Chapter 8
11. 4, 5. _And thou, sad Hour,... rouse thy obscure compeers._ The compeers are clearly the other Hours. Why they should be termed 'obscure' is not quite manifest. Perhaps Shelley means that the weal or woe attaching to these Hours is obscure or uncertain; or perhaps that they are comparatively obscure, undistinguished, as not being marked by any such conspicuous event as the death of Adonais.
11. 8, 9. _His fate and fame shall be An echo and a light unto eternity._ By 'eternity' we may here understand, not absolute eternity as contradistinguished from time, but an indefinite space of time, the years and the centuries. His fate and fame shall be echoed on from age to age, and shall be a light thereto.
+Stanza 2,+ 1. 1. _Where wert thou, mighty Mother._ Aphrodite Urania. See pp. 51, 52. Shelley constantly uses the form 'wert' instead of 'wast.' This phrase may be modelled upon two lines near the opening of Milton's _Lycidas_--
'Where were ye, nymphs, when the remorseless deep Closed o'er the head of your loved Lycidas?'
1. 2. _The shaft which flies In darkness._ As Adonis was mortally wounded by a boar's tusk, so (it is here represented) was Adonais slain by an insidiously or murderously launched dart: see p. 49. The allusion is to the truculent attack made upon Keats by the _Quarterly Review_. It is true that 'the shaft which flies in darkness' might be understood in merely a general sense, as the mysterious and unforeseen arrow of Death: but I think it clear that Shelley used the phrase in a more special sense.
1. 4. _With veiled eyes_, &c. Urania is represented as seated in her paradise (pleasure-ground, garden-bower), with veiled eyes-- downward-lidded, as in slumber: an Echo chaunts or recites the 'melodies,' or poems, which Adonais had composed while Death was rapidly advancing towards him: Urania is surrounded by other Echoes, who hearken, and repeat the strain. A hostile reviewer might have been expected to indulge in one of the most familiar of cheap jokes, and to say that Urania had naturally fallen asleep over Keats's poems: but I am not aware that any critic of _Adonais_ did actually say this. The phrase, 'one with soft enamoured breath,' means 'one of the Echoes'; this is shown in stanza 22, 'all the Echoes whom _their sister's song_.'
+Stanza 3,+ 11. 6, 7. _For he is gone where all things wise and fair Descend._ Founded on Bion (p. 64), 'Persephone,... all lovely things drift down to thee.'
1. 7, _The amorous deep._ The depth of earth, or region of the dead; amorous, because, having once obtained possession of Adonais, it retains him in a close embrace, and will not restore him to the land of the living. This passage has a certain analogy to that of Bion (p. 65), 'Not that he is loth to hear, but that the maiden of Hades will not let him go.'
+Stanza 4,+ 1. 1. _Most musical of mourners._ This phrase, applying to Urania, is one of those which might seem to favour the assumption that the deity here spoken of is the Muse Urania, and not Aphrodite Urania, But on this point see pp. 50 to 52.
1. 1. _Weep again._ The poem seems to indicate that Urania, slumbering, is not yet aware of the death of Adonais. Therefore she cannot as yet have wept for his death: but she may have wept in anticipation that he would shortly die, and thus can be now adjured to 'weep _again_.' (See also p. 143.)
1. 2. _He died._ Milton.
1. 4. _When his country's pride,_ &c. Construe: When the priest, the slave, and the liberticide, trampled his country's pride, and mocked [it] with many a loathèd rite of lust and blood. This of course refers to the condition of public affairs and of court-life in the reign of Charles II. The inversion in this passage is not a very serious one, although, for the sense, slightly embarrassing. Occasionally Shelley conceded to himself great latitude in inversion: as for instance in the _Revolt of Islam_, canto 3, st. 34,
'And the swift boat the little waves which bore Were cut by its keen keel, though slantingly,'
which means 'And the little waves, which bore the swift boat, were cut,' &c.; also in the _Ode to Naples_, strophe 4,
'Florence, beneath the sun, Of cities fairest one, Blushes within her bower for Freedom's expectation.'
1. 8. _His clear sprite._ To substitute the word 'sprite' for 'spirit,' in an elevated passage referring to Milton, appears to me one of the least tolerable instances of make-rhyme in the whole range of English poetry. 'Sprite' is a trivial and distorted misformation of 'spirit'; and can only, I apprehend, be used with some propriety (at any rate, in modern poetry) in a more or less bantering sense. The tricksy elf Puck may be a sprite, or even the fantastic creation Ariel; but neither Milton's Satan nor Milton's Ithuriel, nor surely Milton himself, could possibly be a sprite, while the limits of language and of common sense are observed.
1. 9. _The third among the Sons of Light._ At first sight this phrase might seem to mean 'the third-greatest poet of the world': in which case one might suppose Homer and Shakespear to be ranked as the first and second. But it may be regarded as tolerably clear that Shelley is here thinking only of _epic_ poets; and that he ranges the epic poets according to a criterion of his own, which is thus expressed in his _Defence of Poetry_ (written in the same year as _Adonais_, 1821): 'Homer was the first and Dante the second epic poet; that is, the second poet the series of whose creations bore a defined and intelligible relation to the knowledge and sentiment and religion of the age in which he lived, and of the ages which followed it--developing itself in correspondence with their development....Milton was the third epic poet.' The poets whom Shelley admired most were probably Homer, Aeschylus, Sophocles, Lucretius, Dante, Shakespear, and Milton; he took high delight in the _Book of Job_, and presumably in some other poetical books of the Old Testament; Calderon also he prized greatly; and in his own time Goethe, Byron, and (on some grounds) Wordsworth and Coleridge.
+Stanza 5,+ 1. 2. _Not all to that bright station dared to climb._ The conception embodied in the diction of this stanza is not quite so clear as might be wished. The first statement seems to amount to this--That some poets, true poets though they were, did not aspire so high, nor were capable of reaching so high, as Homer, Dante, and Milton, the typical epic poets. A statement so obviously true that it hardly extends, in itself, beyond a truism. But it must be read as introductory to what follows.
1. 3. _And happier they their happiness who knew._ Clearly a recast of the phrase of Vergil,
'O fortunati nimium sua si bona nôrint Agricolae.'
But Vergil speaks of men who did not adequately appreciate their own happiness; Shelley (apparently) of others who did so. He seems to intimate that the poetical temperament is a happy one, in the case of those poets who, unconcerned with the greatest ideas and the most arduous schemes of work, pour forth their 'native wood-notes wild.' I think it possible however that Shelley intended, his phrase to be accepted with the same meaning as Vergil's--'happier they, supposing they had known their happiness.' In that case, the only reason implied why these minor poets were the happier is that their works have endured the longer.
11. 4, 5. _Whose tapers yet burn through that night of time In which suns perished._ Shelley here appears to say that the minor poets have left works which survive, while some of the works of the very greatest poets have disappeared: as, for instance, his own lyrical models in _Adonais_, Bion and Moschus, are still known by their writings, while many of the master-pieces of Aeschylus and Sophocles are lost. Some _tapers_ continue to burn; while some _suns_ have perished.
11. 5-7. _Others more sublime, Struck by the envious wrath of man or God, Have sunk, extinct in their refulgent prime._ These others include Keats (Adonais) himself, to whom the phrase, 'struck by the envious wrath of man,' may be understood as more peculiarly appropriated. And generally the 'others' may be regarded as nearly identical with 'the inheritors of unfulfilled renown' who appear (some of them pointed out by name) in stanza 45. The word God is printed in the Pisan edition with a capital letter: it may be questioned whether Shelley meant to indicate anything more definite than 'some higher power--Fate.'
11. 8, 9. _And some yet live, treading the thorny road Which leads, through toil and hate, to Fame's serene abode._ Byron must be supposed to be the foremost among these; also Wordsworth and Coleridge; and doubtless Shelley himself should not he omitted.
+Stanza 6,+ 1. 2. _The nursling of thy widowhood._ As to this expression see p. 51. I was there speaking only of the Muse Urania; but the observations are equally applicable to Aphrodite Urania, and I am unable to carry the argument any further.
11. 3, 4. _Like a pale flower by some sad maiden cherished, And fed with true love tears instead of dew._ It seems sufficiently clear that Shelley is here glancing at a leading incident in Keats's poem of _Isabella, or the Pot of Basil_, founded upon a story in Boccaccio's _Decameron_. Isabella unburies her murdered lover Lorenzo; preserves his head in a pot of basil; and (as expressed in st. 52 of the poem)
'Hung over her sweet basil evermore, And moistened it with tears unto the core.'
I give Shelley's words 'true love tears' as they appear in the Pisan edition: 'true-love tears' might be preferable.
1. 9. _The broken lily lies--the storm is overpast._ As much as to say: the storm came, and shattered the lily; the storm has now passed away, but the lily will never revive.
+Stanza 7,+ 1. i. _To that high Capital where kingly Death_, &c. The Capital is Rome (where Keats died). Death is figured as the King of Rome, who there 'keeps his pale court in beauty and decay,'--amid the beauties of nature and art, and amid the decay of monuments and institutions.
11. 3, 4. _And bought, with price of purest breath, A grave among the eternal._ Keats, dying in Rome, secured sepulture among the many illustrious persons who are there buried. This seems to be the only meaning of 'the eternal' in the present passage: the term does not directly imply (what is sufficiently enforced elsewhere) Keats's own poetic immortality.
1. 4. _Come away!_ This call is addressed in fancy to any persons present in the chamber of death. They remain indefinite both to the poet and to the reader. The conclusion of the stanza, worded with great beauty and delicacy, amounts substantially to saying--'Take your last look of the dead Adonais while he may still seem to the eye to be rather sleeping than dead.'
1. 7. _He lies as if in dewy sleep he lay._ See Bion (p. 64), 'Beautiful in death, as one that hath fallen on sleep.' The term 'dewy sleep' means probably 'sleep which refreshes the body as nightly dew refreshes the fields.' This phrase is followed by the kindred expression 'liquid rest.'
+Stanza 8,+ 1. 3. _The shadow of white Death_, &c. The use of 'his' and 'her' in this stanza is not wholly free from ambiguity. In st. 7 Death was a male impersonation--'kingly Death' who 'keeps his pale court.' It may be assumed that he is the same in the present stanza. Corruption, on the other hand, is a female impersonation: she (not Death) must be the same as 'the eternal Hunger,' as to whom it is said that 'pity and awe soothe _her_ pale rage.' Premising this, we read:--'Within the twilight chamber spreads apace the shadow of white Death, and at the door invisible Corruption waits to trace his [Adonais's] extreme way to her [Corruption's] dim dwelling-place; the eternal Hunger [Corruption] sits [at the door], but pity and awe soothe her pale rage, nor dares she,' &c. The unwonted phrase 'his extreme way' seems to differ in meaning little if at all from the very ordinary term 'his last journey.' The statement in this stanza therefore is that corruption does not assail Adonais lying on his deathbed; but will shortly follow his remains to the grave, the dim [obscure, lightless] abode of corruption itself.
11. 8, 9. _Till darkness and the law Of change shall o'er his sleep the mortal curtain draw._ Until the darkness of the grave and the universal law of change and dissolution shall draw the curtain of death over his sleep--shall prove his apparent sleep to be veritable death. The prolonged interchange in _Adonais_ between the ideas of death and of sleep may remind us that Shelley opened with a similar contrast or approximation his first considerable (though in part immature) poem _Queen Mab_--
'How wonderful is Death,-- Death, and his brother Sleep!' &c.
The mind may also revert to the noble passage in Byron's _Giaour_--
'He who hath bent him o'er the dead Ere the first day of death is fled,' &c.--
though the idea of actual sleep is not raised in this admirably beautiful and admirably realistic description. Perhaps the poem, of all others, in which the conception of death is associated with that of sleep with the most poignant pathos, is that of Edgar Poe entitled _For Annie_--
'Thank Heaven, the crisis, The danger, is past, And the lingering illness Is over at last, And the fever called living Is conquered at last,' &c.--
where real death is spoken of throughout, in a series of exquisite and thrilling images, as being real sleep. In Shelley's own edition of _Adonais_, the lines which we are now considering are essentially different. They run
'Till darkness and the law Of mortal change shall fill the grave which is her maw.'
This is comparatively poor and rude. The change to the present reading was introduced by Mrs. Shelley in her edition of Shelley's Poems in 1839. She gives no information as to her authority: but there can be no doubt that at some time or other Shelley himself made the improvement. See p. 33.
+Stanza 9,+ 1. i. _The quick Dreams._ With these words begins a passage of some length, which is closely modelled upon the passage of Bion (p. 64), 'And around him the Loves are weeping,' &c.: modelled upon it, and also systematically transposed from it. The transposition goes on the same lines as that of Adonis into Adonais, and of the Cyprian into the Uranian Aphrodite; i.e. the personal or fleshly Loves are spiritualized into Dreams (musings, reveries, conceptions) and other faculties or emotions of the mind. It is to be observed, moreover, that the trance of Adonis attended by Cupids forms an incident in Keats's own poem of _Endymion_, book ii--
'For on a silken couch of rosy pride, In midst of all, there lay a sleeping youth Of fondest beauty; fonder, in fair sooth, Than sighs could fathom or contentment reach.
* * * * *
... Hard by Stood serene Cupids, watching silently. One, kneeling to a lyre, touched the strings, Muffling to death the pathos with his wings, And ever and anon uprose to look At the youth's slumber; while another took A willow-bough distilling odorous dew, And shoot it on his hair; another flew In through the woven roof, and fluttering-wise Rained violets upon his sleeping eyes.'
1. 2. _The passion-winged ministers of thought._ The 'Dreams' are here defined as being thoughts (or ministers of thought) winged with passion; not mere abstract cogitations, but thoughts warm with the heart's blood, emotional conceptions--such thoughts as subserve the purposes of poetry, and enter into its structure: in a word, poetic thoughts.
1. 3. _Who were his flocks_, &c. These Dreams were in fact the very thoughts of Adonais, as conveyed in his poems. He being dead, they cannot assume new forms of beauty in any future poems, and cannot be thus diffused from mind to mind, but they remain mourning round their deceased herdsman, or master. It is possible that this image of a flock and a herdsman is consequent upon the phrase in the Elegy of Moschus for Bion--'Bion the herdsman is dead' (p. 65).
+Stanza 10,+ 1. 2. _And fans him with her moonlight wings._ See Bion (p. 65), 'and another, from behind him, with his wings is fanning Adonis.' The epithet 'moonlight' may indicate either delicacy of colour, or faint luminosity--rather the latter,
1. 6. _A tear some Dream has loosened from his brain._ I follow Shelley's edition in printing Dream with a capital letter. I do not however think this helpful to the right sense. The capitalized Dream might appear to be one of those impersonated Dreams to whom these stanzas relate: but in the present line the word 'dream' would be more naturally construed as meaning simply 'thought, mental conception.'
1. 7. _Lost angel of a ruined paradise._ The ruined paradise is the mind, now torpid in death, of Adonais. The 'Dream' which has been speaking is a lost angel of this paradise, in the sense of being a messenger or denizen of the mind of Adonais, incapacitated for exercising any further action: indeed, the Dream forthwith fades, and is for ever extinct.
1. 8. _With no stain._ Leaving no trace behind. The rhyme has entailed the use of the word 'stain,' which is otherwise a little arbitrary in this connexion.
1. 9. _She faded, like a cloud which had outwept its rain._ A rain-cloud which has fully discharged its rain would no longer constitute a cloud--it would be dispersed and gone. The image is therefore a very exact one for the Dream which, having accomplished its function and its life, now ceases to be. There appears to be a further parallel intended--between the Dream whose existence closes in a _tear_, and the rain-cloud which has discharged its _rain_: this is of less moment, and verges upon a conceit. This passage in _Adonais_ is not without some analogy to one in Keats's _Endymion_ (quoted on p. 42)--
'Therein A melancholy spirit well might win Oblivion, and melt out his essence fine Into the winds.'
Stanza 11+ 11. 1, 2. _One from a lucid urn of starry dew Washed his light limbs, as if embalming them._ See the passage from Bion (p. 64), 'One in a golden vessel bears water, and another laves the wound.' The expression 'starry dew' is rather peculiar: the dew may originally have 'starred' the grass, but, when collected into an urn, it must have lost this property: perhaps we should rather understand, nocturnal dew upon which the stars had been shining. It is difficult to see how the act of washing the limbs could simulate the process of embalming.
1. 3. _Another clipt her profuse locks._ See Bion (p. 64), 'clipping their locks for Adonis.' 'Profuse' is here accented on the first syllable; although indeed the line can be read with the accent, as is usual, on the second syllable.
11. 3-5. _And threw The wreath upon him like an anadem Which frozen tears instead of pearls begem._ The wreath is the lock of hair--perhaps a plait or curl, for otherwise the term wreath is rather wide of the mark. The idea that the tears shed by this Dream herself (or perhaps other Dreams) upon the lock are 'frozen,' and thus stand in lieu of pearls upon an anadem or circlet, seems strained, and indeed incongruous: one might wish it away.
11. 6, 7. _Another in her wilful grief would break Her bow and wingèd reeds._ Follows Bion closely--'And one upon his shafts, another on his bow, is treading' (p. 64). This is perfectly appropriate for the Loves, or Cupids: not equally so for the Dreams, for it is not so apparent what concern they have with bows and arrows. These may however be 'winged thoughts' or 'winged words'--[Greek: epea pteroenta]. Mr. Andrew Lang observes (Introduction to his Theocritus volume), 'In one or other of the sixteen Pompeian pictures of Venus and Adonis, the Loves are breaking their bows and arrows for grief, as in the hymn of Bion.'
11. 7, 8. _As if to stem A greater loss with one which was more weak._ 'To stem a loss' is a very lax phrase--and more especially 'to stem a loss with another loss.' 'To stem a torrent--or, the current of a river,' is a well-known expression, indicating one sort of material force in opposition to another. Hence we come to the figurative expression, 'to stem the torrent of his grief,' &c. Shelley seems to have yielded to a certain analogy in the sentiment, and also to the convenience of a rhyme, and thus to have permitted himself a phrase which is neither English nor consistent with sense. Line 8 seems to me extremely feeble throughout.
1. 9. _And dull the barbèd fire against his frozen cheek._ The construction runs--'Another would break, &c., and [would] dull, &c.' The term 'the barbèd fire' represents of course 'the winged reeds,' or arrows: actual reeds or arrows are now transmuted into flame-tipped arrows (conformable to the spiritual or immaterial quality of the Dreams): the fire is to be quenched against the frost of the death-cold cheek of Adonais. 'Frozen tears--frozen cheek:' Shelley would scarcely, I apprehend, have allowed this repetition, but for some inadvertence. I am free to acknowledge that I think the whole of this stanza bad. Its _raison d'être_ is a figurative but perfectly appropriate and straightforward passage in Bion: Shelley has attempted to turn that into a still more figurative passage suitable for _Adonais_, with a result anything but happy. He fails to make it either straightforward or appropriate, and declines into the super-subtle or wiredrawn.
+Stanza 12,+ 1. 1. _Another Splendour._ Another luminous Dream.
1. 2. _That mouth whence it was wont to draw the breath,_ &c. Adonais (Keats), as a poet, is here figured as if he were a singer; consequently we are referred to his 'mouth' as the vehicle of his thoughts or poetic imaginings--not to his hand which recorded them.
1. 3. _To pierce the guarded wit._ To obtain entry into the otherwise unready minds of others--the hearers (or readers) of the poet.
11. 5, 6. _The damp death Quenched its caress upon his icy lips._ This phrase is not very clear. I understand it to mean--The damps of death [upon the visage of Adonais] quenched the caress of the Splendour [or Dream] imprinted on his icy lips. It might however be contended that the term 'the damp death' is used as an energetic synonym for the 'Splendour' itself. In this case the sense of the whole passage may be amplified thus: The Splendour, in imprinting its caress upon the icy lips of Adonais, had its caress quenched by the cold, and was itself converted into dampness and deathliness: it was no longer a luminous Splendour, but a vaporous and clammy form of death. The assumption that 'the damp death' stands as a synonym for the 'Splendour' obtains some confirmation from the succeeding phrase about the '_dying_ meteor'--for this certainly seems used as a simile for the 'Splendour.'
1. 7. _'And, as a dying meteor,'_ &c. The dying meteor, in this simile, must represent the Splendour; the wreath of moonlight vapour stands for the pale limbs of Adonais; the cold night may in a general way symbolize the night of death.
1. 9. _It flushed through his pale limbs, and passed to its eclipse._ The Splendour flushed through the limbs of Adonais, and so became eclipsed,--faded into nothingness. This terminates the episode of the 'quick Dreams,' beginning with stanza 9.