The poem of _Adonais_ can of course be contemplated from different
points of view. Its biographical relations have been already considered
in our preceding sections: its poetical structure and value, its ideal
or spiritual significance, and its particular imagery and diction, will
occupy us much as we proceed. At present I mean simply to deal with the
Argument of _Adonais_. It has a thread--certainly a slender thread--of
narrative or fable; the personation of the poetic figure Adonais, as
distinct from the actual man John Keats, and the incidents with which
that poetic figure is associated. The numerals which I put in
parentheses indicate the stanzas in which the details occur.
(1) Adonais is now dead: the Hour which witnessed his loss mourns him,
and is to rouse the other Hours to mourn. (2) He was the son of the
widowed Urania, (6) her youngest and dearest son. (2) He was slain by a
nightly arrow--'pierced by the shaft which flies in darkness.' At the
time of his death Urania was in her paradise (pleasure-garden),
slumbering, while Echoes listened to the poems which he had written as
death was impending. (3) Urania should now wake and weep; yet wherefore?
'He is gone where all things wise and fair descend.' (4) Nevertheless
let her weep and lament. (7) Adonais had come to Rome. (8) Death and
Corruption are now in his chamber, but Corruption delays as yet to
strike. (9) The Dreams whom he nurtured, as a herdsman tends his flock,
mourn around him, (10) One of them was deceived for a moment into
supposing that a tear shed by itself came from the eyes of Adonais, and
must indicate that he was still alive. (11) Another washed his limbs,
and a third clipped and shed her locks upon his corpse, &c. (13) Then
came others--Desires, Adorations, Fantasies, &c. (14 to 16) Morning
lamented, and Echo, and Spring. (17) Aibion wailed. May 'the curse of
Cain light on his head who pierced thy innocent breast,' and scared away
its angel soul! (20) Can it be that the soul alone dies, when nothing
else is annihilated? (22) Misery aroused Urania: urged by Dreams and
Echoes, she sprang up, and (23) sought the death-chamber of Adonais,
(24) enduring much suffering from 'barbèd tongues, and thoughts more
sharp than they.' (25) As she arrived, Death was shamed for a moment,
and Adonais breathed again: but immediately afterwards 'Death rose and
smiled, and met her vain caress.' (26) Urania would fain have died along
with Adonais; but, chained as she was to Time, this was denied her. (27)
She reproached Adonais for having, though defenceless, dared the dragon
in his den. Had he waited till the day of his maturity, 'the monsters of
life's waste' would have fled from him, as (28) the wolves, ravens, and
vultures had fled from, and fawned upon, 'the Pythian of the age.' (30)
Then came the Mountain Shepherds, bewailing Adonais: the Pilgrim of
Eternity, the Lyrist of lerne, and (31) among others, one frail form, a
pard-like spirit. (34) Urania asked the name of this last Shepherd: he
then made bare his branded and ensanguined brow, which was like Cain's
or Christ's. (35) Another Mountain Shepherd, 'the gentlest of the wise,'
leaned over the deathbed. (36) Adonais has drunk poison. Some 'deaf and
viperous murderer' gave him the envenomed draught.
[I must here point out a singular discrepancy in the poem of _Adonais_,
considered as a narrative or apologue. Hitherto we had been told that
Adonais was killed by an arrow or dart--he was 'pierced by the shaft
which flies in darkness,' and the man who 'pierced his innocent breast'
had incurred the curse of Cain: he had 'a wound' (stanza 22). There was
also the alternative statement that Adonais, unequipped with the shield
of wisdom or the spear of scorn, had been so rash as to 'dare the
unpastured dragon in his den'; and from this the natural inference is
that not any 'shaft which flies in darkness,' but the dragon himself,
had slaughtered the too-venturous youth. But now we hear that he was
done to death by poison. Certainly when we look beneath the symbol into
the thing symbolized, we can see that these divergent allegations
represent the same fact, and the readers of the Elegy are not called
upon to form themselves into a coroner's jury to determine whether a
'shaft' or a 'dragon' or 'poison' was the instrument of murder:
nevertheless the statements in the text are neither identical nor
reconcileable for purposes of mythical narration, and it seems strange
that the author should not have taken this into account. It will be
found as we proceed (see p. 66) that the reference to 'poison' comes
into the poem as a direct reproduction from the Elegy of Moschus upon
Bion--being the passage which forms the second of the two mottoes to
_Adonais_.]
(36) This murderer, a 'nameless worm,' was alone callous to the prelude
of the forthcoming song. (37) Let him live on in remorse and
self-contempt. (38) Neither should we weep that Adonais has 'fled far
from these carrion-kites that scream below.' His spirit flows back to
its fountain, a portion of the Eternal. (39) Indeed, he is not dead nor
sleeping, but 'has awakened from the dream of life.' Not he decays, but
we. (41) Let not us, nor the powers of Nature, mourn for _Adonais_. (42)
He is made one with Nature. (45) In 'the unapparent' he was welcomed by
Chatterton, Sidney, Lucan, and (46) many more immortals, and was hailed
as the master of a 'kingless sphere' in a 'heaven of song.' (48) Let any
rash mourner go to Rome, and (49) visit the cemetery. (53) And thou, my
heart, why linger and shrink? Adonais calls thee: be no longer divided
from him. (55) The soul of Adonais beacons to thee 'from the abode where
the Eternal are.'
This may he the most convenient place for raising a question of leading
importance to the Argument of _Adonais_--Who is the personage designated
under the name Urania?--a question which, so far as I know, has never
yet been mooted among the students of Shelley. Who is Urania? Why is she
represented as the mother of Adonais (Keats), and the chief mourner for
his untimely death?
In mythology the name Urania is assigned to two divinities wholly
distinct. The first is one of the nine Muses, the Muse of Astronomy: the
second is Aphrodite (Venus). We may without any hesitation assume that
Shelley meant one of these two: but a decision, as to which of the two
becomes on reflection by no means so obvious as one might at first
suppose. We will first examine the question as to the Muse Urania.
To say that the poet Keats, figured as Adonais, was son to one of the
Muses, appears so natural and straightforward a symbolic suggestion as
to command summary assent. But why, out of the nine sisters, should the
Muse of Astronomy be selected? Keats never wrote about astronomy, and
had no qualifications and no faintest inclination for writing about it:
this science, and every other exact or speculative science, were highly
alien from his disposition and turn of mind. And yet, on casting about
for a reason, we can find that after all and in a certain sense there is
one forthcoming, of some considerable amount of relevancy. In the eyes
of Shelley, Keats was principally and above all the poet of _Hyperion_;
and _Hyperion_ is, strictly speaking, a poem about the sun. In like
manner, _Endymion_ is a poem about the moon. Thus, from one point of
view--I cannot see any other--Keats might be regarded as inspired by, or
a son of, the Muse of Astronomy. A subordinate point of some difficulty
arises from stanza 6, where Adonais is spoken of as 'the nursling of thy
[Urania's] widowhood'--which seems to mean, son of Urania, born after
the father's death. Urania is credited in mythology with the motherhood
of two sons--Linus, her offspring by Amphimacus, who was a son of
Poseidon, and Hymenaeus, her offspring by Apollo. It might be idle to
puzzle over this question of Urania's 'widowhood,' or to attempt to
found upon it (on the assumption that Urania the Muse is referred to)
any theory as to who her deceased consort could have been: for it is as
likely as not that the phrase which I have cited from the poem is not
really intended to define with any sort of precision the parentage of
the supposititious Adonais, but, practically ignoring Adonais, applies
to Keats himself, and means simply that Keats, as the son of the Muse,
was born out of time--born in an unpoetical and unappreciative age. Many
of my readers will recollect that Milton, in the elaborate address which
opens Book 7 of _Paradise Lost_, invokes Urania. He is careful however
to say that he does not mean the Muse Urania, but the spirit of
'Celestial Song,' sister of Eternal Wisdom, both of them well-pleasing
to the 'Almighty Father.' Thus far for Urania the Muse.
I now come to Aphrodite Urania. This deity is to be carefully
distinguished from the Cyprian or Pandemic Aphrodite: she is different,
not only in attribute and function, but even in personality and origin.
She is the daughter of Heaven (Uranus) and Light; her influence is
heavenly: she is heavenly or spiritual love, as distinct from earthly or
carnal love. If the personage in Shelley's Elegy is to be regarded, not
as the Muse Urania, but as Aphrodite Urania, she here represents
spiritual or intellectual aspiration, the love of abstract beauty, the
divine element in poesy or art. As such, Aphrodite Urania would be no
less appropriate than Urania or any other Muse to be designated as the
mother of Adonais (Keats). But the more cogent argument in favour of
Aphrodite Urania is to be based upon grounds of analogy or transfer,
rather than upon any reasons of antecedent probability. The part
assigned to Urania in Shelley's Elegy is very closely modelled upon the
part assigned to Aphrodite in the Elegy of Bion upon Adonis (see the
section in this volume, _Bion and Moschus_). What Aphrodite Cypris does
in the _Adonis_, that Urania does in the _Adonais_. The resemblances are
exceedingly close, in substance and in detail: the divergences are only
such as the altered conditions naturally dictate. The Cyprian Aphrodite
is the bride of Adonis, and as such she bewails him: the Uranian
Aphrodite is the mother of Adonais, and she laments him accordingly.
Carnal relationship and carnal love are transposed into spiritual
relationship and spiritual love. The hands are the hands, in both poems,
of Aphrodite: the voices are respectively those of Cypris and of Urania.
It is also worth observing that the fragmentary poem of Shelley named
_Prince Athanase_, written in 1817, was at first named _Pandemos and
Urania_; and was intended, as Mrs. Shelley informs us, to embody the
contrast between 'the earthly and unworthy Venus,' and the nobler ideal
of love, the heaven-born or heaven-sent Venus. The poem would thus have
borne a certain relation to _Alastor_, and also to _Epipsychidion_. The
use of the name 'Urania' in this proposed title may help to confirm us
in the belief that there is no reason why Shelley should not have used
the same name in _Adonais_ with the implied meaning of Aphrodite Urania.
On the whole I am strongly of opinion that the Urania of _Adonais_ is
Aphrodite, and not the Muse.