Adonais Part 14

+Stanza 34,+ 1. 1. _His partial moan._ The epithet 'partial' is accounted for by what immediately follows--viz. that Sh.e.l.ley 'in another's fate now wept his own.' He, like Keats, was the object of critical virulence, and he was wont (but on very different grounds) to antic.i.p.ate an early death. See (on p. 34) the expression in a letter from Sh.e.l.ley--'a writer who, however he may differ,' &c.

1. 4. _As in the accents of an unknown land He sang new sorrow._ It is not very clear why Sh.e.l.ley should represent that he, as one of the Mountain Shepherds, used a language different (as one might infer) from that of his companions. All those whom he particularizes were his compatriots. Perhaps however Sh.e.l.ley merely means that the language (English) was that of a land unknown to the Greek deity Aphrodite Urania. The phrase 'new sorrow' occurs in the Elegy by Moschus (p. 65).

By the use of this phrase Sh.e.l.ley seems to mean not merely that the death of Keats was a recent and sorrowful event, but more especially that it const.i.tuted a new sorrow--one more sorrow--to Sh.e.l.ley himself.

11. 3, 5. I reproduce the punctuation of the Pisan edition, with a colon after 'his own,' and a semicolon after 'sorrow.' It appears to me however that the sense would rather require either a full stop after 'his own,' and a comma after 'sorrow,' or else a comma after 'his own,'

and a full stop or colon after 'sorrow.' Yet it is possible that the phrase, 'As in the accents,' &c., forms a separate clause by itself, meaning, 'As _if_ in the accents of an unknown land, he sang new sorrow.'

11. 8, 9. _Made bare his branded and ensanguined brow, Which was like Cain's or Christ's._ Sh.e.l.ley 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 Sh.e.l.ley 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.

1. 6. _Gentlest of the wise._ It is apparent that Sh.e.l.ley entertained a very sincere affection and regard for Leigh Hunt. He dedicated to Hunt the tragedy of _The Cenci_, using the following expressions among others: 'Had I known a person more highly endowed than yourself with all that it becomes a man to possess, I had solicited for this work the ornament of his name. One more gentle, honourable, innocent, and brave; one of more exalted toleration for all who do and think evil, and yet himself more free from evil; one who knows better how to receive and how to confer a benefit, though he must ever confer far more than he can receive; one of simpler and (in the highest sense of the word) of purer life and manners, I never knew: and I had already been fortunate in friendships when your name was added to the list.'

1. 7. _Taught, soothed, loved, honoured, the departed one._ It has sometimes been maintained that Hunt, whatever may have been the personal friendship which he felt for Keats, did not, during the latter's lifetime, champion his literary cause with so much zeal as might have been expected from his professions. This is a point open to a good deal of discussion from both sides. Mr. Buxton Forman, who, as Editor of Keats, had occasion to investigate the matter attentively, p.r.o.nounces decidedly in favour of Hunt.

+Stanza 36,+ 1. 1. _Our Adonais has drunk poison._ Founded on those lines of Moschus which appear as a motto to Sh.e.l.ley's Elegy. See also p.

49.

1. 2. _What deaf and viperous murderer._ Deaf, because insensible to the beauty of Keats's verse; and viperous, because poisonous and malignant.

The juxtaposition of the two epithets may probably be also partly dependent on that pa.s.sage in the Psalms (lviii. 4, 5) which has become proverbial: 'They are as venomous as the poison of a serpent: even like the deaf adder that stoppeth her ears; which refuseth to hear the voice of the charmer, charm he never so wisely.'

1. 4. _The nameless worm._ A worm, as being one of the lowest forms of life, is constantly used as a term implying contempt; but it may be a.s.sumed that Sh.e.l.ley here uses 'worm' in its original sense, that of any crawling creature, more especially of the snake kind. There would thus be no departure from the previous epithet 'viperous.' See the remarks as to 'reptiles,' St. 29.

11. 5, 6. _The magic tone Whose prelude,_ &c. Sh.e.l.ley, it will be perceived, here figures Keats as a minstrel striking the lyre, and preparing to sing. He strikes the lyre in a 'magic tone'; the very 'prelude' of this was enough to command silent expectation. This prelude is the poem of _Endymion_, to which the _Quarterly_ reviewer alone (according to Sh.e.l.ley) was insensitive, owing to feelings of 'envy, hate, and wrong.' The prelude was only an induction to the 'song,'--which was eventually poured forth in the _Lamia_ volume, and especially (as our poet opined) in _Hyperion_. But now Keats's hand is cold in death, and his lyre unstrung. As I have already observed--see p.

35, &c.--Sh.e.l.ley was mistaken in supposing that the _Quarterly Review_ had held a monopoly of 'envy, hate, and wrong'--or, as one might now term them, detraction, spite, and unfairness--in reference to Keats.

+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 ident.i.ty, 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.'

1. 7. _Remorse and self-contempt._ Sh.e.l.ley frequently dwells upon self-contempt as one of the least tolerable of human distresses.

Thus in the _Revolt of Islam_ (Canto 8, st. 20):

'Yes, it is Hate--that shapeless fiendly thing Of many names, all evil, some divine-- Whom self-contempt arms with a mortal sting,' &c.

And in _Prometheus Unbound_ (Act i)--

'Regard this earth Made mult.i.tudinous with thy slaves, whom thou Requitest for knee-worship, prayer, and praise?

And toil, and hecatombs of broken hearts, With fear and self-contempt and barren hope.'

Again (Act ii, sc. 4)--

'And self-contempt, bitterer to drink than blood.'

+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 Sh.e.l.ley'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. 2. _These carrion kites._ A term of disparagement corresponding nearly enough to the 'ravens' and 'vultures' of st. 28.

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. 4. Thou canst not soar where he is sitting now. This is again addressed to the 'deaf and viperous murderer,' regarded for the moment as a 'carrion kite.' As kites are eminently high flyers, the phrase here used becomes the more emphatic. This line of Sh.e.l.ley's is obviously adapted from a pa.s.sage in Milton's _Paradise Lost_, where Satan addresses the angels in Eden (Book 4)--

'Ye knew me once, no mate For you, there sitting where ye durst not soar.'

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,' c.u.mbering the 'hearth of shame.' As a rhetorical ant.i.thesis, this serves its purpose well: no doubt Sh.e.l.ley would not have pretended that it is a strictly reasoned ant.i.thesis as well, or furnishes a full account of the _post-mortem_ fate of the _Quarterly_ reviewer.

+Stanza 39,+ 11. 1, 2. _Peace, peace! he is not dead, he doth not sleep! He hath awakened from the dream of life._ Sh.e.l.ley now proceeds boldly to declare that the state which we call death is to be preferred to that which we call life. Keats is neither dead nor sleeping. He used to be asleep, perturbed and tantalized by the dream which is termed life. Having at last awakened from the dream, he is no longer asleep: and, if life is no more than a dream, neither does the cessation of life deserve to be named death.

The transition from one emotion to another in this pa.s.sage, and also in the preceding stanza, 'Nor let us weep,' &c., resembles the transition towards the close of _Lycidas_--

'Weep no more, woful shepherds, weep no more, For Lycidas, your sorrow, is not dead,' &c.

The general view has considerable affinity to that which is expounded in a portion of Plato's dialogue _Phaedo_, and which has been thus summarised. 'Death is merely the separation of soul and body. And this is the very consummation at which Philosophy aims: the body hinders thought,--the mind attains to truth by retiring into herself. Through no bodily sense does she perceive justice, beauty, goodness, and other ideas. The philosopher has a lifelong quarrel with bodily desires, and he should welcome the release of his soul.'

1. 3. _'Tis we who, lost in stormy visions_, &c. We, the so-called living, are in fact merely beset by a series of stormy visions which const.i.tute life; all our efforts are expended upon mere phantoms, and are therefore profitless; our mental conflict is an act of trance, exercised upon mere nothings. The very energetic expression, 'strike with our spirit's knife invulnerable nothings,' is worthy of remark. It will be remembered that, according to Sh.e.l.ley's belief, 'nothing exists but as it is perceived': see p. 56. The view of life expressed with pa.s.sionate force in this pa.s.sage of _Adonais_ is the same which forms the calm and placid conclusion of _The Sensitive Plant_, a poem written in 1820;--

'But, in this life Of error, ignorance, and strife, Where nothing is but all things seem.

And we the shadows of the dream,

It is a modest creed, and yet Pleasant if one considers it, To own that death itself must be, Like all the rest, a mockery.

That garden sweet, that Lady fair, And all sweet shapes and odours there, In truth have never pa.s.sed away: 'Tis we, 'tis ours, are changed; not they.

For love, and beauty, and delight, There is no death nor change; their might Exceeds our organs, which endure No light, being themselves obscure.'

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. 5. _From the contagion of the world's slow stain._ It may be said that 'the world's slow stain'--the lowering influence of the aims and a.s.sociations of all ordinary human life--is the main subject-matter of Sh.e.l.ley's latest important poem, _The Triumph of Life._

1. 9. _With sparkless ashes._ See the cognate expression, 'thy cold embers,' in st. 38.

+Stanza 41,+ 1. 1. _He lives, he wakes--'tis Death is dead, not he._ In the preceding three stanzas Adonais is contemplated as being alive, owing to the very fact that his death has awakened him 'from the dream of life'--mundane life. Death has bestowed upon him a vitality superior to that of mundane life. Death therefore has performed an act contrary to his own essence as death, and has practically killed, not Adonais, but himself.

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.