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.)