Chapter 7

Our Adonais has drunk poison--oh What deaf and viperous murderer could crown Life's early cup with such a draught of woe? The nameless worm would now itself disown; It felt, yet could escape, the magic tone 5 Whose prelude held all envy, hate, and wrong, But what was howling in one breast alone, Silent with expectation of the song Whose master's hand is cold, whose silver lyre unstrung.

37.

Live thou, whose infamy is not thy fame! Live! fear no heavier chastisement from me, Thou noteless blot on a remembered name! But be thyself, and know thyself to be! And ever at thy season be thou free 5 To spill the venom when thy fangs o'erflow; Remorse and self-contempt shall cling to thee, Hot shame shall burn upon thy secret brow, And like a beaten hound tremble thou shalt--as now.

38.

Nor let us weep that our delight is fled Far from these carrion kites that scream below. He wakes or sleeps with the enduring dead; Thou canst not soar where he is sitting now. Dust to the dust: but the pure spirit shall flow 5 Back to the burning fountain whence it came, A portion of the Eternal, which must glow Through time and change, unquenchably the same, Whilst thy cold embers choke the sordid hearth of shame.

39.

Peace, peace! he is not dead, he doth not sleep! He hath awakened from the dream of life. 'Tis we who, lost in stormy visions, keep With phantoms an unprofitable strife, And in mad trance strike with our spirit's knife 5 Invulnerable nothings. _We_ decay Like corpses in a charnel; fear and grief Convulse us and consume us day by day, And cold hopes swarm like worms within our living clay.

40.

He has outsoared the shadow of our night. Envy and calumny and hate and pain, And that unrest which men miscall delight, Can touch him not and torture not again. From the contagion of the world's slow stain 5 He is secure; and now can never mourn A heart grown cold, a head grown grey in vain-- Nor, when the spirit's self has ceased to burn, With sparkless ashes load an unlamented urn.

41.

He lives, he wakes--'tis Death is dead, not he; Mourn not for Adonais.--Thou young Dawn, Turn all thy dew to splendour, for from thee The spirit thou lamentest is not gone! Ye caverns and ye forests, cease to moan! 5 Cease, ye faint flowers and fountains! and thou Air, Which like a mourning veil thy scarf hadst thrown O'er the abandoned Earth, now leave it bare Even to the joyous stars which smile on its despair!

42.

He is made one with Nature. There is heard His voice in all her music, from the moan Of thunder to the song of night's sweet bird. He is a presence to be felt and known In darkness and in light, from herb and stone, 5 Spreading itself where'er that Power may move Which has withdrawn his being to its own, Which wields the world with never wearied love, Sustains it from beneath, and kindles it above.

43.

He is a portion of the loveliness Which once he made more lovely. He doth bear His part, while the One Spirit's plastic stress Sweeps through the dull dense world; compelling there All new successions to the forms they wear; 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.

The splendours of the firmament of time May be eclipsed, but are extinguished not; Like stars to their appointed height they climb, And death is a low mist which cannot blot The brightness it may veil. When lofty thought 5 Lifts a young heart above its mortal lair, And love and life contend in it for what Shall be its earthly doom, the dead live there, And move like winds of light on dark and stormy air.

45.

The inheritors of unfulfilled renown Rose from their thrones, built beyond mortal thought, Far in the unapparent. Chatterton Rose pale, his solemn agony had not Yet faded from him; Sidney, as he fought 5 And as he fell and as he lived and loved Sublimely mild, a spirit without spot, Arose; and Lucan, by his death approved;-- Oblivion as they rose shrank like a thing reproved.

46.

And many more, whose names on earth are dark But whose transmitted effluence cannot die So long as fire outlives the parent spark, Rose, robed in dazzling immortality. 'Thou art become as one of us,' they cry; 5 'It was for thee yon kingless sphere has long Swung blind in unascended majesty, Silent alone amid an heaven of song. Assume thy wingèd throne, thou Vesper of our throng!'

47.

Who mourns for Adonais? Oh come forth, Fond wretch, and know thyself and him aright. Clasp with thy panting soul the pendulous earth; As from a centre, dart thy spirit's light Beyond all worlds, until its spacious might 5 Satiate the void circumference: then shrink Even to a point within our day and night; And keep thy heart light lest it make thee sink When hope has kindled hope, and lured thee to the brink.

48.

Or go to Rome, which is the sepulchre, Oh not of him, but of our joy. 'Tis nought That ages, empires, and religions, there Lie buried in the ravage they have wrought; For such as he can lend--they borrow not 5 Glory from those who made the world their prey: And he is gathered to the kings of thought Who waged contention with their time's decay, And of the past are all that cannot pass away.

49.

Go thou to Rome,--at once the paradise, The grave, the city, and the wilderness; And where its wrecks like shattered mountains rise, And flowering weeds and fragrant copses dress The bones of Desolation's nakedness, 5 Pass, till the Spirit of the spot shall lead Thy footsteps to a slope of green access, Where, like an infant's smile, over the dead A light of laughing flowers along the grass is spread.

50.

And grey walls moulder round, on which dull Time Feeds, like slow fire upon a hoary brand; And one keen pyramid with wedge sublime, Pavilioning the dust of him who planned This refuge for his memory, doth stand 5 Like flame transformed to marble; and beneath A field is spread, on which a newer band Have pitched in heaven's smile their camp of death, Welcoming him we lose with scarce extinguished breath.

51.

Here pause. These graves are all too young as yet To have outgrown the sorrow which consigned Its charge to each; and, if the seal is set Here on one fountain of a mourning mind, Break it not thou! too surely shalt thou find 5 Thine own well full, if thou returnest home, Of tears and gall. From the world's bitter wind Seek shelter in the shadow of the tomb. What Adonais is why fear we to become?

52.

The One remains, the many change and pass; Heaven's light for ever shines, earth's shadows fly; Life, like a dome of many-coloured glass, Stains the white radiance of eternity, Until Death tramples it to fragments.--Die, 5 If thou wouldst be with that which thou dost seek! Follow where all is fled!--Rome's azure sky, Flowers, ruins, statues, music, words, are weak The glory they transfuse with fitting truth to speak.

53.

Why linger, why turn back, why shrink, my heart? Thy hopes are gone before: from all things here They have departed; thou shouldst now depart! A light is past from the revolving year, And man and woman; and what still is dear 5 Attracts to crush, repels to make thee wither. The soft sky smiles, the low wind whispers near: 'Tis Adonais calls! Oh hasten thither! No more let life divide what death can join together.

54.

That light whose smile kindles the universe, That beauty in which all things work and move, That benediction which the eclipsing curse Of birth can quench not, that sustaining Love Which, through the web of being blindly wove 5 By man and beast and earth and air and sea, Burns bright or dim, as each are mirrors of The fire for which all thirst, now beams on me, Consuming the last clouds of cold mortality.

55.

The breath whose might I have invoked in song Descends on me; my spirit's bark is driven Far from the shore, far from the trembling throng Whose sails were never to the tempest given. The massy earth and spherèd skies are riven! 5 I am borne darkly, fearfully, afar! Whilst, burning through the inmost veil of heaven, The soul of Adonais, like a star, Beacons from the abode where the Eternal are.

CANCELLED PASSAGES OF ADONAIS,

AND OF ITS PREFACE.

The expression of my indignation and sympathy. I will allow myself a first and last word on the subject of calumny as it relates to me. As an author I have dared and invited censure. If I understand myself, I have written neither for profit nor for fame: I have employed my poetical compositions and publications simply as the instruments of that sympathy between myself and others which the ardent and unbounded love I cherished for my kind incited me to acquire. I expected all sorts of stupidity and insolent contempt from those.... These compositions (excepting the tragedy of _The Cenci_, which was written rather to try my powers than to unburden my full heart) are insufficiently.... Commendation then perhaps they deserve, even from their bitterest enemies; but they have not obtained any corresponding popularity. As a man, I shrink from notice and regard: the ebb and flow of the world vexes me: I desire to be left in peace. Persecution, contumely, and calumny, have been heaped upon me in profuse measure; and domestic conspiracy and legal oppression have violated in my person the most sacred rights of nature and humanity. The bigot will say it was the recompense of my errors--the man of the world will call it the result of my imprudence: but never upon one head....

Reviewers, with some rare exceptions, are a most stupid and malignant race. As a bankrupt thief turns thief-taker in despair, so an unsuccessful author turns critic. But a young spirit panting for fame, doubtful of its powers, and certain only of its aspirations, is ill-qualified to assign its true value to the sneer of this world. He knows not that such stuff as this is of the abortive and monstrous births which time consumes as fast as it produces. He sees the truth and falsehood, the merits and demerits, of his case, inextricably entangled.... No personal offence should have drawn from me this public comment upon such stuff.

The offence of this poor victim seems to have consisted solely in his intimacy with Leigh Hunt, Mr. Hazlitt, and some other enemies of despotism and superstition. My friend Hunt has a very hard skull to crack, and will take a deal of killing. I do not know much of Mr. Hazlitt, but....

I knew personally but little of Keats; but, on the news of his situation, I wrote to him, suggesting the propriety of trying the Italian climate, and inviting him to join me. Unfortunately he did not allow me.

* * * * *

1.

And the green paradise which western waves Embosom in their ever-wailing sweep,-- Talking of freedom to their tongueless caves, Or to the spirits which within them keep A record of the wrongs which, though they sleep, 5 Die not, but dream of retribution,--heard His hymns, and echoing them from steep to steep, Kept--

* * * * *

2.

And ever as he went he swept a lyre Of unaccustomed shape, and ... strings Now like the ... of impetuous fire Which shakes the forest with its murmurings, Now like the rush of the aërial wings 5 Of the enamoured wind among the treen, Whispering unimaginable things, And dying on the streams of dew serene Which feed the unmown meads with ever-during green.

3.

And then came one of sweet and earnest looks, Whose soft smiles to his dark and night-like eyes Were as the clear and ever-living brooks Are to the obscure fountains whence they rise, Showing how pure they are: a paradise 5 Of happy truth upon his forehead low Lay, making wisdom lovely, in the guise Of earth-awakening morn upon the brow Of star-deserted heaven while ocean gleams below.

4.

His song, though very sweet, was low and faint, A simple strain.

* * * * *

5.

A mighty Phantasm, half concealed In darkness of his own exceeding light, Which clothed his awful presence unrevealed, Charioted on the ... night Of thunder-smoke, whose skirts were chrysolite. 5

6.

And like a sudden meteor which outstrips The splendour-wingèd chariot of the sun, ... eclipse The armies of the golden stars, each one Pavilioned in its tent of light--all strewn 5 Over the chasms of blue night--

NOTES.

PREFACE.

Line 1. _Adonais_. There is nothing to show positively why Shelley adopted the name Adonais as a suitable Hellenic name for John Keats. I have already suggested (p. 59) that he may perhaps have wished to indicate, in this indirect way, that his poem was founded partly upon the Elegy of Bion for Adonis. I believe the name Adonais was not really in use among the Greeks, and is not anywhere traceable in classical Grecian literature. It has sometimes been regarded as a Doricized form of the name Adonis: Mr. William Cory says that it is not this, but would properly be a female form of the same name. Dr. Furnivall has suggested to me that Adonais is 'Shelley's variant of Adonias, the women's yearly mourning for Adonis.' Disregarding details, we may perhaps say that the whole subject of his Elegy is treated by Shelley as a transposition of the lament, as conceived by Bion, of the Cyprian Aphrodite for Adonis; and that, as he changes the Cyprian into the Uranian Aphrodite, so he changes the dead youth from Adonis into Adonais.

1. 4. _Motto from the poet Plato_. This motto has been translated by Shelley himself as follows:

'Thou wert the morning star among the living, Ere thy fair light had fled:-- Now, having died, thou art as Hesperus, giving New splendour to the dead.'

1. 8. _Motto from Moschus_. Translated on p. 66, 'Poison came, Bion,' &c.

1. 13. _It is my intention to subjoin to the London edition of this poem a criticism_, &c. As to the non-fulfilment of this intention see p. 31.

1. 16. _My known repugnance ... proves at least_. In the Pisa edition the word is printed 'prove' (not 'proves'). Shelley was far from being an exact writer in matters of this sort.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

* * * * *

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

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