1. 4. _When his country's pride,_ &c. Construe: When the priest,
the slave, and the liberticide, trampled his country's pride, and
mocked [it] with many a loathèd rite of lust and blood. This of
course refers to the condition of public affairs and of court-life in
the reign of Charles II. The inversion in this passage is not a
very serious one, although, for the sense, slightly embarrassing.
Occasionally Shelley conceded to himself great latitude in inversion:
as for instance in the _Revolt of Islam_, canto 3, st. 34,
'And the swift boat the little waves which bore
Were cut by its keen keel, though slantingly,'
which means 'And the little waves, which bore the swift boat,
were cut,' &c.; also in the _Ode to Naples_, strophe 4,
'Florence, beneath the sun,
Of cities fairest one,
Blushes within her bower for Freedom's expectation.'
1. 8. _His clear sprite._ To substitute the word 'sprite' for 'spirit,'
in an elevated passage referring to Milton, appears to me one of the
least tolerable instances of make-rhyme in the whole range of English
poetry. 'Sprite' is a trivial and distorted misformation of 'spirit';
and can only, I apprehend, be used with some propriety (at any rate, in
modern poetry) in a more or less bantering sense. The tricksy elf Puck
may be a sprite, or even the fantastic creation Ariel; but neither
Milton's Satan nor Milton's Ithuriel, nor surely Milton himself, could
possibly be a sprite, while the limits of language and of common sense
are observed.
1. 9. _The third among the Sons of Light._ At first sight this phrase
might seem to mean 'the third-greatest poet of the world': in which case
one might suppose Homer and Shakespear to be ranked as the first and
second. But it may be regarded as tolerably clear that Shelley is here
thinking only of _epic_ poets; and that he ranges the epic poets
according to a criterion of his own, which is thus expressed in his
_Defence of Poetry_ (written in the same year as _Adonais_, 1821):
'Homer was the first and Dante the second epic poet; that is, the second
poet the series of whose creations bore a defined and intelligible
relation to the knowledge and sentiment and religion of the age in which
he lived, and of the ages which followed it--developing itself in
correspondence with their development....Milton was the third epic
poet.' The poets whom Shelley admired most were probably Homer,
Aeschylus, Sophocles, Lucretius, Dante, Shakespear, and Milton; he took
high delight in the _Book of Job_, and presumably in some other poetical
books of the Old Testament; Calderon also he prized greatly; and in his
own time Goethe, Byron, and (on some grounds) Wordsworth and Coleridge.
+Stanza 5,+ 1. 2. _Not all to that bright station dared to climb._ The
conception embodied in the diction of this stanza is not quite so clear
as might be wished. The first statement seems to amount to this--That
some poets, true poets though they were, did not aspire so high, nor
were capable of reaching so high, as Homer, Dante, and Milton, the
typical epic poets. A statement so obviously true that it hardly
extends, in itself, beyond a truism. But it must be read as introductory
to what follows.
1. 3. _And happier they their happiness who knew._ Clearly a recast
of the phrase of Vergil,
'O fortunati nimium sua si bona nôrint
Agricolae.'
But Vergil speaks of men who did not adequately appreciate their own
happiness; Shelley (apparently) of others who did so. He seems to
intimate that the poetical temperament is a happy one, in the case of
those poets who, unconcerned with the greatest ideas and the most
arduous schemes of work, pour forth their 'native wood-notes wild.' I
think it possible however that Shelley intended, his phrase to be
accepted with the same meaning as Vergil's--'happier they, supposing
they had known their happiness.' In that case, the only reason implied
why these minor poets were the happier is that their works have endured
the longer.
11. 4, 5. _Whose tapers yet burn through that night of time In which
suns perished._ Shelley here appears to say that the minor poets have
left works which survive, while some of the works of the very greatest
poets have disappeared: as, for instance, his own lyrical models in
_Adonais_, Bion and Moschus, are still known by their writings, while
many of the master-pieces of Aeschylus and Sophocles are lost. Some
_tapers_ continue to burn; while some _suns_ have perished.
11. 5-7. _Others more sublime, Struck by the envious wrath of man or
God, Have sunk, extinct in their refulgent prime._ These others include
Keats (Adonais) himself, to whom the phrase, 'struck by the envious
wrath of man,' may be understood as more peculiarly appropriated. And
generally the 'others' may be regarded as nearly identical with 'the
inheritors of unfulfilled renown' who appear (some of them pointed out
by name) in stanza 45. The word God is printed in the Pisan edition with
a capital letter: it may be questioned whether Shelley meant to indicate
anything more definite than 'some higher power--Fate.'
11. 8, 9. _And some yet live, treading the thorny road Which leads,
through toil and hate, to Fame's serene abode._ Byron must be supposed
to be the foremost among these; also Wordsworth and Coleridge; and
doubtless Shelley himself should not he omitted.
+Stanza 6,+ 1. 2. _The nursling of thy widowhood._ As to this expression
see p. 51. I was there speaking only of the Muse Urania; but the
observations are equally applicable to Aphrodite Urania, and I am unable
to carry the argument any further.
11. 3, 4. _Like a pale flower by some sad maiden cherished, And fed
with true love tears instead of dew._ It seems sufficiently clear that
Shelley is here glancing at a leading incident in Keats's poem of
_Isabella, or the Pot of Basil_, founded upon a story in Boccaccio's
_Decameron_. Isabella unburies her murdered lover Lorenzo;
preserves his head in a pot of basil; and (as expressed in st. 52
of the poem)
'Hung over her sweet basil evermore,
And moistened it with tears unto the core.'
I give Shelley's words 'true love tears' as they appear in the
Pisan edition: 'true-love tears' might be preferable.
1. 9. _The broken lily lies--the storm is overpast._ As much as to say:
the storm came, and shattered the lily; the storm has now passed away,
but the lily will never revive.
+Stanza 7,+ 1. i. _To that high Capital where kingly Death_, &c. The
Capital is Rome (where Keats died). Death is figured as the King of
Rome, who there 'keeps his pale court in beauty and decay,'--amid the
beauties of nature and art, and amid the decay of monuments and
institutions.
11. 3, 4. _And bought, with price of purest breath, A grave among the
eternal._ Keats, dying in Rome, secured sepulture among the many
illustrious persons who are there buried. This seems to be the only
meaning of 'the eternal' in the present passage: the term does not
directly imply (what is sufficiently enforced elsewhere) Keats's own
poetic immortality.
1. 4. _Come away!_ This call is addressed in fancy to any persons
present in the chamber of death. They remain indefinite both to the poet
and to the reader. The conclusion of the stanza, worded with great
beauty and delicacy, amounts substantially to saying--'Take your last
look of the dead Adonais while he may still seem to the eye to be rather
sleeping than dead.'
1. 7. _He lies as if in dewy sleep he lay._ See Bion (p. 64), 'Beautiful
in death, as one that hath fallen on sleep.' The term 'dewy sleep' means
probably 'sleep which refreshes the body as nightly dew refreshes the
fields.' This phrase is followed by the kindred expression 'liquid
rest.'
+Stanza 8,+ 1. 3. _The shadow of white Death_, &c. The use of 'his' and
'her' in this stanza is not wholly free from ambiguity. In st. 7 Death
was a male impersonation--'kingly Death' who 'keeps his pale court.' It
may be assumed that he is the same in the present stanza. Corruption, on
the other hand, is a female impersonation: she (not Death) must be the
same as 'the eternal Hunger,' as to whom it is said that 'pity and awe
soothe _her_ pale rage.' Premising this, we read:--'Within the twilight
chamber spreads apace the shadow of white Death, and at the door
invisible Corruption waits to trace his [Adonais's] extreme way to her
[Corruption's] dim dwelling-place; the eternal Hunger [Corruption] sits
[at the door], but pity and awe soothe her pale rage, nor dares she,'
&c. The unwonted phrase 'his extreme way' seems to differ in meaning
little if at all from the very ordinary term 'his last journey.' The
statement in this stanza therefore is that corruption does not assail
Adonais lying on his deathbed; but will shortly follow his remains to
the grave, the dim [obscure, lightless] abode of corruption itself.
11. 8, 9. _Till darkness and the law Of change shall o'er his sleep the
mortal curtain draw._ Until the darkness of the grave and the universal
law of change and dissolution shall draw the curtain of death over his
sleep--shall prove his apparent sleep to be veritable death. The
prolonged interchange in _Adonais_ between the ideas of death and of
sleep may remind us that Shelley opened with a similar contrast or
approximation his first considerable (though in part immature) poem
_Queen Mab_--
'How wonderful is Death,--
Death, and his brother Sleep!' &c.