, while the vault of blue Italian day
Is yet his fitting charnel-roof, while still
He lies as if in dewy sleep he lay.
Awake him not! surely he takes his fill
Of deep and liquid rest, forgetful of all ill.
8.
He will awake no more, oh never more!
Within the twilight chamber spreads apace
The shadow of white Death, and at the door
Invisible Corruption waits to trace
His extreme way to her dim dwelling-place;
The eternal Hunger sits, but pity and awe
Soothe her pale rage, nor dares she to deface
So fair a prey, till darkness and the law
Of change shall o'er his sleep the mortal curtain draw.
9.
Oh weep for Adonais!--The quick Dreams,
The passion-wingèd ministers of thought,
Who were his flocks, whom near the living streams
Of his young spirit he fed, and whom he taught
The love which was its music, wander not--
Wander no more from kindling brain to brain,
But droop there whence they sprung; and mourn their lot
Round the cold heart where, after their sweet pain,
They ne'er will gather strength or find a home again.
10.
And one with trembling hands clasps his cold head,
And fans him with her moonlight wings, and cries,
'Our love, our hope, our sorrow, is not dead!
See, on the silken fringe of his faint eyes,
Like dew upon a sleeping flower, there lies
A tear some Dream has loosened from his brain,'
Lost angel of a ruined paradise!
She knew not 'twas her own,--as with no stain
She faded, like a cloud which had outwept its rain.
11.
One from a lucid urn of starry dew
Washed his light limbs, as if embalming them;
Another dipt her profuse locks, and threw
The wreath upon him, like an anadem
Which frozen tears instead of pearls begem;
Another in her wilful grief would break
Her bow and wingèd reeds, as if to stem
A greater loss with one which was more weak,
And dull the barbèd fire against his frozen cheek.
12.
Another Splendour on his mouth alit,
That mouth whence it was wont to draw the breath
Which gave it strength to pierce the guarded wit,
And pass into the panting heart beneath
With lightning and with music: the damp death
Quenched its caress upon his icy lips;
And, as a dying meteor stains a wreath
Of moonlight vapour which the cold night clips,
It flushed through his pale limbs, and passed to its eclipse.
13.
And others came,--Desires and Adorations,
Wingèd Persuasions, and veiled Destinies,
Splendours, and Glooms, and glimmering incarnations
Of Hopes and Fears, and twilight Phantasies;
And Sorrow, with her family of Sighs,
And Pleasure, blind with tears, led by the gleam
Of her own dying smile instead of eyes,
Came in slow pomp;--the moving pomp might seem
Like pageantry of mist on an autumnal stream.
14.
All he had loved, and moulded into thought
From shape and hue and odour and sweet sound.
Lamented Adonais. Morning sought
Her eastern watch-tower, and her hair unbound,
Wet with the tears which should adorn the ground,
Dimmed the aerial eyes that kindle day;
Afar the melancholy Thunder moaned,
Pale Ocean in unquiet slumber lay,
And the wild Winds flew round, sobbing in their dismay.
15.
Lost Echo sits amid the voiceless mountains,
And feeds her grief with his remembered lay,
And will no more reply to winds or fountains,
Or amorous birds perched on the young green spray,
Or herdsman's horn, or bell at closing day;
Since she can mimic not his lips, more dear
Than those for whose disdain she pined away
Into a shadow of all sounds:--a drear
Murmur, between their songs, is all the woodmen hear.
16.
Grief made the young Spring wild, and she threw down
Her kindling buds, as if she Autumn were,
Or they dead leaves; since her delight is flown,
For whom should she have waked the sullen Year?
To Phoebus was not Hyacinth so dear,
Nor to himself Narcissus, as to both
Thou, Adonais; wan they stand and sere
Amid the faint companions of their youth,
With dew all turned to tears,--odour, to sighing ruth.
17.
Thy spirit's sister, the lorn nightingale,
Mourns not her mate with such melodious pain;
Not so the eagle, who like thee could scale
Heaven, and could nourish in the sun's domain
Her mighty young with morning, doth complain,
Soaring and screaming round her empty nest,
As Albion wails for thee: the curse of Cain
Light on his head who pierced thy innocent breast,
And scared the angel soul that was its earthly guest!
18.
Ah woe is me! Winter is come and gone,
But grief returns with the revolving year.
The airs and streams renew their joyous tone;
The ants, the bees, the swallows, re-appear;
Fresh leaves and flowers deck the dead Seasons' bier;
The amorous birds now pair in every brake,
And build their mossy homes in field and brere;
And the green lizard and the golden snake,
Like unimprisoned flames, out of their trance awake.
19.
Through wood and stream and field and hill and ocean,
A quickening life from the Earth's heart has burst,
As it has ever done, with change and motion,
From the great morning of the world when first
God dawned on chaos. In its steam immersed,
The lamps of heaven flash with a softer light;
All baser things pant with life's sacred thirst,
Diffuse themselves, and spend in love's delight
The beauty and the joy of their renewèd might.
20.
The leprous corpse, touched by this spirit tender,
Exhales itself in flowers of gentle breath;
Like incarnations of the stars, when splendour
Is changed to fragrance, they illumine death,
And mock the merry worm that wakes beneath.
Nought we know dies: shall that alone which knows
Be as a sword consumed before the sheath
By sightless lightning? Th' intense atom glows
A moment, then is quenched in a most cold repose.
21.
Alas that all we loved of him should be,
But for our grief, as if it had not been,
And grief itself be mortal! Woe is me!
Whence are we, and why are we? of what scene
The actors or spectators? Great and mean
Meet massed in death, who lends what life must borrow.
As long as skies are blue and fields are green,
Evening must usher night, night urge the morrow,
Month follow month with woe, and year wake year to sorrow.
22.
_He_ will awake no more, oh never more!
'Wake thou,' cried Misery, 'childless Mother; Rise
Out of thy sleep, and slake in thy heart's core
A wound more fierce than his, with tears and sighs.'
And all the Dreams that watched Urania's eyes,
And all the Echoes whom their Sister's song
Had held in holy silence, cried 'Arise!'
Swift as a thought by the snake memory stung,
From her ambrosial rest the fading Splendour sprung.
23.
She rose like an autumnal Night that springs
Out of the east, and follows wild and drear
The golden Day, which on eternal wings,
Even as a ghost abandoning a bier,
Had left the Earth a corpse. Sorrow and fear
So struck, so roused, so rapt, Urania;
So saddened round her like an atmosphere
Of stormy mist; so swept her on her way,
Even to the mournful place where Adonais lay.
24.
Out of her secret paradise she sped,
Through camps and cities rough with stone and steel
And human hearts, which, to her aery tread
Yielding not, wounded the invisible
Palms of her tender feet where'er they fell.
And barbèd tongues, and thoughts more sharp than they,
Rent the soft form they never could repel,
Whose sacred blood, like the young tears of May,
Paved with eternal flowers that undeserving way.
25.
In the death-chamber for a moment Death,
Shamed by the presence of that living might,
Blushed to annihilation, and the breath
Revisited those lips, and life's pale light
Flashed through those limbs so late her dear delight.
'Leave me not wild and drear and comfortless,
As silent lightning leaves the starless night!
Leave me not!' cried Urania. Her distress
Roused Death: Death rose and smiled, and met her vain caress.
26.
'Stay yet awhile! speak to me once again!
Kiss me, so long but as a kiss may live!
And in my heartless breast and burning brain
That word, that kiss, shall all thoughts else survive,
With food of saddest memory kept alive,
Now thou art dead, as if it were a part
Of thee, my Adonais! I would give
All that I am, to be as thou now art:--
But I am chained to Time, and cannot thence depart.
27
'O gentle child, beautiful as thou wert,
Why didst thou leave the trodden paths of men
Too soon, and with weak hands though mighty heart
Dare the unpastured dragon in his den?
Defenceless as thou wert, oh where was then
Wisdom the mirrored shield, or scorn the spear?--
Or, hadst thou waited the full cycle when
Thy spirit should have filled its crescent sphere,
The monsters of life's waste had fled from thee like deer.
28.
'The herded wolves bold only to pursue,
The obscene ravens clamorous o'er the dead,
The vultures to the conqueror's banner true,
Who feed where desolation first has fed,
And whose wings rain contagion,--how they fled,
When like Apollo, from his golden bow,
The Pythian of the age one arrow sped,
And smiled!--The spoilers tempt no second blow,
They fawn on the proud feet that spurn them lying low.
29.
'The sun comes forth, and many reptiles spawn:
He sets, and each ephemeral insect then
Is gathered into death without a dawn,
And the immortal stars awake again.
So is it in the world of living men:
A godlike mind soars forth, in its delight
Making earth bare and veiling heaven; and, when
It sinks, the swarms that dimmed or shared its light
Leave to its kindred lamps the spirit's awful night.'
30.
Thus ceased she: and the Mountain Shepherds came,
Their garlands sere, their magic mantles rent.
The Pilgrim of Eternity, whose fame
Over his living head like heaven is bent,
An early but enduring monument,
Came, veiling all the lightnings of his song
In sorrow. From her wilds Ierne sent
The sweetest lyrist of her saddest wrong,
And love taught grief to fall like music from his tongue.
31.
'Midst others of less note came one frail form,
A phantom among men, companionless
As the last cloud of an expiring storm
Whose thunder is its knell. He, as I guess,
Had gazed on Nature's naked loveliness
Actaeon-like; and now he fled astray
With feeble steps o'er the world's wilderness,
And his own thoughts along that rugged way
Pursued like raging hounds their father and their prey.
32.
A pard-like Spirit beautiful and swift--
A love in desolation masked--a power
Girt round with weakness; it can scarce uplift
The weight of the superincumbent hour.
It is a dying lamp, a falling shower,
A breaking billow;--even whilst we speak
Is it not broken? On the withering flower
The killing sun smiles brightly: on a cheek
The life can burn in blood even while the heart may break.
33.
His head was bound with pansies overblown,
And faded violets, white and pied and blue;
And a light spear topped with a cypress cone,
Round whose rude shaft dark ivy tresses grew
Yet dripping with the forest's noonday dew,
Vibrated, as the ever-beating heart
Shook the weak hand that grasped it. Of that crew
He came the last, neglected and apart;
A herd-abandoned deer struck by the hunter's dart.
34.
All stood aloof, and at his partial moan
Smiled through their tears; well knew that gentle band
Who in another's fate now wept his own;
As in the accents of an unknown land
He sang new sorrow; sad Urania scanned
The Stranger's mien, and murmured 'Who art thou?'
He answered not, but with a sudden hand
Made bare his branded and ensanguined brow,
Which was like Cain's or Christ's--Oh that it should be so!
35.
What softer voice is hushed over the dead?
Athwart what brow is that dark mantle thrown?
What form leans sadly o'er the white death-bed,
In mockery of monumental stone,
The heavy heart heaving without a moan?
If it be he who, gentlest of the wise,
Taught, soothed, loved, honoured, the departed one.
Let me not vex with inharmonious sighs
The silence of that heart's accepted sacrifice.
36.
Our Adonais has drunk poison--oh
What deaf and viperous murderer could crown
Life's early cup with such a draught of woe?
The nameless worm would now itself disown;
It felt, yet could escape, the magic tone
Whose prelude held all envy, hate, and wrong,
But what was howling in one breast alone,
Silent with expectation of the song
Whose master's hand is cold, whose silver lyre unstrung.
37.
Live thou, whose infamy is not thy fame!
Live! fear no heavier chastisement from me,
Thou noteless blot on a remembered name!
But be thyself, and know thyself to be!
And ever at thy season be thou free
To spill the venom when thy fangs o'erflow;
Remorse and self-contempt shall cling to thee,
Hot shame shall burn upon thy secret brow,
And like a beaten hound tremble thou shalt--as now.
38.
Nor let us weep that our delight is fled
Far from these carrion kites that scream below.
He wakes or sleeps with the enduring dead;
Thou canst not soar where he is sitting now.
Dust to the dust: but the pure spirit shall flow
Back to the burning fountain whence it came,
A portion of the Eternal, which must glow
Through time and change, unquenchably the same,
Whilst thy cold embers choke the sordid hearth of shame.
39.
Peace, peace! he is not dead, he doth not sleep!
He hath awakened from the dream of life.
'Tis we who, lost in stormy visions, keep
With phantoms an unprofitable strife,
And in mad trance strike with our spirit's knife
Invulnerable nothings. _We_ decay
Like corpses in a charnel; fear and grief
Convulse us and consume us day by day,
And cold hopes swarm like worms within our living clay.
40.
He has outsoared the shadow of our night.
Envy and calumny and hate and pain,
And that unrest which men miscall delight,
Can touch him not and torture not again.
From the contagion of the world's slow stain
He is secure; and now can never mourn
A heart grown cold, a head grown grey in vain--
Nor, when the spirit's self has ceased to burn,
With sparkless ashes load an unlamented urn.
41.
He lives, he wakes--'tis Death is dead, not he;
Mourn not for Adonais.--Thou young Dawn,
Turn all thy dew to splendour, for from thee
The spirit thou lamentest is not gone!
Ye caverns and ye forests, cease to moan!
Cease, ye faint flowers and fountains! and thou Air,
Which like a mourning veil thy scarf hadst thrown
O'er the abandoned Earth, now leave it bare
Even to the joyous stars which smile on its despair!
42.
He is made one with Nature. There is heard
His voice in all her music, from the moan
Of thunder to the song of night's sweet bird.
He is a presence to be felt and known
In darkness and in light, from herb and stone,
Spreading itself where'er that Power may move
Which has withdrawn his being to its own,
Which wields the world with never wearied love,
Sustains it from beneath, and kindles it above.
43.
He is a portion of the loveliness
Which once he made more lovely. He doth bear
His part, while the One Spirit's plastic stress
Sweeps through the dull dense world; compelling there
All new successions to the forms they wear;
Torturing th' unwilling dross, that checks its flight,
To its own likeness, as each mass may bear;
And bursting in its beauty and its might
From trees and beasts and men into the heaven's light.
44.
The splendours of the firmament of time
May be eclipsed, but are extinguished not;
Like stars to their appointed height they climb,
And death is a low mist which cannot blot
The brightness it may veil. When lofty thought
Lifts a young heart above its mortal lair,
And love and life contend in it for what
Shall be its earthly doom, the dead live there,
And move like winds of light on dark and stormy air.
45.
The inheritors of unfulfilled renown
Rose from their thrones, built beyond mortal thought,
Far in the unapparent. Chatterton
Rose pale, his solemn agony had not
Yet faded from him; Sidney, as he fought
And as he fell and as he lived and loved
Sublimely mild, a spirit without spot,
Arose; and Lucan, by his death approved;--
Oblivion as they rose shrank like a thing reproved.
46.
And many more, whose names on earth are dark
But whose transmitted effluence cannot die
So long as fire outlives the parent spark,
Rose, robed in dazzling immortality.
'Thou art become as one of us,' they cry;
'It was for thee yon kingless sphere has long
Swung blind in unascended majesty,
Silent alone amid an heaven of song.
Assume thy wingèd throne, thou Vesper of our throng!'
47.
Who mourns for Adonais? Oh come forth,
Fond wretch, and know thyself and him aright.
Clasp with thy panting soul the pendulous earth;
As from a centre, dart thy spirit's light
Beyond all worlds, until its spacious might
Satiate the void circumference: then shrink
Even to a point within our day and night;
And keep thy heart light lest it make thee sink
When hope has kindled hope, and lured thee to the brink.
48.
Or go to Rome, which is the sepulchre,
Oh not of him, but of our joy. 'Tis nought
That ages, empires, and religions, there
Lie buried in the ravage they have wrought;
For such as he can lend--they borrow not
Glory from those who made the world their prey:
And he is gathered to the kings of thought
Who waged contention with their time's decay,
And of the past are all that cannot pass away.
49.
Go thou to Rome,--at once the paradise,
The grave, the city, and the wilderness;
And where its wrecks like shattered mountains rise,
And flowering weeds and fragrant copses dress
The bones of Desolation's nakedness,
Pass, till the Spirit of the spot shall lead
Thy footsteps to a slope of green access,
Where, like an infant's smile, over the dead
A light of laughing flowers along the grass is spread.
50.
And grey walls moulder round, on which dull Time
Feeds, like slow fire upon a hoary brand;
And one keen pyramid with wedge sublime,
Pavilioning the dust of him who planned
This refuge for his memory, doth stand
Like flame transformed to marble; and beneath
A field is spread, on which a newer band
Have pitched in heaven's smile their camp of death,
Welcoming him we lose with scarce extinguished breath.
51.
Here pause. These graves are all too young as yet
To have outgrown the sorrow which consigned
Its charge to each; and, if the seal is set
Here on one fountain of a mourning mind,
Break it not thou! too surely shalt thou find
Thine own well full, if thou returnest home,
Of tears and gall. From the world's bitter wind
Seek shelter in the shadow of the tomb.
What Adonais is why fear we to become?
52.
The One remains, the many change and pass;
Heaven's light for ever shines, earth's shadows fly;
Life, like a dome of many-coloured glass,
Stains the white radiance of eternity,
Until Death tramples it to fragments.--Die,
If thou wouldst be with that which thou dost seek!
Follow where all is fled!--Rome's azure sky,
Flowers, ruins, statues, music, words, are weak
The glory they transfuse with fitting truth to speak.
53.
Why linger, why turn back, why shrink, my heart?
Thy hopes are gone before: from all things here
They have departed; thou shouldst now depart!
A light is past from the revolving year,
And man and woman; and what still is dear
Attracts to crush, repels to make thee wither.
The soft sky smiles, the low wind whispers near:
'Tis Adonais calls! Oh hasten thither!
No more let life divide what death can join together.
54.
That light whose smile kindles the universe,
That beauty in which all things work and move,
That benediction which the eclipsing curse
Of birth can quench not, that sustaining Love
Which, through the web of being blindly wove
By man and beast and earth and air and sea,
Burns bright or dim, as each are mirrors of
The fire for which all thirst, now beams on me,
Consuming the last clouds of cold mortality.
55.
The breath whose might I have invoked in song
Descends on me; my spirit's bark is driven
Far from the shore, far from the trembling throng
Whose sails were never to the tempest given.
The massy earth and spherèd skies are riven!
I am borne darkly, fearfully, afar!
Whilst, burning through the inmost veil of heaven,
The soul of Adonais, like a star,
Beacons from the abode where the Eternal are.
Extra Info:
CANCELLED PASSAGES OF ADONAIS, AND OF ITS PREFACE.
The expression of my indignation and sympathy. I will allow myself a
first and last word on the subject of calumny as it relates to me. As an
author I have dared and invited censure. If I understand myself, I have
written neither for profit nor for fame: I have employed my poetical
compositions and publications simply as the instruments of that sympathy
between myself and others which the ardent and unbounded love I
cherished for my kind incited me to acquire. I expected all sorts of
stupidity and insolent contempt from those.... These compositions
(excepting the tragedy of _The Cenci_, which was written rather to try
my powers than to unburden my full heart) are insufficiently....
Commendation then perhaps they deserve, even from their bitterest
enemies; but they have not obtained any corresponding popularity. As a
man, I shrink from notice and regard: the ebb and flow of the world
vexes me: I desire to be left in peace. Persecution, contumely, and
calumny, have been heaped upon me in profuse measure; and domestic
conspiracy and legal oppression have violated in my person the most
sacred rights of nature and humanity. The bigot will say it was the
recompense of my errors--the man of the world will call it the result of
my imprudence: but never upon one head....
Reviewers, with some rare exceptions, are a most stupid and malignant
race. As a bankrupt thief turns thief-taker in despair, so an
unsuccessful author turns critic. But a young spirit panting for fame,
doubtful of its powers, and certain only of its aspirations, is
ill-qualified to assign its true value to the sneer of this world. He
knows not that such stuff as this is of the abortive and monstrous
births which time consumes as fast as it produces. He sees the truth and
falsehood, the merits and demerits, of his case, inextricably
entangled.... No personal offence should have drawn from me this public
comment upon such stuff.
The offence of this poor victim seems to have consisted solely in his
intimacy with Leigh Hunt, Mr. Hazlitt, and some other enemies of
despotism and superstition. My friend Hunt has a very hard skull to
crack, and will take a deal of killing. I do not know much of Mr.
Hazlitt, but....
I knew personally but little of Keats; but, on the news of his
situation, I wrote to him, suggesting the propriety of trying the
Italian climate, and inviting him to join me. Unfortunately he did not
allow me.
* * * * *
1.
And the green paradise which western waves
Embosom in their ever-wailing sweep,--
Talking of freedom to their tongueless caves,
Or to the spirits which within them keep
A record of the wrongs which, though they sleep,
Die not, but dream of retribution,--heard
His hymns, and echoing them from steep to steep,
Kept--
* * * * *
2.
And ever as he went he swept a lyre
Of unaccustomed shape, and ... strings
Now like the ... of impetuous fire
Which shakes the forest with its murmurings,
Now like the rush of the aërial wings
Of the enamoured wind among the treen,
Whispering unimaginable things,
And dying on the streams of dew serene
Which feed the unmown meads with ever-during green.
3.
And then came one of sweet and earnest looks,
Whose soft smiles to his dark and night-like eyes
Were as the clear and ever-living brooks
Are to the obscure fountains whence they rise,
Showing how pure they are: a paradise
Of happy truth upon his forehead low
Lay, making wisdom lovely, in the guise
Of earth-awakening morn upon the brow
Of star-deserted heaven while ocean gleams below.
4.
His song, though very sweet, was low and faint,
A simple strain.
* * * * *
5.
A mighty Phantasm, half concealed
In darkness of his own exceeding light,
Which clothed his awful presence unrevealed,
Charioted on the ... night
Of thunder-smoke, whose skirts were chrysolite.
6.
And like a sudden meteor which outstrips
The splendour-wingèd chariot of the sun,
... eclipse
The armies of the golden stars, each one
Pavilioned in its tent of light--all strewn
Over the chasms of blue night--
NOTES.
PREFACE.
Line 1. _Adonais_. There is nothing to show positively why Shelley
adopted the name Adonais as a suitable Hellenic name for John Keats. I
have already suggested (p. 59) that he may perhaps have wished to
indicate, in this indirect way, that his poem was founded partly upon
the Elegy of Bion for Adonis. I believe the name Adonais was not really
in use among the Greeks, and is not anywhere traceable in classical
Grecian literature. It has sometimes been regarded as a Doricized form
of the name Adonis: Mr. William Cory says that it is not this, but would
properly be a female form of the same name. Dr. Furnivall has suggested
to me that Adonais is 'Shelley's variant of Adonias, the women's yearly
mourning for Adonis.' Disregarding details, we may perhaps say that the
whole subject of his Elegy is treated by Shelley as a transposition of
the lament, as conceived by Bion, of the Cyprian Aphrodite for Adonis;
and that, as he changes the Cyprian into the Uranian Aphrodite, so he
changes the dead youth from Adonis into Adonais.
1. 4. _Motto from the poet Plato_. This motto has been translated
by Shelley himself as follows:
'Thou wert the morning star among the living,
Ere thy fair light had fled:--
Now, having died, thou art as Hesperus, giving
New splendour to the dead.'
1. 8. _Motto from Moschus_. Translated on p. 66, 'Poison came, Bion,'
&c.
1. 13. _It is my intention to subjoin to the London edition of this poem
a criticism_, &c. As to the non-fulfilment of this intention see p. 31.
1. 16. _My known repugnance ... proves at least_. In the Pisa edition
the word is printed 'prove' (not 'proves'). Shelley was far from being
an exact writer in matters of this sort.
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.
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): '
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