Adonais Part 12

'Forlorn!--the very word is as a knell,' &c.

The nightingale is also introduced into the Elegy of Moschus for Bion; 'Ye nightingales that lament,' &c. (p. 65), and 'Nor ever sang so sweet the nightingale on the cliffs.' Poets are fond of speaking of the nightingale as being the hen-bird, and Sh.e.l.ley follows this precedent. It is a fallacy, for the songster is always the c.o.c.k-bird.

1. 3. _Not so the eagle_, &c. The general statement in these lines is that Albion wails for the death of Keats more melodiously than the nightingale mourning for her lost mate, and more pa.s.sionately than the eagle robbed of her young. This statement has proved true enough in the long run: when Sh.e.l.ley wrote, it was only prospectively or potentially true, for the death of Keats excited no immediate widespread concern in England. It should be observed that, by introducing Albion as a figurative personage in his Elegy, Sh.e.l.ley disregards his emblematic Grecian youth Adonais, and goes straight to the actual Englishman Keats.

This pa.s.sage, taken as a whole, is related to that of Moschus (p. 65) regarding the nightingale, the sea-bird, and the bird of Memnon; see also the pa.s.sage, 'and not for Sappho, but still for thee,' &c.

11. 4, 5. _Could nourish in the sun's domain Her mighty youth with morning._ This phrase seems to have some a.n.a.logy to that of Milton in his _Areopagitica_: 'Methinks I see in my mind a n.o.ble and puissant nation rousing herself like a strong man after sleep and shaking her invincible locks. Methinks I see her as an eagle muing her mighty youth, and kindling her undazzled eyes at the full mid-day beam--purging and unsealing her long-abused sight at the fountain itself of heavenly radiance.'

11. 7, 8. _The curse of Cain Light on his head_, &c. An imprecation against the critic of Keats's _Endymion_ in the _Quarterly Review_: see especially p. 39, &c. The curse of Cain was that he should be 'a fugitive and a vagabond,' as well as unsuccessful in tilling the soil.

Sh.e.l.ley probably pays no attention to these details, but simply means 'the curse of murder.'

+Stanza 18,+ 11. 1, 2. _Ah woe is me! Winter is come and gone, But grief returns with the revolving year_, &c. See the pa.s.sage in Moschus (p.

65): 'Ah me! when the mallows wither,' &c. The phrase in Bion has also a certain but restricted a.n.a.logy to this stanza: 'Thou must again bewail him, again must weep for him another year' (p. 65). As to the phrase 'Winter is come and gone,' see the note (p. 111) on 'Grief made the young Spring wild.'

1. 5. _Fresh leaves and flowers deck the dead Seasons' bier._ This phrase is barely consistent with the statement (st. 16) as to Spring throwing down her kindling buds. Perhaps, moreover, it was an error of print to give 'Seasons' in the plural: 'Season's' (meaning winter) would seem more accurate. A somewhat similar idea is conveyed in one of Sh.e.l.ley's lyrics, _Autumn, a Dirge_, written in 1820:--

'And the Year On the earth her death-bed, in a shroud of leaves dead, Is lying.'

1. 7. _Brere._ An antiquated form of the word briar.

1. 9. _Like unimprisoned flames._ Flames which, after being pent up within some substance or s.p.a.ce, finally find a vent.

+Stanza 19,+ 1. 2. _A quickening life_, &c. The present stanza is generally descriptive of the effects of Springtime upon the earth. This reawakening of Nature (Sh.e.l.ley says) has always taken place, in annual recurrence, since 'the great morning of the world when first G.o.d dawned on chaos.' This last expression must be construed with a certain lat.i.tude. The change from an imagined chaos into a divinely-ordered cosmos is not necessarily coincident with the interchange of seasons, and especially the transition from Winter to Spring, upon the planet Earth. All that can be safely propounded on such a subject is that the sequence of seasons is a constant and infallible phenomenon of Nature in that condition of our planet with which alone we have, or can have, any acquaintance.

1. 5. _In its steam immersed_: i.e. in the steam--or vapour or exhalation--of the 'quickening life.'

+Stanza 20,+ 11. 1, 2. _The leprous corpse, touched by this spirit tender, Exhales itself in flowers of gentle breath._ 'This spirit tender' is the 'quickening life' of the renascent year; or briefly the Spring. By 'the leprous corpse' Sh.e.l.ley may mean, not the corpse of an actual leper, but any corpse in a loathsome state of decay. Even so abhorrent an object avails to fertilize the soil, and thus promotes the growth of odorous flowers.

1. 3. _Like incarnations of the stars_, &c. These flowers--star-like blossoms--illumine death and the grave: the light which would belong to them as stars is converted into the fragrance proper to them as flowers.

This image is rather confused, and I think rather stilted: moreover, 'incarnation' (or embodiment in _flesh_) is hardly the right word for the vegetative nature of flowers. As forms of life, the flowers mock or deride the grave-worm which battens or makes merry on corruption. The appropriateness of the term 'merry worm' seems very disputable.

1. 6. _Nought we know dies._ This affirmation springs directly out of the consideration just presented to us--that even the leprous corpse does not, through various stages of decay, pa.s.s into absolute nothingness: on the contrary, its const.i.tuents take new forms, and subserve a re-growth of life, as in the flowers which bedeck the grave. From this single and impressive instance the poet pa.s.ses to the general and unfailing law--No material object of which we have cognizance really dies: all such objects are in a perpetual cycle of change. This conception has been finely developed in a brace of early poems of Lord Tennyson, _All Things will Die_, and _Nothing will Die_:--

'The stream will cease to flow, The wind will cease to blow, The clouds will cease to fleet, The heart will cease to beat-- For all things must die.

'The stream flows, The wind blows, The cloud fleets, The heart beats, Nothing will die.

Nothing will die; All things will change Through eternity.'

11. 6-8. _Shall that alone which knows Be as a sword consumed before the sheath By sightless lightning?_ From the axiom 'Nought we know dies'--an axiom which should be understood as limited to what we call material objects (which Sh.e.l.ley however considered to be indistinguishable, in essence, from ideas, see p, 56)--he proceeds to the question, 'Shall that alone which knows'--i.e. shall the mind alone--die and be annihilated? If the mind were to die, while the body continues extant (not indeed in the form of a human body, but in various phases of ulterior development), then the mind would resemble a sword which, by the action of lightning, is consumed (molten, dissolved) within its sheath, while the sheath itself remains unconsumed. This is put as a question, and Sh.e.l.ley does not supply an answer to it here, though the terms in which his enquiry is couched seem intended to suggest a reply to the effect that the mind shall _not_ die. The meaning of the epithet 'sightless,' as applied to lightning, seems disputable. Of course the primary sense of this word is 'not-seeing, blind'; but Sh.e.l.ley would probably not have scrupled to use it in the sense of 'unseen.' I incline to suppose that Sh.e.l.ley means 'unseen'; not so much that the lightning is itself unseen as that its action in fusing the sword, which remains concealed within the sheath, is unseen. But the more obvious sense of 'blind, unregardful,' could also be justified.

11. 8, 9. _Th' intense atom glows A moment, then is quenched in a most cold repose._ The term 'th' intense atom' is a synonym for 'that which knows,' or the mind. By death it is 'quenched in a most cold repose': but the repose is not necessarily extinction.

+Stanza 21,+ 11. 1, 2. _Alas that all we loved of him should be, But for our grief, as if it had not been._ 'All we loved of him' must be the mind and character--the mental and personal endowments--of Adonais: his bodily frame is little or not at all in question here. By these lines therefore Sh.e.l.ley seems to intimate that the mind or soul of Adonais is indeed now and for ever extinct: it lives no longer save in the grief of the survivors. But it does not follow that this is a final expression of Sh.e.l.ley's conviction on the subject: the pa.s.sage should be read as in context with the whole poem.

11. 5, 6. _Great and mean Meet ma.s.sed in death, who lends what life must borrow._ The meaning of the last words is far from clear to me. I think Sh.e.l.ley may intend to say that, in this our mortal state, death is the solid and permanent fact; it is rather a world of death than of life.

The phenomena of life are but like a transitory loan from the great emporium, death. Sh.e.l.ley no doubt wanted a rhyme for 'morrow' and 'sorrow': he has made use of 'borrow' in a compact but not perspicuous phrase.

+Stanza 22,+ 1. 2. _'Wake thou,' cried Misery, 'childless mother!'_ We here return to Urania, of whom we had last heard in st. 6. See the pa.s.sage translated by Sh.e.l.ley from Bion (p. 63), 'Sleep no more, Venus:... 'tis Misery calls,' &c.; but here the phrase, ''Tis Misery calls,' is Sh.e.l.ley's own. He more than once introduces Misery (in the sense of Unhappiness, Tribulation) as an emblematic personage. There is his lyric named _Misery_, written in 1818, which begins--

'Come, be happy,--sit by me, Shadow-vested Misery: Coy, unwilling, silent bride, Mourning in thy robe of pride, Desolation deified.'

There is also the briefer lyric named _Death_, 1817, which begins--

'They die--the dead return not. Misery Sits near an open grave, and calls them over, A youth with h.o.a.ry hair and haggard eye.'

11. 3, 4. _'Slake in thy hearts core A wound--more fierce than his, with tears and sighs.'_ Construe: Slake with tears and sighs a wound in thy heart's core--a wound more fierce than his.' See (p. 101) the remarks, apposite to st. 4, upon the use of inversion by Sh.e.l.ley.

1. 5. _All the Dreams that watched Urania's eyes._ We had not hitherto heard of 'Dreams' in connexion with Urania, but only in connexion with Adonais himself. These 'Dreams that watched Urania's eyes' appear to be dreams in the more obvious sense of that word-visions which had haunted the slumbers of Urania.

1. 8. _Swift as a thought by the snake memory stung._ The context suggests that the 'thought' here in question is a grievous thought, and the term 'the snake memory' conveys therefore a corresponding impression of pain. Sh.e.l.ley however had not the usual feeling of repulsion or abhorrence for snakes and serpents. Various pa.s.sages could be cited to prove this; more especially Canto 1 of _The Revolt of Islam,_ where the Spirit of Good is figured under the form of a serpent.

1. 9. _Front her ambrosial rest the fading Splendour sprung._ Urania.

She is in her own nature a splendour, or celestial deity: at the present moment her brightness is 'fading,' as being overcast by sorrow and dismay. 'Her ambrosial rest' does not appear to signify anything more precise than 'her rest, proper to an immortal being.' The forms 'sprung, sung,' &c. are constantly used by Sh.e.l.ley instead of 'sprang, sang,' &c.

+Stanza 23,+ 1. 5. _Had left the Earth a corpse._ Sh.e.l.ley, in this quasi-Greek poem, takes no count of the fact that the sun, when it ceases to illumine one part of the earth, is s.h.i.+ning upon another part.

He treats the unillumined part as if it were the whole earth--which has hereby become 'a corpse.'

+Stanza 24,+ 1. 2, _Through camps and cities_, &c. In highly figurative language, this stanza pictures the pa.s.sage of Urania from 'her secret paradise' to the death-chamber of Adonais in Rome, as if the spiritual essence and external form of the G.o.ddess were wounded by the uncongenial atmosphere of human malice and detraction through which she has to pa.s.s.

The whole description is spiritualized from that of Bion (p. 63):--

'Wildered, ungirt, unsandalled--the thorns pierce Her hastening feet, and drink her sacred blood.'

11. 4,5. _The invisible Palms of her tender feet._ Sh.e.l.ley more than once uses 'palms' for 'soles' of the feet. See _Prometheus Unbound_, Act 4:--

'Our feet now, every palm, Are sandalled with calm';

and _The Triumph of Life_:--

'As she moved under the ma.s.s Of the deep cavern, and, with palms so tender Their tread broke not the mirror of the billow, Glided along the river.'

Perhaps Sh.e.l.ley got this usage from the Italian: in that language the web-feet of aquatic birds are termed 'palme.'

11. 8, 9. _Whose sacred blood, like the young tears of May, Paved with eternal flowers that undeserving way._ The tears of May are rain-drops; young, because the year is not far advanced. 'That undeserving way'

seems a very poor expression. See (p. 64) the pa.s.sage from Bion: 'A tear the Paphian sheds for each blood-drop of Adonis, and tears and blood on the earth are turned to flowers.'

+Stanza 25,+ 1. 3. _Death ... blushed to annihilation._ This very daring hyperbole will hardly bear--nor does it want--manipulation into prose.