The consideration which, in the preceding section, we have bestowed upon
the 'Argument' of _Adonais_ will assist us not a little in grasping the
full scope of the poem. It may be broadly divided into three currents of
thought, or (as one might say) into three acts of passion. I. The sense
of grievous loss in the death of John Keats the youthful and aspiring
poet, cut short as he was approaching his prime; and the instinctive
impulse to mourning and desolation. 2. The mythical or symbolic
embodiment of the events in the laments of Urania and the Mountain
Shepherds, and in the denunciation of the ruthless destroyer of the
peace and life of Adonais. 3. The rejection of mourning as one-sided,
ignorant, and a reversal of the true estimate of the facts; and a
recognition of the eternal destiny of Keats in the world of mind,
coupled with the yearning of Shelley to have done with the vain shows of
things in this cycle of mortality, and to be at one with Keats in the
mansions of the everlasting. Such is the evolution of this Elegy; from
mourning to rapture: from a purblind consideration of deathly phenomena
to the illumination of the individual spirit which contemplates the
eternity of spirit as the universal substance.
Shelley raises in his poem a very marked contrast between the death of
Adonais (Keats) as a mortal man succumbing to 'the common fate,' and the
immortality of his spirit as a vital immaterial essence surviving the
death of the body: he uses terms such as might be adopted by any
believer in the doctrine of 'the immortality of the soul,' in the
ordinary sense of that phrase. It would not however be safe to infer
that Shelley, at the precise time when he wrote _Adonais_, was really in
a more definite frame of mind on this theme than at other periods of his
life, or of a radically different conviction. As a fact, his feelings on
the great problems of immortality were acute, his opinions regarding
them vague and unsettled. He certainly was not an adherent of the
typical belief on this subject; the belief that a man on this earth is a
combination of body and soul, in a state--his sole state--of
'probation'; that, when the body dies and decays, the soul continues to
be the same absolute individual identity; and that it passes into a
condition of eternal and irreversible happiness or misery, according to
the faith entertained or the deeds done in the body. His belief amounted
more nearly to this: That a human soul is a portion of the Universal
Soul, subjected, during its connexion with the body, to all the
illusions, the dreams and nightmares, of sense; and that, after the
death of the body, it continues to be a portion of the Universal Soul,
liberated, from those illusions, and subsisting in some condition which
the human reason is not capable of defining as a state either of
personal consciousness or of absorption. And, so far as the human being
exercised, during the earthly life, the authentic functions of soul,
that same exercise of function continues to be the permanent record of
the soul in the world of mind. If any reader thinks that this seems a
vague form of belief, the answer is that the belief of Shelley was
indeed a vague one. In the poem of _Adonais_ it remains, to my
apprehension, as vague as in his other writings: but it assumes a shape
of greater definition, because the poem is, by its scheme and intent, a
personating poem, in which the soul of Keats has to be greeted by the
soul of Chatterton, just as the body of Adonais has to be caressed and
bewailed by Urania. Using language of a semi-emblematic kind, we might
perhaps express something of Shelley's belief thus:--Mankind is the
microcosm, as distinguished from the rest of the universe, which forms
the macrocosm; and, as long as a man's body and soul remain in
combination, his soul pertains to the microcosm: when this combination
ceases with the death of the body, his soul, in whatever sense it may be
held to exist, lapses into the macrocosm, but there is neither knowledge
as to the mode of its existence, nor speech capable of recording this.
As illustrating our poet's conceptions on these mysterious subjects, I
append extracts from three of his prose writings. The first extract
comes from his fragment _On Life_, which may have been written (but this
is quite uncertain) towards 1815; the second from his fragment _On a
Future State_, for which some similar date is suggested; the third from
the notes to his drama of _Hellas_, written in 1821, later than
_Adonais_.
(1) 'The most refined abstractions of logic conduct to a view of Life
which, though startling to the apprehension, is in fact that which the
habitual sense of its repeated combinations has extinguished in us. It
strips, as it were, the painted curtain from this scene of things. I
confess that I am one of those who am unable to refuse my assent[17] to
the conclusions of those philosophers who assert that nothing exists but
as it is perceived. It is a decision against which all our persuasions
struggle--and we must be long convicted before we can be convinced that
the solid universe of external things is "such stuff as dreams are made
of." The shocking absurdities of the popular philosophy of mind and
matter, its fatal consequences in morals, and their [? the] violent
dogmatism concerning the source of all things, had early conducted me to
Materialism. This Materialism is a seducing system to young and
superficial minds: it allows its disciples to talk, and dispenses them
from thinking. But I was discontented with such a view of things as it
afforded. Man is a being of high aspirations, "looking both before and
after," whose "thoughts wander through eternity," disclaiming alliance
with transcience and decay; incapable of imagining to himself
annihilation; existing but in the future and the past; being, not what
he is, but what he has been and shall be. Whatever may be his true and
final destination, there is a spirit within him at enmity with
nothingness and dissolution. This is the character of all life and
being. Each is at once the centre and the circumference; the point to
which all things are referred, and the line in which all things are
contained. Such contemplations as these Materialism, and the popular
philosophy of mind and matter, alike forbid: they are only consistent
with the Intellectual System.... The view of Life presented by the most
refined deductions of the Intellectual Philosophy is that of unity.
Nothing exists but as it is perceived. The difference is merely nominal
between those two classes of thought which are vulgarly distinguished by
the names of "ideas" and of "external objects." Pursuing the same thread
of reasoning, the existence of distinct individual minds, similar to
that which is employed in now questioning its own nature, is likewise
found to be a delusion. The words "I, you, they," are not signs of any
actual difference subsisting between the assemblage of thoughts thus
indicated, but are merely marks employed to denote the different
modifications of the one mind. Let it not be supposed that this doctrine
conducts to the monstrous presumption that I, the person who now write
and think, am that one mind. I am but a portion of it.'
(2) 'Suppose however that the intellectual and vital principle differs
in the most marked and essential manner from all other known substances;
that they have all some resemblance between themselves which _it_ in no
degree participates. In what manner can this concession be made an
argument for its imperishability? All that we see or know perishes[18]
and is changed. Life and thought differ indeed from everything else: but
that it survives that period beyond which we have no experience of its
existence such distinction and dissimilarity affords no shadow of proof,
and nothing but our own desires could have led us to conjecture or
imagine. Have we existed before birth? It is difficult to conceive the
possibility of this.... If we have _not_ existed before birth; if, at
the period when the parts of our nature on which thought and life depend
seem to be woven together, they _are_ woven together; if there are no
reasons to suppose that we have existed before that period at which our
existence apparently commences; then there are no grounds for
supposition that we shall continue to exist after our existence has
apparently ceased. So far as thought and life is concerned, the same
will take place with regard to us, individually considered, after death,
as had place before our birth. It is said that it is possible that we
should continue to exist in some mode totally inconceivable to us at
present. This is a most unreasonable presumption.... Such assertions ...
persuade indeed only those who desire to be persuaded. This desire to be
for ever as we are--the reluctance to a violent and unexperienced change
which is common to all the animated and inanimate combinations of the
universe--is indeed the secret persuasion which has given birth to the
opinions of a Future State.'
(3. Note to the chorus, 'Worlds on worlds are rolling ever,' &c.) 'The
first stanza contrasts the immortality of the living and thinking beings
which inhabit the planets and (to use a common and inadequate phrase)
clothe themselves in matter, with the transcience of the noblest
manifestations of the external world. The concluding verses indicate a
progressive state of more or less exalted existence, according to the
degree of perfection which every distinct intelligence may have
attained. Let it not be supposed that I mean to dogmatise upon a subject
concerning which all men are equally ignorant, or that I think the
Gordian knot of the origin of evil can be disentangled by that or any
similar assertions.... That there is a true solution of the riddle, and
that in our present state that solution is unattainable by us, are
propositions which may be regarded as equally certain: meanwhile, as it
is the province of the poet to attach himself to those ideas which exalt
and ennoble humanity, let him be permitted to have conjectured the
condition of that futurity towards which we are all impelled by an
inextinguishable thirst for immortality. Until better arguments can be
produced than sophisms which disgrace the cause, this desire itself must
remain the strongest and the only presumption that eternity is the
inheritance of every thinking being.'
The reader will perceive that in these three passages the dominant
ideas, very briefly stated, are as follows:--(1) Mind is the aggregate
of all individual minds; (2) man has no reason for expecting that his
mind or soul will be immortal; (3) no reason, except such as inheres in
the very desire which he feels for immortality. These opinions,
deliberately expressed by Shelley at different dates as a theorist in
prose, should be taken into account if we endeavour to estimate what he
means when, as a poet, he speaks, whether in _Hellas_ or in _Adonais_,
of an individual, his mind and his immortality. When Shelley calls upon
us to regard Keats (Adonais) as mortal in body but immortal in soul or
mind, his real intent is probably limited to this: that Keats has been
liberated, by the death of the body, from the dominion and delusions of
the senses; and that he, while in the flesh, developed certain fruits of
mind which survive his body, and will continue to survive it
indefinitely, and will form a permanent inheritance of thought and of
beauty to succeeding generations. Keats himself, in one of his most
famous lines, expressed a like conception,
'A thing of beauty is a joy for ever.'
Shelley was faithful to his canons of highest literary or poetical form
in giving a Greek shape to his elegy on Keats; but it may be allowed to
his English readers, or at any rate to some of them, to think that he
hereby fell into a certain degree of artificiality of structure,
undesirable in itself, and more especially hampering him in a plain and
self-consistent expression both of his real feeling concerning Keats,
and of his resentment against those who had cut short, or were supposed
to have cut short, the career and the poetical work of his friend.
Moreover Shelley went beyond the mere recurrence to Greek forms of
impersonation and expression: he took two particular Greek authors, and
two particular Greek poems, as his principal model. These two poems are
the Elegy of Bion on Adonis, and the Elegy of Moschus on Bion. To
imitate is not to plagiarize; and Shelley cannot reasonably be called a
plagiarist because he introduced into _Adonais_ passages which are
paraphrased or even translated from Bion and Moschus. It does seem
singular however that neither in the _Adonais_ volume nor in any of his
numerous written remarks upon the poem does Shelley ever once refer to
this state of the facts. Possibly in using the name 'Adonais' he
intended to refer the reader indirectly to the 'Adonis' of Bion; and he
prefixed to the preface of his poem, as a motto, four verses from the
Elegy of Moschus upon Bion. This may have been intended for a hint to
the reader as to the Grecian sources of the poem. The whole matter will
receive detailed treatment in our next section, as well as in the Notes.
The passages of _Adonais_ which can be traced back to Bion and Moschus
are not the finest things in the poem: mostly they fill out its fabular
'argument' with brilliancy and suavity, rather than with nerve and
pathos. The finest things are to be found in the denunciation of the
'deaf and viperous murderer;' in the stanzas concerning the 'Mountain
Shepherds,' especially the figure representing Shelley himself; and in
the solemn and majestic conclusion, where the poet rises from the region
of earthly sorrow into the realm of ideal aspiration and contemplation.
Shelley is generally--and I think most justly--regarded as a peculiarly
melodious versifier: but it must not be supposed that he is rigidly
exact in his use of rhyme. The contrary can be proved from the entire
body of his poems. _Adonais_ is, in this respect, neither more nor less
correct than his other writings. It would hardly be reasonable to
attribute his laxity in rhyming to either carelessness, indifference, or
unskilfulness: but rather to a deliberate preference for a certain
variety in the rhyme-sounds--as tending to please the ear, and availing
to satisfy it in the total effect, without cloying it by any tight-drawn
uniformity. Such a preference can be justified on two grounds: firstly,
that the general effect of the slightly varied sounds is really the more
gratifying of the two methods, and I believe that, practised within
reasonable limits, it is so; and secondly, that the requirements of
sense are superior to those of sound, and that, in the effort after
severely exact rhyming, a writer would often, be compelled to sacrifice
some delicacy of thought, or some grace or propriety of diction. Looking
through the stanzas of _Adonais_, I find the following laxities of
rhyming: Compeers, dares; anew, knew (this repetition of an identical
syllable as if it were a rhyme is very frequent with Shelley, who
evidently considered it to be permissible, and even right--and in this
view he has plenty of support): God; road; last, waste; taught, not;
break, cheek (two instances); ground, moaned; both, youth; rise, arise;
song, stung; steel, fell; light, delight; part, depart; wert, heart;
wrong, tongue; brow, so; moan, one; crown, tone; song, unstrung; knife,
grief; mourn, burn; dawn, moan; bear, bear; blot, thought; renown,
Chatterton; thought, not; approved, reproved; forth, earth; nought, not;
home, tomb; thither, together; wove, of; riven, heaven. These are 34
instances of irregularity. The number of stanzas in _Adonais_ is 55:
therefore there is more than one such irregularity for every two
stanzas.
It may not be absolutely futile if we bestow a little more attention
upon the details of these laxities of rhyme. The repetition of an
identical syllable has been cited 6 times. In 4 instances the sound of
_taught_ is assimilated to that of _not_ (I take here no account of
differences of spelling, but only of the sounds); in 4, the sound of
_ground_ and of _renown_ to that of _moaned_, or of _Chatterton_; in 2,
the sound of _o_ in _road, both_, and _wove_, to that in _God, youth_,
and _of_; in 3, the sound of _song_ to that of _stung_; in 2, the sound
of _ee_ in _compeers, steel, cheek_, and _grief_, to that in _dares,
fell, break_ and _knife_; in 2, the sound of _e_ in _wert_ and _earth_
to that in _heart_ and _forth_; in 3, the sound of _o_ in _moan_ and
_home_ to that in _one, dawn_, and _tomb_; in 2, the sound of _thither_
to that of _together_. The other cases which I have cited have only a
single instance apiece. It results therefore that the vowel-sound
subjected to the most frequent variations is that of _o_, whether single
or in combination.
Shelley may be considered to allow himself more than an average degree
of latitude in rhyming: but it is a fact that, if the general body of
English poetry is scrutinized, it will be found to be more or less lax
in this matter. This question is complicated by another question--that
of how words were pronounced at different periods in our literary
history: in order to exclude the most serious consequent difficulties, I
shall say nothing here about any poet prior to Milton. I take at
haphazard four pages of rhymed verse from each of the following six
poets, and the result proves to be as follows:--
_Milton._--Pass, was; feast, rest; come, room; still, invisible;
vouchsafe, safe; moon, whereon; ordained, land. 7 instances.
_Dryden._--Alone, fruition; guard, heard; pursued, good: procured,
secured, 4 instances.
_Pope._--Given, heaven; steer, character; board, lord; fault, thought;
err, singular. 5 instances.
_Gray._--Beech, stretch; borne, thorn; abode, God; broke, rock, 4
instances.
_Coleridge._--Not a single instance.
_Byron._--Given, heaven; Moore, yore; look, duke; song, tongue; knot,
not; of, enough; bestowed, mood. 7 instances.
In all these cases, as in that of Shelley's _Adonais_, I have taken no
count of those instances of lax sound-rhyme which are correct
letter-rhyme--such as the coupling of _move_ with _love_, or of _star_
with _war_; for these, however much some more than commonly purist ears
may demur to them, appear to be part and parcel of the rhyming system of
the English language. I need hardly say that, if these cases had been
included, my list would in every instance have swelled considerably; nor
yet that I am conscious how extremely partial and accidental is the
test, as to comparative number of laxities, which I have here supplied.
The Spenserian metre, in which _Adonais_ is written, was used by Shelley
in only one other instance--his long ideal epic _The Revolt of Islam_.