Adonais Part 10

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 Sh.e.l.ley 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 s.p.a.ce 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. Sh.e.l.ley 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 Sh.e.l.ley 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 pa.s.sage has a certain a.n.a.logy 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 a.s.sumption 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 antic.i.p.ation that he would shortly die, and thus can be now adjured to 'weep _again_.' (See also p. 143.)

1. 2. _He died._ Milton.

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 loathed rite of l.u.s.t 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 pa.s.sage is not a very serious one, although, for the sense, slightly embarra.s.sing.

Occasionally Sh.e.l.ley conceded to himself great lat.i.tude 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 subst.i.tute the word 'sprite' for 'spirit,'

in an elevated pa.s.sage 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 Sh.e.l.ley 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 Sh.e.l.ley 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 norint Agricolae.'

But Vergil speaks of men who did not adequately appreciate their own happiness; Sh.e.l.ley (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 Sh.e.l.ley 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._ Sh.e.l.ley 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 G.o.d, 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 G.o.d is printed in the Pisan edition with a capital letter: it may be questioned whether Sh.e.l.ley meant to indicate anything more definite than 'some higher power--Fate.'

11. 8, 9. _And some yet live, treading the th.o.r.n.y 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 Sh.e.l.ley 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 Sh.e.l.ley 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 Sh.e.l.ley'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 pa.s.sed 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 inst.i.tutions.

11. 3, 4. _And bought, with price of purest breath, A grave among the eternal._ Keats, dying in Rome, secured sepulture among the many ill.u.s.trious persons who are there buried. This seems to be the only meaning of 'the eternal' in the present pa.s.sage: 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 a.s.sumed 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 a.s.sail 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 Sh.e.l.ley 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.

The mind may also revert to the n.o.ble pa.s.sage in Byron's _Giaour_--

'He who hath bent him o'er the dead Ere the first day of death is fled,' &c.--

though the idea of actual sleep is not raised in this admirably beautiful and admirably realistic description. Perhaps the poem, of all others, in which the conception of death is a.s.sociated with that of sleep with the most poignant pathos, is that of Edgar Poe ent.i.tled _For Annie_--

'Thank Heaven, the crisis, The danger, is past, And the lingering illness Is over at last, And the fever called living Is conquered at last,' &c.--

where real death is spoken of throughout, in a series of exquisite and thrilling images, as being real sleep. In Sh.e.l.ley's own edition of _Adonais_, the lines which we are now considering are essentially different. They run

'Till darkness and the law Of mortal change shall fill the grave which is her maw.'

This is comparatively poor and rude. The change to the present reading was introduced by Mrs. Sh.e.l.ley in her edition of Sh.e.l.ley's Poems in 1839. She gives no information as to her authority: but there can be no doubt that at some time or other Sh.e.l.ley himself made the improvement.

See p. 33.