Adonai, Therefore, Emphasizes The Sovereignty of God, The Lordship of God. The Meaning of Adonai in The Hebrew Language, God Is Lord
Adonai, Therefore, Emphasizes The Sovereignty of God, The Lordship of God. The Meaning of Adonai in The Hebrew Language, God Is Lord
Adonai, Therefore, Emphasizes The Sovereignty of God, The Lordship of God. The Meaning of Adonai in The Hebrew Language, God Is Lord
The meaning of
Adonai in the Hebrew language, God is Lord
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Title: Adonais
Author: Shelley
Language: English
ADONAIS
by
SHELLEY
edited
1891
CONTENTS.
PREFACE
MEMOIR OF SHELLEY
MEMOIR OF KEATS
ADONAIS:
ITS COMPOSITION AND BIBLIOGRAPHY ITS ARGUMENT GENERAL EXPOSITION
BION AND MOSCHUS
ADONAIS: PREFACE
ADONAIS
CANCELLED PASSAGES OF ADONAIS AND ITS PREFACE
NOTES
PREFACE.
_Adonais_ is the first writing by Shelley which has been included in the
_Clarendon Press Series_. It is a poem of convenient length for such a
purpose, being neither short nor decidedly long; and--leaving out of
count some of the short poems--is the one by this author which
approaches nearest to being 'popular.' It is elevated in sentiment,
classical in form,--in substance, biographical in relation to Keats, and
in some minor degree autobiographical for Shelley himself. On these
grounds it claimed a reasonable preference over all his other poems, for
the present method of treatment; although some students of Shelley,
myself included, might be disposed to maintain that, in point of
absolute intrinsic beauty and achievement, and of the qualities most
especially characteristic of its author, it is not superior, or indeed
is but barely equal, to some of his other compositions. To take, for
instance, two poems not very different in length from _Adonais_--_The
Witch of Atlas_ is more original, and _Epipsychidion_ more abstract in
ideal.
W.M. ROSSETTI.
_July, 1890._
MEMOIR OF SHELLEY.
The life of Percy Bysshe Shelley is one which has given rise to a great
deal of controversy, and which cannot, for a long time to come, fail to
be regarded with very diverse sentiments. His extreme opinions on
questions of religion and morals, and the great latitude which he
allowed himself in acting according to his own opinions, however widely
they might depart from the law of the land and of society, could not but
produce this result. In his own time he was generally accounted an
outrageous and shameful offender. At the present date many persons
entertain essentially the same view, although softened by lapse of
years, and by respect for his standing as a poet: others regard him as a
conspicuous reformer. Some take a medium course, and consider him to
have been sincere, and so far laudable; but rash and reckless of
consequences, and so far censurable. His poetry also has been subject to
very different constructions. During his lifetime it obtained little
notice save for purposes of disparagement and denunciation. Now it is
viewed with extreme enthusiasm by many, and is generally admitted to
hold a permanent rank in English literature, though faulty (as some
opine) through vague idealism and want of backbone. These are all points
on which I shall here offer no personal opinion. I shall confine myself
to tracing the chief outlines of Shelley's life, and (very briefly) the
sequence of his literary work.
Shelley's schooling began at six years of age, when he was placed under
the Rev. Mr. Edwards, at Warnham. At ten he went to Sion House School,
Brentford, of which the Principal was Dr. Greenlaw, the pupils being
mostly sons of local tradesmen. In July, 1804, he proceeded to Eton,
where Dr. Goodall was the Head Master, succeeded, just towards the end
of Shelley's stay, by the far severer Dr. Keate. Shelley was shy,
sensitive, and of susceptible fancy: at Eton we first find him
insubordinate as well. He steadily resisted the fagging-system, learned
more as he chose than as his masters dictated, and was known as 'Mad
Shelley,' and 'Shelley the Atheist.' It has sometimes been said that an
Eton boy, if rebellious, was termed 'Atheist,' and that the designation,
as applied to Shelley, meant no more than that. I do not feel satisfied
that this is true at all; at any rate it seems to me probable that
Shelley, who constantly called himself an atheist in after-life,
received the epithet at Eton for some cause more apposite than
disaffection to school-authority.
Settling in lodgings in London, and parting from Hogg, who went to York
to study conveyancing, Percy pretty soon found a substitute for Harriet
Grove in Harriet Westbrook, a girl of fifteen, schoolfellow of two of
his sisters at Clapham. She was exceedingly pretty, daughter of a
retired hotel-keeper in easy circumstances. Shelley wanted to talk both
her and his sisters out of Christianity; and he cultivated the
acquaintance of herself and of her much less juvenile sister Eliza,
calling from time to time at their father's house in Chapel Street,
Grosvenor Square. Harriet fell in love with him: besides, he was a
highly eligible _parti_, being a prospective baronet, absolute heir to a
very considerable estate, and contingent heir (if he had assented to a
proposal of entail, to which however he never did assent, professing
conscientious objections) to another estate still larger. Shelley was
not in love with Harriet; but he liked her, and was willing to do
anything he could to further her wishes and plans. Mr. Timothy Shelley,
after a while, pardoned his son's misadventure at Oxford, and made him a
moderate allowance of £200 a-year. Percy then visited a cousin in Wales,
a member of the Grove family. He was recalled to London by Harriet
Westbrook, who protested against a project of sending her back to
school. He counselled resistance. She replied in July 1811 (to quote a
contemporary letter from Shelley to Hogg), 'that resistance was useless,
but that she would fly with me, and threw herself upon my protection.'
This was clearly a rather decided step upon the damsel's part: we may
form our own conclusions whether she was willing to unite with Percy
without the bond of marriage; or whether she confidently calculated upon
inducing him to marry her, her family being kept in the dark; or whether
the whole affair was a family manoeuvre for forcing on an engagement and
a wedding. Shelley returned to London, and had various colloquies with
Harriet: in due course he eloped with her to Edinburgh, and there on
28th August he married her. His age was then just nineteen, and hers
sixteen. Shelley, who was a profound believer in William Godwin's
_Political Justice_, rejected the institution of marriage as being
fundamentally irrational and wrongful. But he saw that he could not in
this instance apply his own pet theories without involving in discredit
and discomfort the woman whose love had been bestowed upon him. Either
his opinion or her happiness must be sacrificed to what he deemed a
prejudice of society: he decided rather to sacrifice the former.
Hunt, in his _Autobiography_, narrates as follows. 'I had not known the
young poet [Keats] long when Shelley and he became acquainted under my
roof. Keats did not take to Shelley as kindly as Shelley did to him.
Shelley's only thoughts of his new acquaintance were such as regarded
his bad health with which he sympathised [this about bad health seems
properly to apply to a date later than the opening period when the two
poets came together], and his poetry, of which he has left such a
monument of his admiration as _Adonais_. Keats, being a little too
sensitive on the score of his origin, felt inclined to see in every man
of birth a sort of natural enemy. Their styles in writing also were very
different; and Keats, notwithstanding his unbounded sympathies with
ordinary flesh and blood, and even the transcendental cosmopolitics of
_Hyperion_, was so far inferior in universality to his great
acquaintance that he could not accompany him in his daedal rounds with
Nature, and his Archimedean endeavours to move the globe with his own
hands [an allusion to the motto appended to _Queen Mab_]. I am bound to
state thus much; because, hopeless of recovering his health, under
circumstances that made the feeling extremely bitter, an irritable
morbidity appears even to have driven his suspicions to excess; and this
not only with regard to the acquaintance whom he might reasonably
suppose to have had some advantages over him, but to myself, who had
none; for I learned the other day with extreme pain ... that Keats, at
one period of his intercourse with us, suspected both Shelley and myself
of a wish to see him undervalued! Such are the tricks which constant
infelicity can play with the most noble natures. For Shelley let
_Adonais_ answer.' It is to be observed that Hunt is here rather putting
the cart before the horse. Keats (as we shall see immediately) suspected
Shelley and Hunt 'of a wish to see him undervalued' as early as February
1818; but his 'irritable morbidity' when 'hopeless of recovering his
health' belongs to a later date, say the spring and summer of 1820.
It is said that in the spring of 1817 Shelley and Keats agreed that each
of them would undertake an epic, to be written in a space of six months:
Shelley produced _The Revolt of Islam_ (originally entitled _Laon and
Cythna_), and Keats produced _Endymion_. Shelley's poem, the longer of
the two, was completed by the early autumn, while Keats's occupied him
until the winter which opened 1818. On 8th October, 1817, Keats wrote to
a friend, 'I refused to visit Shelley, that I might have my own
unfettered scope; meaning presumably that he wished to finish _Endymion_
according to his own canons of taste and execution, without being
hampered by any advice from Shelley. There is also a letter from Keats
to his two brothers, 22nd December, 1817, saying: 'Shelley's poem _Laon
and Cythna_ is out, and there are words about its being objected to as
much as _Queen Mab_ was. Poor Shelley, I think he has his quota of good
qualities.' As late as February 1818 He wrote, 'I have not yet read
Shelley's poem.' On 23rd January of the same year he had written: 'The
fact is, he [Hunt] and Shelley are hurt, and perhaps justly, at my not
having showed them the affair [_Endymion_ in MS.] officiously; and, from
several hints I have had, they appear much disposed to dissect and
anatomize any trip or slip I may have made.' It was at nearly the same
date, 4th February, that Keats, Shelley, and Hunt wrote each a sonnet on
_The Nile_: in my judgment, Shelley's is the least successful of the
three.
Soon after their marriage, Shelley and his second wife settled at Great
Marlow, in Buckinghamshire. They were shortly disturbed by a Chancery
suit, whereby Mr. Westbrook sought to deprive Shelley of the custody of
his two children by Harriet, Ianthe and Charles. Towards March 1818,
Lord Chancellor Eldon pronounced judgment against Shelley, on the ground
of his culpable conduct as a husband, carrying out culpable opinions
upheld in his writings. The children were handed over to Dr. Hume, an
army-physician named by Shelley: he had to assign for their support a
sum of £120 per annum, brought up to £200 by a supplement from Mr.
Westbrook. About the same date he suffered from an illness which he
regarded as a dangerous pulmonary attack, and he made up his mind to
quit England for Italy; accompanied by his wife, their two infants
William and Clara, Miss Clairmont, and her infant Allegra, who was soon
afterwards consigned to Lord Byron in Venice. Mr. Charles Cowden Clarke,
who was Keats's friend from boyhood, writes: 'When Shelley left England
for Italy, Keats told me that he had received from him an invitation to
become his guest, and in short to make one of his household. It was upon
the purest principle that Keats declined his noble proffer, for he
entertained an exalted opinion of Shelley's genius--in itself an
inducement. He also knew of his deeds of bounty, and from their frequent
social intercourse he had full faith in the sincerity of his
proposal.... Keats said that, in declining the invitation, his sole
motive was the consciousness, which would be ever prevalent with him, of
his being, in its utter extent, not a free agent, even within such a
circle as Shelley's--he himself nevertheless being the most unrestricted
of beings.' Mr. Clarke seems to mean in this passage that Shelley,
_before_ starting for Italy, invited Keats to accompany him thither--a
fact, if such it is, of which I find no trace elsewhere. It is however
just possible that Clarke was only referring to the earlier invitation,
previously mentioned, for Keats to visit at Great Marlow; or he may most
probably, with some confusion as to dates and details, be thinking of
the message which Shelley, when already settled in Italy for a couple of
years, addressed to his brother-poet--of which more anon.
It was only towards the summer of 1819 that Shelley read the _Endymion_.
He wrote of it thus in a letter to his publisher, Mr. Ollier, September
6, 1819. 'I have read ... Keats's poem.... Much praise is due to me for
having read it, the author's intention appearing to be that no person
should possibly get to the end of it. Yet it is full of some of the
highest and the finest gleams of poetry: indeed, everything seems to be
viewed by the mind of a poet which is described in it. I think, if he
had printed about fifty pages of fragments from it, I should have been
led to admire Keats as a poet more than I ought--of which there is now
no danger.' Shelley regarded the Hymn to Pan, in the first Book of
_Endymion_, as affording 'the surest promise of ultimate excellence.'
The health of Keats having broken down, and consumption having set in,
Shelley wrote to him from Pisa urging him to come over to Italy as his
guest. Keats did not however go to Pisa, but, along with the young
painter Joseph Severn, to Naples, and thence to Rome. I here subjoin
Shelley's letter.
'I hear with great pain the dangerous accident you have undergone
[recurrence of blood-spitting from the lungs], and Mr. Gisborne, who
gives me the account of it, adds that you continue to wear a consumptive
appearance. This consumption is a disease particularly fond of people
who write such good verses as you have done, and with the assistance of
an English winter, it can often indulge its selection. I do not think
that young and amiable poets are bound to gratify its taste: they have
entered into no bond with the Muses to that effect. But seriously (for I
am joking on what I am very anxious about) I think you would do well to
pass the winter in Italy, and avoid so tremendous an accident; and, if
you think it as necessary as I do, so long as you continue to find Pisa
or its neighbourhood agreeable to you, Mrs. Shelley unites with myself
in urging the request that you would take up your residence with us. You
might come by sea to Leghorn (France is not worth seeing, and the sea is
particularly good for weak lungs)--which is within a few miles of us.
You ought, at all events, to see Italy; and your health, which I suggest
as a motive, may be an excuse to you. I spare declamation about the
statues and paintings and ruins, and (what is a greater piece of
forbearance) about the mountains and streams, the fields, the colours of
the sky, and the sky itself.
'I have lately read your _Endymion_ again, and even with a new sense of
the treasures of poetry it contains--though treasures poured forth with
indistinct profusion. This people in general will not endure; and that
is the cause of the comparatively few copies which have been sold. I
feel persuaded that you are capable of the greatest things, so you but
will. I always tell Ollier to send you copies of my books. _Prometheus
Unbound_ I imagine you will receive nearly at the same time with this
letter. _The Cenci_ I hope you have already received: it was studiously
composed in a different style.
"Below the _good_ how far! but far above the _great_[3]!"
In poetry I have sought to avoid system and mannerism. I wish those who
excel me in genius would pursue the same plan.
'Yours sincerely,
'P.B. SHELLEY.'
Keats's reply to Shelley ran as follows:--
'I am very much gratified that you, in a foreign country, and with a
mind almost over-occupied, should write to me in the strain of the
letter beside me. If I do not take advantage of your invitation, it will
be prevented by a circumstance I have very much at heart to prophesy[4].
There is no doubt that an English winter would put an end to me, and do
so in a lingering hateful manner. Therefore I must either voyage or
journey to Italy, as a soldier marches up to a battery. My nerves at
present are the worst part of me: yet they feel soothed that, come what
extreme may, I shall not be destined to remain in one spot long enough
to take a hatred of any four particular bedposts.
'I received a copy of _The Cenci_, as from yourself, from Hunt. There is
only one part of it I am judge of--the poetry and dramatic effect, which
by many spirits nowadays is considered the Mammon. A modern work, it is
said, must have a purpose; which may be the God. An artist must serve
Mammon: he must have "self-concentration"--selfishness perhaps. You, I
am sure, will forgive me for sincerely remarking that you might curb
your magnanimity, and be more of an artist, and load every rift of your
subject with ore. The thought of such discipline must fall like cold
chains upon you, who perhaps never sat with your wings furled for six
months together. And is not this extraordinary talk for the writer of
_Endymion_, whose mind was like a pack of scattered cards? I am picked
up and sorted to a pip. My imagination is a monastery, and I am its
monk.
'I must express once more my deep sense of your kindness, adding my
sincere thanks and respects for Mrs. Shelley. In the hope of soon seeing
you I remain
'JOHN KEATS.'
It may have been in the interval between writing his note Of invitation
to Keats, and receiving the reply of the latter, that Shelley penned the
following letter to the Editor of the _Quarterly Review_--the periodical
which had taken (or had shared with _Blackwood's Magazine_) the lead in
depreciating _Endymion_. The letter, however, was left uncompleted, and
was not dispatched. (I omit such passages as are not directly concerned
with Keats):--
'SIR,
'Should you cast your eye on the signature of this letter before you
read the contents, you might imagine that they related to a slanderous
paper which appeared in your Review some time since.... I am not in the
habit of permitting myself to be disturbed by what is said or written of
me.... The case is different with the unfortunate subject of this
letter, the author of _Endymion_, to whose feelings and situation I
entreat you to allow me to call your attention. I write considerably in
the dark; but, if it is Mr. Gifford that I am addressing, I am persuaded
that, in an appeal to his humanity and justice, he will acknowledge the
_fas ab hoste doceri_. I am aware that the first duty of a reviewer is
towards the public; and I am willing to confess that the _Endymion_ is a
poem considerably defective, and that perhaps it deserved as much
censure as the pages of your Review record against it. But, not to
mention that there is a certain contemptuousness of phraseology, from
which it Is difficult for a critic to abstain, in the review of
_Endymion_, I do not think that the writer has given it its due praise.
Surely the poem, with all its faults, is a very remarkable production
for a man of Keats's age[7]; and the promise of ultimate excellence is
such as has rarely been afforded even by such as have afterwards
attained high literary eminence. Look at book 2, line 833, &c., and book
3, lines 113 to 120; read down that page, and then again from line
193[8]. I could cite many other passages to convince you that it
deserved milder usage. Why it should have been reviewed at all,
excepting for the purpose of bringing its excellences into notice, I
cannot conceive; for it was very little read, and there was no danger
that it should become a model to the age of that false taste with which
I confess that it is replenished.
'Poor Keats was thrown into a dreadful state of mind by this review,
which, I am persuaded, was not written with any intention of producing
the effect--to which it has at least greatly contributed--of embittering
his existence, and inducing a disease from which there are now but faint
hopes of his recovery. The first effects are described to me to have
resembled insanity, and it was by assiduous watching that he was
restrained from effecting purposes of suicide. The agony of his
sufferings at length produced the rupture of a blood-vessel in the
lungs, and the usual process of consumption appears to have begun. He is
coming to pay me a visit in Italy; but I fear that, unless his mind can
be kept tranquil, little is to be hoped from the mere influence of
climate.
'But let me not extort anything from your pity. I have just seen a
second volume, published by him evidently in careless despair. I have
desired my bookseller to send you a copy: and allow me to solicit your
especial attention to the fragment of a poem entitled _Hyperion_, the
composition of which was checked by the review in question. The great
proportion of this piece is surely in the very highest style of poetry.
I speak impartially, for the canons of taste to which Keats has
conformed in his other compositions are the very reverse of my own. I
leave you to judge for yourself: it would be an insult to you to suppose
that, from motives however honourable, you would lend yourself to a
deception of the public.'
The question arises, How did Shelley know what he here states--that
Keats was thrown, by reading the _Quarterly_ article, into a state
resembling insanity, that he contemplated suicide, &c.? Not any document
has been published whereby this information could have been imparted to
Shelley: his chief informant on the subject appears to have been Mr.
Gisborne, who had now for a short while returned to England, and some
confirmation may have come from Hunt. As to the statements themselves,
they have, ever since the appearance in 1848 of Lord Houghton's _Life of
Keats_, been regarded as very gross exaggerations: indeed, I think the
tendency has since then been excessive in the reverse direction, and the
vexation occasioned to Keats by hostile criticism has come to be
underrated.
As I have already said, the last residence of Shelley was on the Gulf of
Spezzia. He had a boat built named the Ariel (by Byron, the Don Juan),
boating being his favourite recreation; and on 1 July, 1822, he and
Lieut. Williams, along with a single sailor-lad, started in her for
Leghorn, to welcome there Leigh Hunt. The latter had come to Italy with
his family, on the invitation of Byron and Shelley, to join in a
periodical to be called _The Liberal_. On 8 July Shelley, with his two
companions, embarked to return to Casa Magni. Towards half-past six in
the evening a sudden and tremendous squall sprang up. The Ariel sank,
either upset by the squall, or (as some details of evidence suggest) run
down near Viareggio by an Italian fishing-boat, the crew of which had
plotted to plunder her of a sum of money. The bodies were eventually
washed ashore; and on 16 August the corpse of Shelley was burned on the
beach under the direction of Trelawny. In the pocket of his jacket had
been found two books--a Sophocles, and the _Lamia_ volume, doubled back
as if it had at the last moment been thrust aside. His ashes were
collected, and, with the exception of the heart which was delivered to
Mrs. Shelley, were buried in Rome, in the new Protestant Cemetery. The
corpse of Shelley's beloved son William had, in 1819, been interred hard
by, and in 1821 that of Keats, in the old Cemetery--a space of ground
which had, by 1822, been finally closed.
The enthusiastic and ideal fervour which marks Shelley's poetry could
not possibly be simulated--it was a part, the most essential part, of
his character. He was remarkably single-minded, in the sense of being
constantly ready to do what he professed as, in the abstract, the right
thing to be done; impetuous, bold, uncompromising, lavishly generous,
and inspired by a general love of humankind, and a coequal detestation
of all the narrowing influences of custom and prescription. Pity, which
included self-pity, was one of his dominant emotions. If we consider
what are the uses, and what the abuses, of a character of this type, we
shall have some notion of the excellences and the defects of Shelley. In
person he was well-grown and slim; more nearly beautiful than handsome;
his complexion brilliant, his dark-brown but slightly grizzling hair
abundant and wavy, and his eyes deep-blue, large, and fixed. His voice
was high-pitched--at times discordant, but capable of agreeable
modulation; his general aspect uncommonly youthful.
The roll of Shelley's publications is a long one for a man who perished
not yet thirty years of age. I append a list of the principal ones,
according to date of publication, which was never very distant from that
of composition. Several minor productions remain unspecified.
" Adonais.
The _Masque of Anarchy_ and _Peter Bell the Third_, both written by
Shelley in 1819, were published later on; also various minor poems,
complete or fragmentary. _Peter Bell the Third_ has a certain fortuitous
connexion with Keats. It was written in consequence of Shelley's having
read in _The Examiner_ a notice of _Peter Bell, a Lyrical Ballad_ (the
production of John Hamilton Reynolds): and this notice, as has very
recently been proved, was the handiwork of Keats. Shelley cannot have
been aware of that fact. His prose _Essays and Letters_, including _The
Defence of Poetry_, appeared in 1840. The only known work of Shelley,
extant but yet unpublished, is the _Philosophical View of Reform_: an
abstract of it, with several extracts, was printed in the _Fortnightly
Review_ in 1886.
MEMOIR OF KEATS.
The parents of John Keats were Thomas Keats, and Frances, daughter of
Mr. Jennings, who kept a large livery-stable, the Swan and Hoop, in the
Pavement, Moorfields, London. Thomas Keats was the principal stableman
or assistant in the same business. John, a seven months' child, was born
at the Swan and Hoop on 31 October, 1795. Three other children grew
up--George, Thomas, and Fanny, John is said to have been violent and
ungovernable in early childhood. He was sent to a very well-reputed
school, that of the Rev. John Clarke, at Enfield: the son Charles Cowden
Clarke, whom I have previously mentioned, was an undermaster, and paid
particular attention to Keats. The latter did not show any remarkable
talent at school, but learned easily, and was 'a very orderly scholar,'
acquiring a fair amount of Latin but no Greek. He was active,
pugnacious, and popular among his school-fellows. The father died of a
fall from his horse in April, 1804: the mother, after re-marrying,
succumbed to consumption in February, 1810. Before the close of the same
year John left school, and he was then apprenticed, to a surgeon at
Edmonton. In July, 1815, he passed with credit the examination at
Apothecaries' Hall.
In 1812 Keats read for the first time Spenser's _Faery Queen_, and was
fascinated with it to a singular degree. This and other poetic reading
made him flag in his surgical profession, and finally he dropped it, and
for the remainder of his life had no definite occupation save that of
writing verse. From his grandparents he inherited a certain moderate sum
of money--not more than sufficient to give him a tolerable start in
life. He made acquaintance with Leigh Hunt, then editor of the
_Examiner_, John Hunt, the publisher, Charles Wentworth Dilke who became
editor of the _Athenaeum_, the painter Haydon, and others. His first
volume of Poems (memorable for little else than the sonnet _On Reading
Chapman's Homer_) was published in 1817. It was followed by _Endymion_
in April, 1818.
In June of the same year Keats set off with his chief intimate, Charles
Armitage Brown (a retired Russia merchant who afterwards wrote a book on
Shakespeare's Sonnets), on a pedestrian tour in Scotland, which extended
into North Ireland as well. In July, in the Isle of Mull, he got a bad
sore throat, of which some symptoms had appeared also in earlier years:
it may be regarded as the beginning of his fatal malady. He cut short
his tour and returned to Hampstead, where he had to nurse his younger
brother Tom, a consumptive invalid, who died in December of the same
year.
At the house of the Dilkes, in the autumn of 1818, Keats made the
acquaintance of Miss Fanny Brawne, the orphan daughter of a gentleman of
independent means: he was soon desperately in love with her, having 'a
swooning admiration of her beauty:' towards the spring of 1819 they
engaged to marry, with the prospect of a long engagement. On the night
of 3 February, 1820, on returning to the house at Hampstead which he
shared with Mr. Brown, the poet had his first attack, a violent one, of
blood-spitting from the lungs. He rallied somewhat, but suffered a
dangerous relapse in June, just prior to the publication of his final
volume, containing all his best poems--_Isabella, Hyperion, the Eve of
St. Agnes, Lamia_, and the leading Odes. His doctor ordered him off, as
a last chance, to Italy; previously to this he had been staying in the
house of Mrs. and Miss Brawne, who tended him affectionately. Keats was
now exceedingly unhappy. His passionate love, his easily roused feelings
of jealousy of Miss Brawne, and of suspicious rancour against even the
most amicable and attached of his male intimates, the general
indifference and the particular scorn and ridicule with which his poems
had been received, his narrow means and uncertain outlook, and the
prospect of an early death closing a painful and harassing illness--all
preyed upon his mind with unrelenting tenacity. The worst of all was the
sense of approaching and probably final separation from Fanny Brawne.
Keats was an undersized man, little more than five feet high. His face
was handsome, ardent, and full of expression; the hair rich, brown, and
curling; the hazel eyes 'mellow and glowing--large, dark, and
sensitive.' He was framed for enjoyment; but with that acuteness of
feeling which turned even enjoyment into suffering, and then again
extracted a luxury out of melancholy. He had vehemence and generosity,
and the frankness which belongs to these qualities, not unmingled,
however, with a strong dose of suspicion. Apart from the overmastering
love of his closing years, his one ambition was to be a poet. His mind
was little concerned either with the severe practicalities of life, or
with the abstractions of religious faith.
ADONAIS:
For nearly two months after the death of Keats, 23 February, 1821,
Shelley appears to have remained in ignorance of the event: he knew it
on or before 19 April. The precise date when he began his Elegy does not
seem to be recorded: one may suppose it to have been in the latter half
of May. On 5 June he wrote to Mr. and Mrs. Gisborne: 'I have been
engaged these last days in composing a poem on the death of Keats, which
will shortly be finished; and I anticipate the pleasure of reading it to
you, as some of the very few persons who will be interested in it and
understand it. It is a highly wrought piece of art, and perhaps better,
in point of composition, than anything I have written.'
'I am fully repaid for the painful emotions from which some verses of my
poem sprung by your sympathy and approbation; which is all the reward I
expect, and as much as I desire. It is not for me to judge whether, in
the high praise your feelings assign me, you are right or wrong. The
poet and the man are two different natures: though they exist together,
they may be unconscious of each other, and incapable of deciding on each
other's powers and efforts by any reflex act. The decision of the cause
whether or not I am a poet is removed from the present time to the hour
when our posterity shall assemble: but the court is a very severe one,
and I fear that the verdict will be "Guilty--death."'
A letter to Mr. Ollier was probably a little later. It says: 'I send you
a sketch for a frontispiece to the poem _Adonais_. Pray let it be put
into the engraver's hands immediately, as the poem is already on its way
to you, and I should wish it to be ready for its arrival. The poem is
beautifully printed, and--what is of more consequence--correctly:
indeed, it was to obtain this last point that I sent it to the press at
Pisa. In a few days you will receive the bill of lading.' Nothing is
known as to the sketch which Shelley thus sent. It cannot, I presume,
have been his own production, nor yet Severn's: possibly it was supplied
by Lieutenant Williams, who had some aptitude as an amateur artist.
Earlier than the latest of these extracts Shelley had sent to Mr. Severn
a copy of _Adonais_, along with a letter which I append.
'DEAR SIR,
'I send you the Elegy on poor Keats, and I wish it were better worth
your acceptance. You will see, by the preface, that it was written
before I could obtain any particular account of his last moments. All
that I still know was communicated to me by a friend who had derived his
information from Colonel Finch, I have ventured [in the Preface] to
express as I felt the respect and admiration which _your_ conduct
towards him demands.
'In spite of his transcendent genius, Keats never was, nor ever will be,
a popular poet; and the total neglect and obscurity in which the
astonishing remains of his mind still lie was hardly to be dissipated by
a writer who, however he may differ from Keats in more important
qualities, at least resembles him in that accidental one, a want of
popularity.
'I have little hope therefore that the poem I send you will excite any
attention, nor do I feel assured that a critical notice of his writings
would find a single reader. But for these considerations, it had been my
intention to have collected the remnants of his compositions, and to
have published them with a Life and criticism. Has he left any poems or
writings of whatsoever kind, and in whose possession are they? Perhaps
you would oblige me by information on this point.
'Should you ever pass through Pisa, I hope to have the pleasure of
seeing you, and of cultivating an acquaintance into something pleasant,
begun under such melancholy auspices.
'PERCY B. SHELLEY.
'Do you know Leigh Hunt? I expect him and his family here every day.'
Even the death of Keats, in 1821, did not abate the rancour of
_Blackwood's Magazine_. Witness the following extracts. (1823) 'Keats
had been dished--utterly demolished and dished--by _Blackwood_ long
before Mr. Gifford's scribes mentioned his name.... But let us hear no
more of Johnny Keats. It is really too disgusting to have him and his
poems recalled in this manner after all the world thought they had got
rid of the concern.' (1824) 'Mr. Shelley died, it seems, with a volume
of Mr. Keats's poetry "grasped with one hand in his bosom"--rather an
awkward posture, as you will be convinced if you try it. But what a rash
man Shelley was to put to sea in a frail boat with Jack's poetry on
board!... Down went the boat with a "swirl"! I lay a wager that it
righted soon after ejecting Jack.'... (1826) 'Keats was a Cockney, and
Cockneys claimed him for their own. Never was there a young man so
encrusted with conceit.'
'Locke says the most resolute liar cannot lie more than once in every
three sentences. Folly is more engrossing; for we could prove from the
present Elegy that it is possible to write two sentences of pure
nonsense out of three. A more faithful calculation would bring us to
ninety-nine out of every hundred; or--as the present consists of only
fifty-five stanzas--leaving about five readable lines in the entire....
A Mr. Keats, who had left a decent calling for the melancholy trade of
Cockney poetry, has lately died of a consumption, after having written
two or three little books of verses much neglected by the public.... The
New School, however, will have it that he was slaughtered by a criticism
of the _Quarterly Review_: "O flesh, how art thou fishified!" There is
even an aggravation in this cruelty of the Review--for it had taken
three or four years to slay its victim, the deadly blow having been
inflicted at least as long since. [This is not correct: the _Quarterly_
critique, having appeared in September, 1818, preceded the death of
Keats by two years and five months].... The fact is, the _Quarterly_,
finding before it a work at once silly and presumptuous, full of the
servile _slang_ that Cockaigne dictates to its servitors, and the vulgar
indecorums which that Grub Street Empire rejoiceth to applaud, told the
truth of the volume, and recommended a change of manners[14] and of
masters to the scribbler. Keats wrote on; but he wrote _indecently_,
probably in the indulgence of his social propensities.'
From the dates already cited, it may be assumed that the Pisan edition
of _Adonais_ was in London in the hands of Mr. Ollier towards the middle
of August, 1821, purchasable by whoever might be minded to buy it. Very
soon afterwards it was reprinted in the _Literary Chronicle and Weekly
Review_, published by Limbird in the Strand--1 December, 1821: a rather
singular, not to say piratical, proceeding. An editorial note was worded
thus: 'Through the kindness of a friend, we have been favoured with the
latest production of a gentleman of no ordinary genius, Mr. Bysshe
Shelley. It is an elegy on the death of a youthful poet of considerable
promise, Mr. Keats, and was printed at Pisa. As the copy now before us
is perhaps [surely not] the only one that has reached England, and the
subject is one that will excite much interest, we shall print the whole
of it.' This promise was not literally fulfilled, for stanzas 19 to 24
were omitted, not apparently with any special object.
'Reviewers have been sometimes accused of not reading the works which
they affected to criticise. On the present occasion we shall anticipate
the author's complaint, and honestly confess that we have not read his
work. Not that we have been wanting in our duty; far from it; indeed, we
have made efforts, almost as superhuman as the story itself appears to
be, to get through it: but, with the fullest stretch of our
perseverance, we are forced to confess that we have not been able to
struggle beyond the first of the four books of which this Poetic Romance
consists. We should extremely lament this want of energy, or whatever it
may be, on our parts, were it not for one consolation--namely, that we
are no better acquainted with the meaning of the book through which we
have so painfully toiled than we are with that of the three which we
have not looked into.
'It is not that Mr. Keats (if that be his real name, for we almost doubt
that any man in his senses would put his real name to such a
rhapsody)--it is not, we say, that the author has not powers of
language, rays of fancy, and gleams of genius. He has all these: but he
is unhappily a disciple of the new school of what has been somewhere
called "Cockney Poetry," which may be defined to consist of the most
incongruous ideas in the most uncouth language.
'Mr. Keats's preface hints that his poem was produced under peculiar
circumstances. "Knowing within myself." he says, "the manner in which
this poem has been produced, it is not without a feeling of regret that
I make it public. What manner I mean will be quite clear to the reader,
who must soon perceive great inexperience, immaturity, and every error
denoting a feverish attempt rather than a deed accomplished." We humbly
beg his pardon, but this does not appear to us to be "quite so clear";
we really do not know what he means. But the next passage is more
intelligible. "The two first books, and indeed the two last, I feel
sensible, are not of such completion as to warrant their passing the
press." Thus "the two first books" are, even in his own judgment, unfit
to appear, and "the two last" are, it seems, in the same condition; and,
as two and two make four, and as that is the whole number of books, we
have a clear, and we believe a very just, estimate of the entire work.
'Of the story we have been able to make out but little. It seems to be
mythological, and probably relates to the loves of Diana and Endymion;
but of this, as the scope of the work has altogether escaped us, we
cannot speak with any degree of certainty, and must therefore content
ourselves with giving some instances of its diction and versification.
And here again we are perplexed and puzzled. At first it appeared to us
that Mr. Keats had been amusing himself and wearying his readers with an
immeasurable game at _bouts rimés_; but, if we recollect rightly, it is
an indispensable condition at this play that the rhymes, when filled up,
shall have a meaning; and our author, as we have already hinted, has no
meaning. He seems to us to write a line at random, and then he follows,
not the thought excited by this line, but that suggested by the _rhyme_
with which it concludes. There is hardly a complete couplet enclosing a
complete idea in the whole book. He wanders from one subject to another,
from the association, not of ideas, but of sounds; and the work is
composed of hemistichs which, it is quite evident, have forced
themselves upon the author by the mere force of the catchwords on which
they turn.
'We shall select, not as the most striking instance, but as that least
liable to suspicion, a passage from the opening of the poem;--
Here it is clear that the word, and not the idea, _moon_, produces the
simple sheep and their shady _boon_, and that "the _dooms_ of the mighty
dead" would never have intruded themselves but for the "fair musk-rose
_blooms_."
'Again:--
'By this time our readers must be pretty well satisfied as to the
meaning of his sentences and the structure of his lines. We now present
them with some of the new words with which, in imitation of Mr. Leigh
Hunt, he adorns our language.
'We are told that turtles _passion_ their voices; that an arbour was
_nested_, and a lady's locks _gordianed_ up; and, to supply the place of
the nouns thus verbalized, Mr. Keats, with great fecundity, spawns new
ones, such as men-slugs and human _serpentry_, the _honey-feel_ of
bliss, wives prepare _needments_, and so forth.
'Then he has formed new verbs by the process of cutting off their
natural tails, the adverbs, and affixing them to their foreheads. Thus
the wine out-sparkled, the multitude up-followed, and night up-took: the
wind up-blows, and the hours are down-sunken. But, if he sinks some
adverbs in the verbs, he compensates the language with adverbs and
adjectives which he separates from the parent stock. Thus a lady
whispers _pantingly_ and close, makes _hushing_ signs, and steers her
skiff into a _ripply_ cove, a shower falls _refreshfully_, and a vulture
has a _spreaded_ tail.
'But enough of Mr. Leigh Hunt and his simple neophyte. If any one should
be bold enough to purchase this Poetic Romance, and so much more patient
than ourselves as to get beyond the first book, and so much more
fortunate as to find a meaning, we entreat him to make us acquainted
with his success. We shall then return to the task which we now abandon
in despair, and endeavour to make all due amends to Mr. Keats and to our
readers.'
That Keats was a friend of Leigh Hunt in the earlier period of his own
poetical career is a fact; but not long after the appearance of the
_Quarterly Review_ article he conceived a good deal of dislike and even
animosity against this literary ally. Possibly the taunts of the
_Quarterly Review_, and the alienation of Keats from Hunt, had some
connexion as cause and effect. In a letter from John Keats to his
brother George and his sister-in-law occurs the following passage[16],
dated towards the end of 1818: 'Hunt has asked me to meet Tom Moore some
day--so you shall hear of him. The night we went to Novello's there was
a complete set-to of Mozart and punning. I was so completely tired of it
that, if I were to follow my own inclinations, I should never meet any
one of that set again; not even Hunt, who is certainly a pleasant fellow
in the main, when you are with him--but in reality he is vain,
egotistical, and disgusting in matters of taste, and in morals. He
understands many a beautiful thing; but then, instead of giving other
minds credit for the same degree of perception as he himself professes,
he begins an explanation in such a curious manner that our taste and
self-love are offended continually. Hunt does one harm by making fine
things petty, and beautiful things hateful. Through him I am indifferent
to Mozart, I care not for white busts; and many a glorious thing, when
associated with him, becomes a nothing. This distorts one's mind--makes
one's thoughts bizarre--perplexes one in the standard of Beauty.'
ITS ARGUMENT.
(1) Adonais is now dead: the Hour which witnessed his loss mourns him,
and is to rouse the other Hours to mourn. (2) He was the son of the
widowed Urania, (6) her youngest and dearest son. (2) He was slain by a
nightly arrow--'pierced by the shaft which flies in darkness.' At the
time of his death Urania was in her paradise (pleasure-garden),
slumbering, while Echoes listened to the poems which he had written as
death was impending. (3) Urania should now wake and weep; yet wherefore?
'He is gone where all things wise and fair descend.' (4) Nevertheless
let her weep and lament. (7) Adonais had come to Rome. (8) Death and
Corruption are now in his chamber, but Corruption delays as yet to
strike. (9) The Dreams whom he nurtured, as a herdsman tends his flock,
mourn around him, (10) One of them was deceived for a moment into
supposing that a tear shed by itself came from the eyes of Adonais, and
must indicate that he was still alive. (11) Another washed his limbs,
and a third clipped and shed her locks upon his corpse, &c. (13) Then
came others--Desires, Adorations, Fantasies, &c. (14 to 16) Morning
lamented, and Echo, and Spring. (17) Aibion wailed. May 'the curse of
Cain light on his head who pierced thy innocent breast,' and scared away
its angel soul! (20) Can it be that the soul alone dies, when nothing
else is annihilated? (22) Misery aroused Urania: urged by Dreams and
Echoes, she sprang up, and (23) sought the death-chamber of Adonais,
(24) enduring much suffering from 'barbèd tongues, and thoughts more
sharp than they.' (25) As she arrived, Death was shamed for a moment,
and Adonais breathed again: but immediately afterwards 'Death rose and
smiled, and met her vain caress.' (26) Urania would fain have died along
with Adonais; but, chained as she was to Time, this was denied her. (27)
She reproached Adonais for having, though defenceless, dared the dragon
in his den. Had he waited till the day of his maturity, 'the monsters of
life's waste' would have fled from him, as (28) the wolves, ravens, and
vultures had fled from, and fawned upon, 'the Pythian of the age.' (30)
Then came the Mountain Shepherds, bewailing Adonais: the Pilgrim of
Eternity, the Lyrist of lerne, and (31) among others, one frail form, a
pard-like spirit. (34) Urania asked the name of this last Shepherd: he
then made bare his branded and ensanguined brow, which was like Cain's
or Christ's. (35) Another Mountain Shepherd, 'the gentlest of the wise,'
leaned over the deathbed. (36) Adonais has drunk poison. Some 'deaf and
viperous murderer' gave him the envenomed draught.
(36) This murderer, a 'nameless worm,' was alone callous to the prelude
of the forthcoming song. (37) Let him live on in remorse and
self-contempt. (38) Neither should we weep that Adonais has 'fled far
from these carrion-kites that scream below.' His spirit flows back to
its fountain, a portion of the Eternal. (39) Indeed, he is not dead nor
sleeping, but 'has awakened from the dream of life.' Not he decays, but
we. (41) Let not us, nor the powers of Nature, mourn for _Adonais_. (42)
He is made one with Nature. (45) In 'the unapparent' he was welcomed by
Chatterton, Sidney, Lucan, and (46) many more immortals, and was hailed
as the master of a 'kingless sphere' in a 'heaven of song.' (48) Let any
rash mourner go to Rome, and (49) visit the cemetery. (53) And thou, my
heart, why linger and shrink? Adonais calls thee: be no longer divided
from him. (55) The soul of Adonais beacons to thee 'from the abode where
the Eternal are.'
This may he the most convenient place for raising a question of leading
importance to the Argument of _Adonais_--Who is the personage designated
under the name Urania?--a question which, so far as I know, has never
yet been mooted among the students of Shelley. Who is Urania? Why is she
represented as the mother of Adonais (Keats), and the chief mourner for
his untimely death?
To say that the poet Keats, figured as Adonais, was son to one of the
Muses, appears so natural and straightforward a symbolic suggestion as
to command summary assent. But why, out of the nine sisters, should the
Muse of Astronomy be selected? Keats never wrote about astronomy, and
had no qualifications and no faintest inclination for writing about it:
this science, and every other exact or speculative science, were highly
alien from his disposition and turn of mind. And yet, on casting about
for a reason, we can find that after all and in a certain sense there is
one forthcoming, of some considerable amount of relevancy. In the eyes
of Shelley, Keats was principally and above all the poet of _Hyperion_;
and _Hyperion_ is, strictly speaking, a poem about the sun. In like
manner, _Endymion_ is a poem about the moon. Thus, from one point of
view--I cannot see any other--Keats might be regarded as inspired by, or
a son of, the Muse of Astronomy. A subordinate point of some difficulty
arises from stanza 6, where Adonais is spoken of as 'the nursling of thy
[Urania's] widowhood'--which seems to mean, son of Urania, born after
the father's death. Urania is credited in mythology with the motherhood
of two sons--Linus, her offspring by Amphimacus, who was a son of
Poseidon, and Hymenaeus, her offspring by Apollo. It might be idle to
puzzle over this question of Urania's 'widowhood,' or to attempt to
found upon it (on the assumption that Urania the Muse is referred to)
any theory as to who her deceased consort could have been: for it is as
likely as not that the phrase which I have cited from the poem is not
really intended to define with any sort of precision the parentage of
the supposititious Adonais, but, practically ignoring Adonais, applies
to Keats himself, and means simply that Keats, as the son of the Muse,
was born out of time--born in an unpoetical and unappreciative age. Many
of my readers will recollect that Milton, in the elaborate address which
opens Book 7 of _Paradise Lost_, invokes Urania. He is careful however
to say that he does not mean the Muse Urania, but the spirit of
'Celestial Song,' sister of Eternal Wisdom, both of them well-pleasing
to the 'Almighty Father.' Thus far for Urania the Muse.
ADONAIS:
GENERAL EXPOSITION.
Shelley raises in his poem a very marked contrast between the death of
Adonais (Keats) as a mortal man succumbing to 'the common fate,' and the
immortality of his spirit as a vital immaterial essence surviving the
death of the body: he uses terms such as might be adopted by any
believer in the doctrine of 'the immortality of the soul,' in the
ordinary sense of that phrase. It would not however be safe to infer
that Shelley, at the precise time when he wrote _Adonais_, was really in
a more definite frame of mind on this theme than at other periods of his
life, or of a radically different conviction. As a fact, his feelings on
the great problems of immortality were acute, his opinions regarding
them vague and unsettled. He certainly was not an adherent of the
typical belief on this subject; the belief that a man on this earth is a
combination of body and soul, in a state--his sole state--of
'probation'; that, when the body dies and decays, the soul continues to
be the same absolute individual identity; and that it passes into a
condition of eternal and irreversible happiness or misery, according to
the faith entertained or the deeds done in the body. His belief amounted
more nearly to this: That a human soul is a portion of the Universal
Soul, subjected, during its connexion with the body, to all the
illusions, the dreams and nightmares, of sense; and that, after the
death of the body, it continues to be a portion of the Universal Soul,
liberated, from those illusions, and subsisting in some condition which
the human reason is not capable of defining as a state either of
personal consciousness or of absorption. And, so far as the human being
exercised, during the earthly life, the authentic functions of soul,
that same exercise of function continues to be the permanent record of
the soul in the world of mind. If any reader thinks that this seems a
vague form of belief, the answer is that the belief of Shelley was
indeed a vague one. In the poem of _Adonais_ it remains, to my
apprehension, as vague as in his other writings: but it assumes a shape
of greater definition, because the poem is, by its scheme and intent, a
personating poem, in which the soul of Keats has to be greeted by the
soul of Chatterton, just as the body of Adonais has to be caressed and
bewailed by Urania. Using language of a semi-emblematic kind, we might
perhaps express something of Shelley's belief thus:--Mankind is the
microcosm, as distinguished from the rest of the universe, which forms
the macrocosm; and, as long as a man's body and soul remain in
combination, his soul pertains to the microcosm: when this combination
ceases with the death of the body, his soul, in whatever sense it may be
held to exist, lapses into the macrocosm, but there is neither knowledge
as to the mode of its existence, nor speech capable of recording this.
(2) 'Suppose however that the intellectual and vital principle differs
in the most marked and essential manner from all other known substances;
that they have all some resemblance between themselves which _it_ in no
degree participates. In what manner can this concession be made an
argument for its imperishability? All that we see or know perishes[18]
and is changed. Life and thought differ indeed from everything else: but
that it survives that period beyond which we have no experience of its
existence such distinction and dissimilarity affords no shadow of proof,
and nothing but our own desires could have led us to conjecture or
imagine. Have we existed before birth? It is difficult to conceive the
possibility of this.... If we have _not_ existed before birth; if, at
the period when the parts of our nature on which thought and life depend
seem to be woven together, they _are_ woven together; if there are no
reasons to suppose that we have existed before that period at which our
existence apparently commences; then there are no grounds for
supposition that we shall continue to exist after our existence has
apparently ceased. So far as thought and life is concerned, the same
will take place with regard to us, individually considered, after death,
as had place before our birth. It is said that it is possible that we
should continue to exist in some mode totally inconceivable to us at
present. This is a most unreasonable presumption.... Such assertions ...
persuade indeed only those who desire to be persuaded. This desire to be
for ever as we are--the reluctance to a violent and unexperienced change
which is common to all the animated and inanimate combinations of the
universe--is indeed the secret persuasion which has given birth to the
opinions of a Future State.'
(3. Note to the chorus, 'Worlds on worlds are rolling ever,' &c.) 'The
first stanza contrasts the immortality of the living and thinking beings
which inhabit the planets and (to use a common and inadequate phrase)
clothe themselves in matter, with the transcience of the noblest
manifestations of the external world. The concluding verses indicate a
progressive state of more or less exalted existence, according to the
degree of perfection which every distinct intelligence may have
attained. Let it not be supposed that I mean to dogmatise upon a subject
concerning which all men are equally ignorant, or that I think the
Gordian knot of the origin of evil can be disentangled by that or any
similar assertions.... That there is a true solution of the riddle, and
that in our present state that solution is unattainable by us, are
propositions which may be regarded as equally certain: meanwhile, as it
is the province of the poet to attach himself to those ideas which exalt
and ennoble humanity, let him be permitted to have conjectured the
condition of that futurity towards which we are all impelled by an
inextinguishable thirst for immortality. Until better arguments can be
produced than sophisms which disgrace the cause, this desire itself must
remain the strongest and the only presumption that eternity is the
inheritance of every thinking being.'
The reader will perceive that in these three passages the dominant
ideas, very briefly stated, are as follows:--(1) Mind is the aggregate
of all individual minds; (2) man has no reason for expecting that his
mind or soul will be immortal; (3) no reason, except such as inheres in
the very desire which he feels for immortality. These opinions,
deliberately expressed by Shelley at different dates as a theorist in
prose, should be taken into account if we endeavour to estimate what he
means when, as a poet, he speaks, whether in _Hellas_ or in _Adonais_,
of an individual, his mind and his immortality. When Shelley calls upon
us to regard Keats (Adonais) as mortal in body but immortal in soul or
mind, his real intent is probably limited to this: that Keats has been
liberated, by the death of the body, from the dominion and delusions of
the senses; and that he, while in the flesh, developed certain fruits of
mind which survive his body, and will continue to survive it
indefinitely, and will form a permanent inheritance of thought and of
beauty to succeeding generations. Keats himself, in one of his most
famous lines, expressed a like conception,
The passages of _Adonais_ which can be traced back to Bion and Moschus
are not the finest things in the poem: mostly they fill out its fabular
'argument' with brilliancy and suavity, rather than with nerve and
pathos. The finest things are to be found in the denunciation of the
'deaf and viperous murderer;' in the stanzas concerning the 'Mountain
Shepherds,' especially the figure representing Shelley himself; and in
the solemn and majestic conclusion, where the poet rises from the region
of earthly sorrow into the realm of ideal aspiration and contemplation.
Shelley is generally--and I think most justly--regarded as a peculiarly
melodious versifier: but it must not be supposed that he is rigidly
exact in his use of rhyme. The contrary can be proved from the entire
body of his poems. _Adonais_ is, in this respect, neither more nor less
correct than his other writings. It would hardly be reasonable to
attribute his laxity in rhyming to either carelessness, indifference, or
unskilfulness: but rather to a deliberate preference for a certain
variety in the rhyme-sounds--as tending to please the ear, and availing
to satisfy it in the total effect, without cloying it by any tight-drawn
uniformity. Such a preference can be justified on two grounds: firstly,
that the general effect of the slightly varied sounds is really the more
gratifying of the two methods, and I believe that, practised within
reasonable limits, it is so; and secondly, that the requirements of
sense are superior to those of sound, and that, in the effort after
severely exact rhyming, a writer would often, be compelled to sacrifice
some delicacy of thought, or some grace or propriety of diction. Looking
through the stanzas of _Adonais_, I find the following laxities of
rhyming: Compeers, dares; anew, knew (this repetition of an identical
syllable as if it were a rhyme is very frequent with Shelley, who
evidently considered it to be permissible, and even right--and in this
view he has plenty of support): God; road; last, waste; taught, not;
break, cheek (two instances); ground, moaned; both, youth; rise, arise;
song, stung; steel, fell; light, delight; part, depart; wert, heart;
wrong, tongue; brow, so; moan, one; crown, tone; song, unstrung; knife,
grief; mourn, burn; dawn, moan; bear, bear; blot, thought; renown,
Chatterton; thought, not; approved, reproved; forth, earth; nought, not;
home, tomb; thither, together; wove, of; riven, heaven. These are 34
instances of irregularity. The number of stanzas in _Adonais_ is 55:
therefore there is more than one such irregularity for every two
stanzas.
* * * * *
The reader familiar with _Adonais_ will recognise the passages in that
poem of which we here have the originals. To avoid repetition, I do not
cite them at the moment, but shall call attention to them successively
in my Notes at the end of the volume.
'The flowers flush red for anguish.... This kiss will I treasure, even
as thyself, Adonis, since, ah ill-fated! thou art fleeing me,... while
wretched I yet live, being a goddess, and may not follow thee.
Persephone, take thou my lover, my lord, for thyself art stronger than
I, and all lovely things drift down to thee.... For why ah overbold!
didst thou follow the chase, and, being so fair, why wert thou thus
over-hardy to fight with beasts?... A tear the Paphian sheds for each
blood-drop of Adonis, and tears and blood on the earth are turned to
flowers.... Ah even in death he is beautiful, beautiful in death, as one
that hath fallen on sleep.... All things have perished in his death, yea
all the flowers are faded.... He reclines, the delicate Adonis, in his
raiment of purple, and around him the Loves are weeping and groaning
aloud, clipping their locks for Adonis. And one upon his shafts, another
on his bow, is treading, and one hath loosed the sandal of Adonis, and
another hath broken his own feathered quiver, and one in a golden vessel
bears water, and another laves the wound, and another, from behind him,
with his wings is fanning Adonis.... Thou must again bewail him, again
must weep for him another year.... He does not heed them [the Muses];
not that he is doth to hear, but that the Maiden of Hades doth not let
him go.'
The next-ensuing passages come from the Elegy of Moschus for Bion:--
'Ye flowers, now in sad clusters breathe yourselves away. Now redden, ye
roses, in your sorrow, and now wax red, ye wind-flowers; now, thou
hyacinth, whisper the letters on thee graven, and add a deeper ai ai to
thy petals: he is dead, the beautiful singer.... Ye nightingales that
lament among the thick leaves of the trees, tell ye to the Sicilian
waters of Arethusa the tidings that Bion the herdsman is dead.... Thy
sudden doom, O Bion, Apollo himself lamented, and the Satyrs mourned
thee, and the Priapi in sable raiment, and the Panes sorrow for thy
song, and the Fountain-fairies in the wood made moan, and their tears
turned to rivers of waters. And Echo in the rocks laments that thou art
silent, and no more she mimics thy voice. And in sorrow for thy fall the
trees cast down their fruit, and all the flowers have faded.... Nor ever
sang so sweet the nightingale on the cliffs,... nor so much, by the grey
sea-waves, did ever the sea-bird sing, nor so much in the dells of dawn
did the bird of Memnon bewail the son of the Morning, fluttering around
his tomb, as they lamented for Bion dead.... Echo, among the reeds, doth
still feed upon thy songs.... This, O most musical of rivers, is thy
second sorrow,--this, Meles, thy new woe. Of old didst thou lose
Homer:... now again another son thou weepest, and in a new sorrow art
thou wasting away.... Nor so much did pleasant Lesbos mourn for Alcaeus,
nor did the Teian town so greatly bewail her poet,... and not for Sappho
but still for thee doth Mitylene wail her musical lament.... Ah me! when
the mallows wither in the garden, and the green parsley, and the curled
tendrils of the anise, on a later day they live again, and spring In
another year: but we men, we the great and mighty or wise, when once we
have died, in hollow earth we sleep, gone down into silence.... Poison
came, Bion, to thy mouth--thou didst know poison. To such lips as thine
did it come, and was not sweetened? What mortal was so cruel that could
mix poison for thee, or who could give thee the venom that heard thy
voice? Surely he had no music in his soul,... But justice hath overtaken
them all.'
ADONAIS;
[Greek:
PLATO.
PREFACE.
[Greek:
Pharmakon aelthe Bion poti son stoma, pharmakon eides.
Pos teu tois cheilessi potedrame kouk eglukanthae;
Tis de Brotos tossouton anameros ae kerasai toi,
Ae dounai laleonti to pharmakon; ekphugen odan.]
40 It may be well said that these wretched men know not what they do.
They scatter their insults and their slanders without heed as to whether
the poisoned shaft lights on a heart made callous by many blows, or one,
like Keats's, composed of more penetrable stuff. One of their associates
is, to my knowledge, a most base and unprincipled 45 calumniator. As to
_Endymion_, was it a poem, whatever might be its defects, to be treated
contemptuously by 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, and a long list of
the illustrious 50 obscure? Are these the men who, in their venal
good-nature, presumed to draw a parallel between the Rev. Mr. Milman and
Lord Byron? What gnat did they strain at here, after having swallowed
all those camels? Against what woman taken in adultery dares the
foremost of these literary prostitutes to cast his opprobrious stone? 55
Miserable man! you, one of the meanest, have wantonly defaced one of the
noblest, specimens of the workmanship of God. Nor shall it be your
excuse that, murderer as you are, you have spoken daggers, but used
none.
The circumstances of the closing scene of poor Keats's life were 60 not
made known to me until the Elegy was ready for the press. I am given to
understand that the wound which his sensitive spirit had received from
the criticism of _Endymion_ was exasperated by the bitter sense of
unrequited benefits; the poor fellow seems to have been hooted from the
stage of life, no less by those on whom 65 he had wasted the promise of
his genius than those on whom he had lavished his fortune and his care.
He was accompanied to Rome, and attended in his last illness, by Mr.
Severn, a young artist of the highest promise, who, I have been
informed, 'almost risked his own life, and sacrificed every prospect to
unwearied attendance upon his dying friend.' Had I known these
circumstances before the completion 70 of my poem, I should have been
tempted to add my feeble tribute of applause to the more solid
recompense which the virtuous man finds in the recollection of his own
motives. Mr. Severn can dispense with a reward from 'such stuff as
dreams are made of.' His conduct is a golden augury of the success of
his future career. 75 May the unextinguished spirit of his illustrious
friend animate the creations of his pencil, and plead against oblivion
for his name!
ADONAIS.
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
9.
10.
11.
12.
13.
14.
15.
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, 5
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.
18.
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, 5
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.
21.
22.
23.
24.
25.
26.
27
28.
29.
31.
32.
33.
34.
35.
36.
37.
38.
39.
40.
41.
42.
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; 5
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.
45.
46.
47.
48.
49.
50.
51.
53.
54.
55.
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....
* * * * *
1.
* * * * *
2.
3.
4.
* * * * *
5.
6.
NOTES.
PREFACE.
1. 4. _Motto from the poet Plato_. This motto has been translated
by Shelley himself as follows:
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. 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--
also (a line which has borne, and may yet bear, frequent re-quoting)
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.
* * * * *
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 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.'
which means 'And the little waves, which bore the swift boat,
were cut,' &c.; also in the _Ode to Naples_, strophe 4,
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.
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.
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)
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. 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_--
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--
* * * * *
... 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. 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. 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.
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. 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.
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.
+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.
+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,--
+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)--
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.'
+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.'
* * * * *
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.
+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.
There is also the briefer lyric named _Death_, 1817, which begins--
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.
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:--
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.'
11. 3, 4. _The breath Revisited those lips_, &c. As Death tended towards
'annihilation,' so Adonais tended towards revival.
+Stanza 26,+ 1. 1. _'Stay yet awhile.'_ See Bion (p. 64): 'Stay, Adonis!
stay, dearest one!'
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--
+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?'
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.
+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_--
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.
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. 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.
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 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:--
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.
+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.'
+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. 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. 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.
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. 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.
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.
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.
+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. 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.
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.'
+Stanza 50,+ 1. 3. _One keen pyramid._ The tomb (see last note) of Caius
Cestius, a Tribune of the People.
11. 4, 5. _The dust of him who planned This refuge for his memory._
Shelley probably means that this sepulchral pyramid alone preserves to
remembrance the name of Cestius: which is true enough, as next to
nothing is otherwise known about him.
+Stanza 51,+ 11. 3, 4. _If the seal is set Here on one fountain of a
mourning mind._ Shelley certainly alludes to himself in this line. His
beloved son William, who died in June 1819, in the fourth year of his
age, was buried in this cemetery: the precise spot is not now known.
11. 5-7. _Too surely shalt thou find Thine own well full, if thou
returnest home, Of tears and gall. From the world's bitter wind_, &c.
The apposition between the word 'well' and the preceding word 'fountain'
will be observed. The person whom Shelley addresses would, on returning
home from the cemetery, find more than, ample cause, of one sort or
another, for distress and discomposure. Hence follows the conclusion
that he would do well to 'seek shelter in the shadow of the tomb': he
should prefer the condition of death to that of life. And so we reach in
stanza 51 the same result which, in stanza 47, was deduced from a
different range of considerations.
+Stanza 52,+ 1. 1. _The One remains, the many change and pass._ See the
notes on stanzas 42 and 43. 'The One' is the same as 'the One Spirit' in
stanza 43--the Universal Mind. The Universal Mind has already been
spoken of (stanza 38) as 'the Eternal.' On the other hand, 'the many'
are the individuated minds which we call 'human beings': they 'change
and pass'--the body perishing, the mind which informed it being (in
whatever sense) reabsorbed into 'the Eternal.'
11. 3-5. _Life, like a dome of many-coloured glass, Stains the white
radiance of eternity, Until Death tramples it to fragments._ Perhaps a
more daring metaphorical symbol than this has never been employed by any
poet, nor one that has a deeper or a more spacious meaning. Eternity is
figured as white light--light in its quintessence. Life, mundane life,
is as a dome of glass, which becomes many-coloured by its prismatic
diffraction of the white light: its various prisms reflect eternity at
different angles. Death ultimately tramples the glass dome into
fragments; each individual life is shattered, and the whole integer of
life, constituted of the many individual lives, is shattered. If
everything else written by Shelley were to perish, and only this
consummate image to remain--so vast in purport, so terse in form--he
would still rank as a poet of lofty imagination. _Ex pede Herculem._
11. 5, 6. _Die, If thou wouldst be with that which thou dost seek._ This
phrase is addressed by the poet to anybody, and more especially to
himself. As in stanza 38--'The pure spirit shall flow Back to the
burning fountain whence it came, A portion of the Eternal.'
11. 7-9. _Rome's azure sky, Flowers, ruins, statues, music, words, are
weak The glory thy transfuse with fitting truth to speak._ I follow here
the punctuation of the Pisan edition--with a comma after 'words,' as
well as after 'sky, flowers,' &c. According to this punctuation, the
words of Rome, as well as her sky and other beautiful endowments, are
too weak to declare at full the glory which they impart; and the
inference from this rather abruptly introduced recurrence to Rome is (I
suppose), that the spiritual glory faintly adumbrated by Rome can only
be realised in that realm of eternity to which death gives access. Taken
in this sense, the 'words' of Rome appear to mean 'the beautiful
language spoken in Rome'--the Roman or Latin language, as modified into
modern Italian. The pronunciation of Italian in Rome is counted
peculiarly pure and rich: hence the Italian axiom, 'lingua toscana in
bocca romana'--Tuscan tongue in Roman mouth. At first sight, it would
seem far more natural to punctuate thus: Rome's azure sky, Flowers,
ruins, statues, music,--words are weak The glory, &c. The sense would
then be--Words are too weak to declare at full the glory inherent in the
sky, flowers, &c. of Rome. Yet, although this seems a more
straightforward arrangement for the words of the sentence, as such, it
is not clear that such a comment on the beauties of Rome would have any
great relevancy in its immediate context.
+Stanza 53,+ 1. 2. _Thy hopes are gone before_, &c. This stanza contains
some very pointed references to the state of Shelley's feelings at the
time when he was writing _Adonais_; pointed, but not so clearly defined
as to make his actual meaning transparent. We are told that his hopes
are gone before (i.e. have vanished before the close of his life has
come), and have departed from all things here. This may partly refer to
the deaths of William Shelley and of Keats; but I think the purport of
the phrase extends further, and implies that Shelley's hopes
generally--those animating conceptions which had inspired him in early
youth, and had buoyed him up through many adversities--are now waning in
disappointment. This is confirmed by the ensuing statement--that 'a
light is past from the revolving year [a phrase repeated from stanza
18], and man and woman.' Next we are told that 'what still is dear
Attracts to crush, repels to make thee [me] wither.' The _persons_ who
were more particularly dear to Shelley at this time must have been (not
to mention the two children Percy Florence Shelley and Allegra
Clairmont) his wife, Miss Clairmont, Emilia Viviani, and Lieutenant and
Mrs. Williams: Byron, Leigh Hunt, and Godwin, can hardly be in question.
No doubt Shelley's acute feelings and mobile sympathies involved him in
some considerable agitations, from time to time, with all the four
ladies here named: but the strong expressions which he uses as to
attracting and repelling, crushing and withering, seem hardly likely to
have been employed by him in this personal sense, in a published book.
Perhaps therefore we shall be safest in supposing that he alludes, not
to _persons_ who are dear, but to circumstances and conditions of a more
general kind--such as are involved in his self-portraiture, stanzas
31-34.
1. 8. _'Tis Adonais calls! oh hasten thither!_ 'Thither' must mean 'to
Adonais': a laxity of expression.
+Stanza 64,+ 1. 1. _That light whose smile kindles the universe_, &c.
This is again the 'One Spirit' of stanza 43. And see, in stanza 42, the
cognate expression, 'kindles it above.'
1. 9. _Consuming the last clouds of cold mortality._ This does not imply
that Shelley is shortly about to die. 'Cold mortality' is that condition
in which the human mind, a portion of the Universal Mind, is united to a
mortal body: and the general sense is that the Universal Mind at this
moment beams with such effulgence upon Shelley that his mind responds to
it as if the mortal body no longer interposed any impediment.
+Stanza 55,+ 1. 1. _The breath whose might I have invoked in song._ The
breath or afflatus of the Universal Mind. It has been 'invoked in song'
throughout the whole later section of this Elegy, from stanza 38
onwards.
11. 3, 4. _Far from the shore, far from the trembling throng Whose sails
were never to the tempest given._ In saying that his spirit's bark is
driven far from the shore, Shelley apparently means that his mind, in
speculation and aspiration, ranges far beyond those mundane and material
interests with which the mass of men are ordinarily concerned. 'The
trembling throng' is, I think, a throng of men: though it might be a
throng of barks, contrasted with 'my spirit's bark.' Their sails 'were
never to the tempest given,' in the sense that they never set forth on a
bold ideal or spiritual adventure, abandoning themselves to the stress
and sway of a spiritual storm.
1. 5. _The massy earth_, &c. As the poet launches forth on his voyage
upon the ocean of mind, the earth behind him seems to gape, and the sky
above him to open: his course however is still held on in darkness--the
arcanum is hardly or not at all revealed.
1. 7. _Whilst burning through the inmost veil_, &c. A star pilots his
course: it is the soul of Adonais, which, being still 'a portion of the
Eternal' (st. 38), is in 'the abode where the Eternal are,' and
testifies to the eternity of mind. In this passage, and in others
towards the conclusion of the poem, we find the nearest approach which
Shelley can furnish to an answer to that question which he asked in
stanza 20--'Shall that alone which knows Be as a sword consumed before
the sheath By sightless lightning?'
+Stanzas 4. to 6+--(I add here a note out of its due place, which would
be on p. 101: at the time when it occurred to me to raise this point,
the printing had gone too far to allow of my inserting the remark
there.)--On considering these three stanzas collectively, it may perhaps
be felt that the references to Milton and to Keats are more advisedly
interdependent than my notes on the details of the stanzas suggest.
Shelley may have wished to indicate a certain affinity between the
inspiration of Milton as the poet of _Paradise Lost_, and that of Keats
as the poet of _Hyperion_. Urania had had to bewail the death of Milton,
who died old when 'the priest, the slave, and the liberticide,' outraged
England. Now she has to bewail the death of her latest-born, Keats, who
has died young, and (as Shelley thought) in a similarly disastrous
condition of the national affairs. Had he not been 'struck by the
envious wrath of man,' he might even have 'dared to climb' to the
'bright station' occupied by Milton.--The phrase in st. 4, 'Most musical
of mourners, weep again,' with what follows regarding grief for the loss
of Milton, and again of Keats, is modelled upon the passage in Moschus
(p. 65)--'This, O most musical of rivers, is thy second sorrow,--this,
Meles, thy new woe. Of old didst thou love Homer:... now again another
son thou weepest.' My remark upon st. 13, that there Shelley first had
direct recourse to the Elegy of Moschus, should be modified accordingly.
_The offence of this poor victim seems to have consisted solely in his
intimacy with Leigh Hunt_, &c. See the remarks on p. 45. There can be no
doubt that Shelley was substantially correct in this opinion. Not only
the _Quarterly Review_, of which he knew, but also _Blackwood's
Magazine_, which did not come under his notice, abused Keats because he
was personally acquainted with Hunt, and was, in one degree or another,
a member of the literary coterie in which Hunt held a foremost place.
And Hunt was in bad odour with these reviews because he was a hostile
politician, still more than because of any actual or assumed defects in
his performances as an ordinary man of letters.
_I wrote to him, suggesting the propriety_, &c. See pp. 14, 15.
+Stanza 1,+ 1. 1. _And the green paradise_, &c. The green paradise is
the 'Emerald Isle'--Ireland. This stanza refers to Thomas Moore, and
would have followed on after st. 30 in the body of the poem.
+Stanza 3,+ 1. 1. _And then came one of sweet and earnest looks._ It is
sufficiently clear that this stanza, and also the fragmentary beginning
of stanza 4, refer to Leigh Hunt--who, in the body of the Elegy, is
introduced in st. 35. The reader will observe, on looking back to that
stanza, that the present one could not be added on to the description of
Hunt: it is an alternative form, ultimately rejected. Its tone is
ultra-sentimental, and perhaps on that account it was condemned. The
simile at the close of the present stanza is ambitious, but by no means
felicitous.
+Stanza 4,+ 11. 1, 2. _His song, though very sweet, was low and faint, A
simple strain._ It may be doubted whether this description of Hunt's
poetry, had it been published in _Adonais_, would have been wholly
pleasing to Hunt. Neither does it define, with any exceptional aptness,
the particular calibre of that poetry.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] See the _Life of Mrs. Shelley_, by Lucy Madox Rossetti (_Eminent
Women Series_), published in 1890. The connexion between the two
branches of the Shelley family is also set forth--incidentally, but with
perfect distinctness--in Collins's _Peerage of England_(1756), vol. iii.
p. 119. He says that Viscount Lumley (who died at some date towards
1670) 'married Frances, daughter of Henry Shelley, of Warminghurst in
Sussex, Esq. (a younger branch of the family seated at Michaelgrove, the
seat of the present Sir John Shelley, Bart.).'
[3] This line (should be '_Beneath_ the good,' &c.) is the final line of
Gray's _Progress of Poesy_. The sense in which Shelley intends to apply
it to _The Cenci_ may admit of some doubt. He seems to mean that _The
Cenci_ is not equal to really good tragedies; but still is superior to
some tragedies which have recently appeared, and which bad critics have
dubbed great.
[4] This phrase is not very clear to me. From the context ensuing, it
might seem that the 'circumstance' which prevented Keats from staying
with Shelley in Pisa was that his nerves were in so irritable a state as
to prompt him to move from place to place in Italy rather than fix in
any particular city or house.
[5] Though Shelley gave this advice, which was anything but unsound, he
is said to have taken good-naturedly some steps with a view to getting
the volume printed. Mr. John Dix, writing in 1846, says: 'He [Shelley]
went to Charles Richards, the printer in St. Martin's Lane, when quite
young, about the printing a little volume of Keats's first poems.'
[6] This statement is not correct--so far at least as the longer poems
in the volume are concerned. _Isabella_ indeed was finished by April,
1818; but _Hyperion_ was not relinquished till late in 1819, and the
_Eve of St. Agnes_ and _Lamia_ were probably not even begun till 1819.
[8] The passages to which Shelley refers begin thus: 'And then the
forest told it in a dream;' 'The rosy veils mantling the East;' 'Upon a
weeded rock this old man sat.'
[17] This phrase is lumbering and not grammatical. The words 'I confess
that I am unable to refuse' would be all that the meaning requires.
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