we would call an intimate friend of Shelley's, nor had his earlier poems been at all acceptable to the latter. But his fragment of Hyperion had given great pleasure to Shelley, who declared that he considered it " as second to nothing that was ever produced by a writer of the same years." It is not probable that the "savage criticism" of Endymion in the Quarterly Review did much, if anything, towards hastening the death of the young poet who was already predisposed to consumption. “He was accompanied to Rome," says Shelley, in concluding his Preface," 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 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- - may the unextinguished Spirit of his illustrious friend animate the creations of his pencil, and plead against Oblivion for his name!" Of Shelley's Preface to the poem, I have given only a part, omitting that portion in which he launches into an invective against the critics in the Quarterly Review, a paragraph which adds no lustre to its author's fame, and which can be of but little interest to the readers of Adonais. "The fact is," says Todhunter, "that this preface was a somewhat botchedup affair. It is evident from the first sentence, and the cancelled passages that remain, that Shelley intended to have written a more fitting introduction to the poem, vindicating Keats's claim to a place among the great poets of the day; and it is also evident that the story, so derogatory to Keats, of his having died of a criticism, threw a somewhat lurid light over his champion's imagination. The false story struck a false chord of feeling in Shelley's mind.” STANZA I. 1. Compare this line with the first line of Bion's Lament for Adonis (see pages 21 and 24). Also compare the whole of the first stanza of Mrs. Browning's version of the Lament, with the whole of this stanza. STANZA II. 2. Where wert thou? See The Sorrow of Daphnis, 3; also Lycidas, 50-55, and note 3, page 14. — mighty Mother. Urania. Shelley addresses Urania as the heavenly Venus,, the Aphrodite Urania or spirit of eternal love and beauty. There were two Uranias, the Muse Urania and Aphrodite Urania. Shelley does not seem to have had in mind the exact distinction between them. Although in this passage and in some others which follow he clearly intends reference to the latter, he addresses her in the fourth stanza as "most musical of mourners," as if he meant the former. It is the Muse Urania whom Milton invokes in Paradise Lost, vii. 7 : — "Heavenly-born Before the hills appear'd, or fountain flow'd, In presence of the Almighty Father, pleas'd Tennyson, in In Memoriam, 37 (which see), also refers to the Muse. "The seal was Cupid bent above a scroll, And o'er his head Uranian Venus hung And raised the blinding bandage from his eyes." There is a great contrast between Urania, the patroness of spiritual love, and the sensuous Venus (Aphrodite Pandemos) of Bion's Lament, yet Shelley's imitation of the Greek idyl is very apparent. 3. pierced by the shaft which flies in darkness. Bion speaks of the thigh of Adonis "pierced by a tusk." The shaft which flies in darkness is death. In Psalms xci. 6, it is called "the pestilence that walketh in darkness." Some critics understand the allusion here to be to the savage attack made anonymously upon Keats in the Quarterly Review. But this view seems to be scarcely warranted by the context. 66 2. wake and weep. 'Sleep no more, Venus; STANZA III. Compare again with Bion's Lament for Adonis, rise, wretched goddess," etc. See also note 2, page 31. "A hostile reviewer," says Rossetti, "might have been expected to indulge in one of the most familiar of cheap jokes, and to say that Urania had naturally fallen asleep over Keats's poems; but I am not aware that any critic of Adonais did actually say this." 7. amorous Deep. Another metaphor meaning Death. Compare Romeo and Juliet, v. 3, 102: Shelley may have in mind the line in Bion's Lament for Adonis (line 19, page 24), "Persephone does not release him," the amorous Persephone being the queen of the dead. STANZA IV. 3. the Sire. John Milton, author of Paradise Lost. 9. the third among the sons of light. It is not entirely certain who would have been named by Shelley as the first and second, but perhaps the following passage from his Defence of Poetry will make it sufficiently clear: "Homer was the first and Dante the second epic poet; that is, the second epic 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." A similar idea is expressed by Dryden: "Three poets in three distant ages born, The next in majesty; in both the last. To make a third, she join'd the former two." STANZA V. Hales says: "This is a very obscure stanza. It seems to mean: not all poets have essayed such lofty flights as Milton, i.e. attempted Epic poetry; but some have wisely taken a lower level, i.e. attempted Lyric poetry, and are still remembered as Lyric poets, as, for instance, Gray or Burns; others, attempting a middle flight, have been cut off in the midst of their work, as Keats and Spenser, whom, Others yet live, of whom nothing definite can be said, e.g. Shelley himself, and Byron." To these we might add Wordsworth and Coleridge. STANZA VI. 3. by some sad maiden cherished. See Keats's poem, Isabella, or the Pot of Basil: "And so she ever fed it with thin tears, Whence thick, and green, and beautiful it grew, So that it smelt more balmy than its peers Of Basil-tufts in Florence." 9. The broken lily. Compare Shakespeare, King Henry VIII., v. 3: 'A most unspotted lily shall she pass To the ground, and all the world shall mourn her." STANZA VII. 1. high capital. Rome. See Byron, Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, iv. 78: "O Rome! my country! city of the soul! The cypress, hear the owl, and plod your way A world is at our feet as fragile as our clay." -the eternal. The illustrious dead of mighty Rome, which is itself called the "eternal city." 7. as if in dewy sleep he lay. Compare with the Lament for Adonis (page 23): "And though a corpse he is beautiful, a beautiful corpse as it were sleeping." The resemblance of Death to Sleep is hinted at by Shelley in the opening lines of his first long poem, Queen Mab:· But this idea was probably suggested by the beautiful passage in Homer's Iliad, xiv., beginning thus: "Then Hera came to Lemnos, the city of godlike Thoas. There she met Sleep, the brother of Death," etc. STANZA VIII. 3. shadow of white Death. So, in Job x. 21: "The land of darkness and the shadow of death"; and in Psalms xxiii. 4: "Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death." In the third line below, Shelley calls corruption the "eternal Hunger." The grave, according to Solomon (Proverbs xxx. 16), is the first of "three things that are never satisfied, yea, of four things that say not It is enough." — His extreme way, i.e. "Adonais's last journey."— her, i.e. corruption's. — dim dwelling-place. The grave. STANZA IX. 3. flocks. Shelley here falls into the pastoral strain. Adonais, like Bion (see page 39) and Lycidas, becomes a shepherd, a keeper of flocks, a herdsman. The Dreams - Ministers of Thought were Adonais's poetic imaginings. See Wordsworth, Peele Castle, etc. : — "The light that never was on sea or land, The consecration and the Poet's dream." STANZA X. 1. And one. Compare the ministration of the Dreams, as described in this and the following stanza, with the mourning of the Loves in the Lament for Adonis (page 24), ending with the sentence, "and another behind him is fanning Adonis with his wings." 3. not dead. Compare with Lycidas, 166; also with the Mournfull Lay of Clorinda : — "Ah! no: it is not dead, ne can it die, - Lost Angel. The faded dream. poet's mind. 9. faded, like a cloud, etc. of a ruined Paradise. Of the dead See Keats's Endymion: A melancholy spirit might win Oblivion, and melt out his essence fine Into the winds." STANZA XI. 1. starry dew. It was formerly supposed that the dew was distilled from the stars. Compare this entire sentence with the Lament for Adonis (page 24): "Another is carrying water in golden ewers, and a third is bathing his thighs." 3. clipped her profuse locks. So the Loves, weeping for Adonis, "had their locks shorn" for him. See page 24, also note 17, page 35. Accent the word profuse on the first syllable. The wreath. This cannot mean a wreath made of the "profuse locks." Is it not rather the laurel wreath, meed of poets, which had fallen from his head and is now thrown aimlessly upon him? I hazard this as a conjecture. 7. break her bow and winged reeds. So of the Loves (see page 24), "one was trampling on his arrows, another on his bow, and another was breaking his well-feathered quiver." See note 18, page 35. Compare with the Countess of Pembroke's Dolefull Lay of Clorinda : — |