Adonais Part 11

+Stanza 9,+ 1. i. _The quick Dreams._ With these words begins a pa.s.sage of some length, which is closely modelled upon the pa.s.sage 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, m.u.f.fling 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 pa.s.sion-winged ministers of thought._ The 'Dreams' are here defined as being thoughts (or ministers of thought) winged with pa.s.sion; 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 a.s.sume 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 Sh.e.l.ley'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 const.i.tute 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 pa.s.sage in _Adonais_ is not without some a.n.a.logy 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 pa.s.sage 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 gra.s.s, 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 winged 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. Sh.e.l.ley seems to have yielded to a certain a.n.a.logy 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 barbed fire against his frozen cheek._ The construction runs--'Another would break, &c., and [would] dull, &c.' The term 'the barbed fire' represents of course 'the winged reeds,' or arrows: actual reeds or arrows are now trans.m.u.ted 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:' Sh.e.l.ley would scarcely, I apprehend, have allowed this repet.i.tion, but for some inadvertence. I am free to acknowledge that I think the whole of this stanza bad. Its _raison d'etre_ is a figurative but perfectly appropriate and straightforward pa.s.sage in Bion: Sh.e.l.ley has attempted to turn that into a still more figurative pa.s.sage 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 pa.s.sage 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 a.s.sumption 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 pa.s.sed to its eclipse._ The Splendour flushed through the limbs of Adonais, and so became eclipsed,--faded into nothingness. This terminates the episode of the 'quick Dreams,' beginning with stanza 9.

+Stanza 13,+ 1. 1. _And others came,--Desires and Adorations,_ &c. This pa.s.sage is the first in which Sh.e.l.ley has direct recourse, no longer to the Elegy of Bion for Adonis, but to the Elegy of Moschus for Bion. As he had spiritualized the impersonations of Bion, so he now spiritualizes those of Moschus. The Sicilian lyrist gives us (see p. 65) Apollo, Satyrs, Priapi, Panes, and Fountain-fairies. Sh.e.l.ley gives us Desires, Adorations, Persuasions, Destinies, Splendours, Glooms, Hopes, Fears, Phantasies, Sorrow, Sighs, and Pleasure. All these 'lament Adonais'

(stanza 14): they are such emotional or abstract beings as 'he had loved, and moulded into thought from shape and hue and odour and sweet sound.' The adjectival epithets are worth noting for their poetic felicity: winged Persuasions (again hinting at [Greek: epea pteroenta]), veiled Destinies, glimmering Hopes and Fears, twilight Phantasies.

1. 6. _And Pleasure, blind with tears_, &c. The Rev. Stopford Brooke, in an eloquent Lecture delivered to the Sh.e.l.ley Society in June, 1889, dwelt at some length upon the singular mythopoeic gift of the poet.

These two lines are an instance in point, of a very condensed kind.

Pleasure, heart-struck at the death of Adonais, has abrogated her own nature, and has become blinded with tears; her eyes can therefore serve no longer to guide her steps. Her smile too is dying, but not yet dead; it emits a faint gleam which, in default of eyes, serves to distinguish the path. If one regards this as a mere image, it may be allowed to approach close to a conceit; but it suggests a series of incidents and figurative details which may rather count as a compendious myth.

1. 8. _Came in slow pomp:--the moving pomp might seem._ The repet.i.tion of the word 'pomp' gives a certain poverty to the sound of this line; it can hardly, I think, have been deliberately intended. In other respects this stanza is one of the most melodious in the poem.

+Stanza 14+, 11. 3, 4. _Morning sought Her eastern watch-tower, and her hair unbound_, &c. Whether Sh.e.l.ley 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, Sh.e.l.ley 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 pa.s.sage; 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 Sh.e.l.ley substantially follows, sets forth that 'Echo in the rocks laments that thou [Bion] art silent, and no more she mimics thy voice'; also, 'Echo, among the reeds, doth still feed upon thy songs.'

It will be observed that in this stanza Echo is a single personage--the Nymph known to mythological fable: but in stanza 2 we had various 'Echoes,' spirits of minor account, who, in the paradise of Urania, were occupied with the poems of Adonais.

11. 6-8. _His lips, more dear Than those for whose disdain she pined away Into a shadow of all sounds._ Echo is, in mythology, a Nymph who was in love with Narcissus. He, being enamoured of his own beautiful countenance, paid no heed to Echo, who consequently 'pined away into a shadow of all sounds.' In this expression one may discern a delicate double meaning. (1) Echo pined away into (as the accustomed phrase goes) 'a mere shadow of her former self.' (2) Just as a solid body, lighted by the sun, casts, as a necessary concomitant, a shadow of itself, so a sound, emitted under the requisite conditions, casts an echo of itself; echo is, in relation to sound, the same sort of thing as shadow in relation to substance.

11. 8, 9. _A drear Murmur, between their songs, is all the woodmen hear._ Echo will not now repeat the songs of the woodmen; she merely murmurs some s.n.a.t.c.hes of the 'remembered lay' of Adonais.

+Stanza 16+, 1. 1. _Grief made the young Spring wild._ This introduction of Spring may be taken as implying that Sh.e.l.ley 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 Sh.e.l.ley 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 Sh.e.l.ley 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 pa.s.sage a.s.similates 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 pa.s.sage of Sh.e.l.ley 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 G.o.d 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 Sh.e.l.ley) 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 a.s.signed to the flowers, is not very happily managed by Sh.e.l.ley: 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.' Sh.e.l.ley refers to the hyacinth in another pa.s.sage (_Prometheus Unbound_, act 2, sc. 1) which seems to indicate that he regarded the antique hyacinth as being the same as the modern hyacinth,--

'As the _blue bells_ Of hyacinth tell Apollo's written grief.'

1. 8. _Amid the faint companions of their youth._ In Sh.e.l.ley's edition the words are 'Amid the drooping comrades,' &c. The change was made under the same circ.u.mstances as noted on p. 105. Whether it is a change for the better may admit of some question. The faint companions of the youth of the hyacinth and the narcissus must be other flowers, such as Spring had thrown down.

1. 9. _With dew all turned to tears,--odour, to sighing ruth._ The dew upon the hyacinth and narcissus is converted into tears: they exhale sighs, instead of fragrance. All this is in rather a _falsetto_ tone. It has some resemblance to the more simple and touching phrase in the Elegy by Moschus (p. 65): 'Ye flowers, now in sad cl.u.s.ters breathe yourselves away.'

+Stanza 17+, 1. 1. _Thy spirits sister, the lorn nightingale, Mourns not her mate_, &c. The reason for calling the nightingale the sister of the spirit of Keats (Adonais) does not perhaps go beyond this--that, as the nightingale is a supreme songster among birds, so was Keats a supreme songster among men. It is possible however--and one willingly supposes so--that Sh.e.l.ley 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 pa.s.sage in which 'forlorn' is the leading word (but not as an epithet for the nightingale itself)--