5 And teach them thine own sorrow; Say: "With me Died Adonais; till the Future dares Where wert thou, mighty Mother, when he lay, 10 When thy Son lay, pierced by the Shaft which flies In darkness? where was lorn Urania When Adonais died? With veiled eyes, 'Mid listening Echoes, in her Paradise She sate, while one, with soft enamoured breath, 15 1 Keats, whose untimely loss to poetry is the theme of Adonais, died in Rome. Feb. 23, 1821, in his twentysixth year. Adonais was written in the following May (v. Stanzas xvi and xviii.). While not a close friend of Keats, Shelley had a sincere, increasing, but not an unqualified admiration for his poetry; moreover, he held the then prevalent, but unfounded, belief, that the young poet's death was the result of his grief and disappointment over the harsh and unfair criticism he had received. Hence, in writing Adonais, Shelley was influenced chiefly by two feelings: regret that a poet of high promise should have been "hooted from the stage of life," and passionate indignation against the perpetrator of the wrong. these circumstances, Shelley's elegy became a lament for Keats the poet, rather than for Keats the man, and its true theme is the loss that poetry (rather than Shelley himself) has sustained. Beginning with this theme. Shelley passes to general speculations on life, death. and the hereafter. Under Adonais is modelled on two Greek elegies, that of Bion on Adonis (translated by Mrs. Browning), and of Moschus on Bion. But now, thy youngest, dearest one has perished, The nursling of thy widowhood, who grew, Like a pale flower by some sad maiden cherished And fed with true-love tears instead of dew; 2 Urania was the muse of astronomy. Urania means "the heavenly one," and Shelley, like Milton and Tennyson (taking the word Urania in a spiritual and not in a material sense), makes her the personification of the Heavenly Power, the Mother of all holy and beautiful things, and, hence, the inspirer, or Mother, of poets. (r. Par. Lost. vii. 1-5, sup. p. 223 and In Memoriam, xxxvii). 3 Milton. If Shelley is speaking here of epic poets only, the two other poets of the trio are probably Homer and Dante. In this case, Milton would be "the third." not necessarily in greatness, but in chronological succession. But droop there, whence they sprung; and mourn their lot Round the cold heart, where, after their sweet pain, 80 They ne'er will gather strength, or find a home again. X And one with trembling hands clasps his cold head, And fans him with her moonlight wings, and cries, "Our love, our hope, our sorrow, is not dead; See, on the silken fringe of his faint eyes, 85 Like dew upon a sleeping flower, there lies A tear some Dream has loosened from his brain." Lost Angel of a ruined Paradise! She knew not 'twas her own; as with no stain She faded, like a cloud which had outwept its rain. 5 Rome, where Keats is buried. He thus has literally "a grave among the eternal." |