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 THE SKYLARK 
 
 AND 
 
 , ADONAIS v 
 
 -: BY; — . 
 
 Percy Bysshe Shelley. 
 
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 NEW YORK: 
 
 Effingham Maynard & Co., 
 
 SUCCESSORS TO 
 
 Clark & Maynard, Publishers, 
 
 771 Broadway and 67 & 69 Ninth St. 
 
 1890. 
 
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KELLOGG'S EDITIONS. 
 
 SHAKESPEARE'S PLAYS. 
 
 Bacb ftlag in ©ne IDolume. 
 
 Text Carefully Expurgated f©r Use in Mixed Classes. 
 
 With Portrait, Notes, Introduction to Shakespeare's Grammar, 
 Examination Papers^ and Plan of Study. 
 
 (SELECTED.) 
 
 By BRAINEKD KELLOGG, A.M.. 
 
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 Institute, and author of a "Text-Book on Rhetoric,'" a " Text-Book' On 
 
 English Literature," and one of the authors of Reed & 
 
 Kellogg 's " Lessons in English.'''' 
 
 The notes have been especially prepared and selected, to meet the 
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 nent English scholars. 
 
 We are confident that teachers who examine these editions will pro- 
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 others published. These are the only American Editions 
 of these Plays that have been carefully expurgated 
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 MERCHANT OF VENICE. 
 
 JULIUS Ci*ESAR. 
 
 MACBETH. 
 
 TEMPEST. 
 
 HAMLET. 
 
 KING HENRY V. 
 
 KING LEAR. 
 
 KING HENRY IV., Part I. 
 
 KING HENRY VIII. 
 
 AS YOU LIKE IT. 
 
 KING RICHARD III. 
 
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ENGLISH CLASSIC SERIES.-No. 85. 
 
 The Skylark aistd Ad<otais, 
 
 With Other Poems. 
 
 THE SKYLARK. 
 
 INTELLECTUAL BEAUTY. 
 
 STANZAS. WRITTEN IN DEJECTION, 
 
 NEAR NAPLES. 
 THE CLOUD. 
 ARETHUSA. 
 HYMN OF APOLLO. 
 
 ODE TO THE WEST WIND. 
 THE QUESTION. 
 A SONG. 
 
 THE POET'S WORLD. 
 TO WORDSWORTH. 
 
 ADONAIS : AN ELEGY ON THE DEATH 
 OF JOHN KEATS. 
 
 BY 
 
 Pekcy Bysshe Shelley. 
 
 GUitf) Xntrotructiorc autr Hrplanatorji Notes 
 By J. W. Abernethy, Ph.D., 
 
 PROFESSOR OF ENGLISH LITERATURE IN THE ADELPHI ACADEMY, BROOKLYN. 
 
 NEW YORK: 
 
 Effingham Maynard & Co., Publishers, 
 
 771 Broadway and 67 & 69 Ninth Street. 
 
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 A Complete Course in the Study of English. 
 
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 Kellogg's Text-Book on English Literature 
 
 In the preparation of this series the authors have had one object 
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 present a complete, progressive course, from the Spelling-Book to. the 
 study of English Literature. The troublesome contradictions which 
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 Teachers are earnestly invited to examine these books. 
 
 Effingham Maynard & Co., Publishers, 
 
 771 Broadway, New York. 
 
 Copyright, 1890, by 
 EFFINGHAM MAYNARD & CO. 
 
 6V0 
 
Introduction. 
 
 Percy Bysshe Shelley was born at Field Place, near Horsham 
 in Sussex, August 4, 1792. He was the eldest of six children and 
 the heir to a baronetcy. His father, Sir Timothy Shelley, was a 
 wealthy country gentleman, proud of his lineage, and unfortu- 
 nately possessed of a moral austerity that early brought him 
 into disastrous conflict with his wildly-inspired son. The poet's 
 early years were spent at Field Place with his four sisters; when 
 ten years old, he was sent to a private academy, and two years 
 later to Eton. He learned the classic languages "almost by in- 
 tuition," and astonished his friends with the fluency of his Latin 
 versification; his chief delight, however, was physical science, a 
 taste for which he long retained. He devoured the extravagant 
 romances of the period, and recorded indefinitely the flights of 
 his own imagination in juvenile verses and tales. His desire for 
 knowledge was insatiable; he possessed a remarkable power of 
 memory, and read with astonishing rapidity. " No student 
 ever read more assiduously. He was to be found, book in hand, 
 at all hours; reading in season and out of season; at table, in 
 bed, and especially during a walk; not only in the quiet country, 
 and in retired paths; not only at Oxford, in the public walks, 
 and High Street, but in the most crowded thoroughfares of 
 London." 
 
 At Eton Shelley was unpopular. The qualities that separated 
 him from the world in after life were early manifested — extreme 
 sensitiveness, delicacy of tastes, impulsive and tender feelings, 
 hatred of shams and conventions, intolerance of authority, and 
 uncompromising hostility to tyranny and injustice in every form. 
 " He was all passion, " says Mrs. Shelley, "passionate in his re- 
 sistance to an injury, passionate in his love/' He organized a 
 rebellion against the odious fagging system, and the brutal 
 sports of his foot-ball loving companions, so generally deemed 
 essential to manliness, aroused in him only the enthusiasm of 
 disgust. Naturally enough, he was called " Mad Shelley." 
 
 At Oxford he was equally singular in his conduct and studies. 
 
 3 
 
4: INTRODUCTION. 
 
 He showed a marked distaste for mathematics; was keenly inter- 
 ested in the principles involved in great political questions, but 
 could not endure the trivial newspaper details of party warfare. 
 Poetry and metaphysics mainly occupied his attention, and out 
 of these he was already constructing that ideal, Platouic scheme 
 of society unfolded in his early poems, by which broken human- 
 ity should be restored through universal truth, beauty, and love. 
 Locke, Hume, and the French materialists were favorite authors at 
 this time ; under their influence, and as a means of indulging his 
 passion for controversy, he issued a two- page pamphlet, entitled 
 " The Necessity of Atheism," containing a series of propositions, 
 so stated as to invite answers, embodying the main arguments of 
 Hume and other rationalists against the existence of a Deity. 
 The publication of this pamphlet led to his summary expulsion 
 from the university, March 25, 1811. His father, with just 
 indignation that the fair fame of his house should be sullied by 
 an atheistical son, but with unjust coldness, closed the doors of 
 Field Place upon the wilding, and the young poet-philosopher 
 was forced suddenly to exchange his luxurious Oxford life of 
 reading and dreaming for a struggle with poverty and the 
 "many-headed beast" in London. Neither discomfort nor dan- 
 ger ever taught Shelley wisdom, in the worldly sense ; with 
 characteristic rashness he soon married a beautiful girl of sixteen, 
 the daughter of a retired inn keeper, with nothing to depend 
 upon but unwritten poems and a small annual allowance reluct- 
 antly granted by his father. Undaunted by the persecution of 
 circumstances, and "resolving to lose no opportunity to dis- 
 seminate truth and happiness," he at once set up as a reformer 
 by writing and circulating pamphlets on Catholic Emancipation 
 in Ireland, and a " Declaration of Rights," concerning the ends 
 of government and the rights of man. 
 
 Shelley was a child of the French Revolution, and the victim 
 of its intellectual excesses. He did not, like "Wordsworth, free 
 himself from the baneful influences of that first vision of "Lib- 
 erty, Equality, Fraternity " that so dazzled the intellect of the 
 new generation throughout Europe. His passionate devotion to 
 liberty and his absorbing faith in a golden age of justice and peace, 
 led him into the propagation of wild and obnoxious theories ; 
 and the consequent extravagance of expression often concealed 
 the real man of noble impulse behind it. For this reason some 
 
INTRODUCTIONS O 
 
 of his earlier poems, as "Queen Mab" and " The Revolt of Is- 
 lam," are almost unreadable, and, at publication, aroused 
 only bitter hostility. But the freer utterance of the later lyrics 
 reveals a soul filled with love, faith, and spiritual exaltation. 
 He used the term " atheism," he said, " to express his abhorrence 
 of superstition; he took it up as a knight took up a gauntlet in 
 defiance of injustice." He might well have said with Schiller, 
 "I have no religion, because of my religion." He loved mys- 
 tery, loved to remain " hidden in the light of thought," and could 
 not restrain his thinking by definition. "Lift not the painted 
 veil," he cries, " which those that live call life." His spirit felt 
 itself to be a part of the illimitable spirit of the universe. " He 
 was not an atheist or a materialist," says Stopford Brooke. " If 
 he may be said to have occupied any theoretical position, it was 
 that of an Ideal Pantheist ; a position which, with regard to Na- 
 ture, a modern poet who cares for the subject, naturally — what- 
 ever may be his personal view — adopts in the realm of his art." 
 
 Before Shelley was eighteen he had published two novels, 
 " Zastrozzi" and " The Rosicrucian," both incoherent medleys of 
 sentiment, suggestiug only remotely the future poet. In 1813 his 
 first important poem, "Queen Mab," was printed. "Alastor," 
 the finest of the long poems, was published in 1816. The best of 
 the longer poems that followed are: " Julian and Maddalo," the 
 transcendental love-poem, "Epipsychidion," and " The Witch 
 of Atlas," " a poem in which he sent his imagination out, like a 
 child into a meadow, without any aim save to enjoy itself." His 
 finest poetry was produced in the last two years of his life, when 
 he was no longer the reformer of mankind, but the isolated poet 
 described in the exquisite allegory of the " Sensitive Plant. " His 
 " Prometheus Unbound" is a splendid lyrical drama on the sub- 
 ject of the iEschylean tragedy " Prometheus Bound ;" and the 
 " Cenci" is regarded as the most powerful drama written since 
 the age of Elizabeth. The fragmentary prose works contain 
 much that is beautiful ; few passages can be found in English 
 prose equal to the essay entitled " A Defense of Poetry." 
 
 Soon after the death of his first wife, in 1816, Shelley married 
 Mary Godwin, the gifted daughter of William Godwin, the au- 
 thor of "Caleb Williams." In March, 1818, after an alarming 
 illness, he went to Italy, where the brief remainder of his life 
 was spent. Here in the companionship of a few choice friends, 
 
INTRODUCTION. 
 
 and in reposeful enjoyment of the lofty skies and purple fields, 
 the broad visions of beauty, the romantic witchery of this land of 
 poetry, his genius found its best and truest inspiration. Here he 
 had just begun to show with what sustained ease and consummate 
 art he could rise to the loftiest reaches of inspired song, when his 
 voice was suddenly silenced. His last residence was the Casa 
 Magni, on the Bay of Spezia, where he indulged much in his fav- 
 orite sport of boating. On the afternoon of July 8, 1822, while 
 returning from a visit of welcome to Leigh Hunt at Leghorn, 
 his frail yacht was capsized in a gale and all on board perished. 
 Shelley's body was washed ashore a few days later and, in ac- 
 cordance with the quarantine regulations, was burned by his 
 friends Byron, Trelawney, and Leigh Hunt, and the ashes depos- 
 ited in the Protestant cemetery at Rome, near the grave of Keats 
 — that spot he had just described so beautifully in " Adonais. " In 
 view of the achievement of the life thus brought to an untimely 
 end, it may well be called " a miracle of thirty years." 
 
 Shelley is " the most poetical of poets since the days of 
 Elizabeth," says Stopford Brooke. Of his proper rank, the poet 
 Swinburne ventures the opinion " that of all forms or kinds of 
 poetry the two highest are the lyric and the dramatic, and that as 
 clearly as the first place in the one rank is held among us by 
 Shakespeare, the first place in the other is held and will never be 
 resigned by Shelley." Says J. Addington Symonds: "In none 
 of Shelley's greatest contemporaries was the lyrical faculty so 
 paramount ; and whether we consider his minor songs, his odes, 
 or his more complicated choral dramas, we acknowledge that he 
 was the loftiest and the most spontaneous singer of our language. 
 In range of power he was also conspicuous above the rest. Not 
 only did he write the best lyrics, but the best tragedy, the best 
 translations, and the best familiar poems of his century." 
 
 Professor Shairp, who estimates the poet's character and genius 
 with true Scotch conservatism, says of the lyrics: "Single 
 thrills of rapture, which are insufficient to make long poems out 
 of, supply the very inspiration for the true lyric. It is this pre- 
 dominance of emotion, so unhappy to himself, which made 
 Shelley the lyrist that he was. When he sings his lyric strains, 
 whatever is least pleasing in him is softened down, if it does not 
 wholly disappear. Whatever is most unique and excellent in 
 
INTRODUCTION. 7 
 
 him comes out at its best — his eye for abstract beauty, the 
 subtlety of his thought, the rush of his eager pursuing desire, 
 the splendor of his imagery, the delicate rhythm, the matchless 
 music. These lyrics are gales of melody blown from a far-off 
 region, that looks fair in the distance. To enjoy them it may 
 perhaps be as well not to inquire too closely what is the nature 
 of that land, or to know too exactly the theories and views of 
 life of which these songs are the effluence." The critic and the 
 poet's biographer, W. M. Rossetti, thus summarizes his work : 
 " He excels all his competitors in ideality, he excels them in mu- 
 sic, and he excels them in importance. By importance we here 
 mean the direct import of the work performed, its controlling 
 power over the reader's thought and feeling, the contagious 
 fire of its white-hot intellectual passion, and the long reverber- 
 ation of its appeal. We have named ideality as one of his leading 
 excellencies. This Shelleian quality combines, as its constitu- 
 ents, sublimity, beauty, and the abstract passion for good. It 
 should be acknowledged that, while this great quality forms the 
 chief and most admirable factor in Shelley's poetry, the defects 
 that go along with it mar his work too often — producing at times 
 vagueness, unreliability, and a pomp of glittering indistinctness, 
 in which excess of sentiment welters amid excess of words. The 
 blemish affects the long poems much more than the pure lyrics; 
 in the latter the rapture, the music, and the emotion are in ex- 
 quisite balance, and the work has often as much of delicate sim- 
 plicity as of fragile and flower like perfection/' 
 
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 Facsimile of Manuscript Page of Skylark, 
 
 8 
 
The Skylark and Adonais. 
 
 To a Skylark. 
 
 This ode, the most popular and the most perfect of Shelley's lyrics, was 
 written in the poet's twenty-ninth year, two years before his death. This 
 poem and the " Cloud," says Mrs. Shelley, "were written as his mind 
 prompted, listening to the carolling of the bird, aloft in the azure sky of 
 Italy, or marking the cloud as it sped across the heavens, as he floated in his 
 boat on the Thames." " Describing the song of a skylark," says Prof. De 
 Mille, " may be compared to an artist's attempt to paint a rainbow ; yet in 
 this attempt Shellej^ has not failed. He has tested to the uttermost the ca- 
 pacities of language, and has exhausted its resources in this wonderful ode. 
 It is penetrated through and through with the spirit of the beautiful, and 
 has more of high and pure poetic rapture than any other ode in existence." 
 Wordsworth's " To a Skylark" and " To the Cuckoo" should be read with 
 this poem for comparison. 
 
 Hail to thee, blithe spirit ! 
 
 Bird thou never wert, 
 That from heaven, or near it, 
 
 Pourest thy full heart 
 In profuse strains of unpremeditated art. 5 
 
 Higher still and higher 
 From the earth thou springest 
 
 Like a cloud of fire ; 
 The blue deep thou wmgest, 
 And siuging still dost soar, and soaring ever singest. 10 
 
 3. So Shakespeare begins the morning song for Imogen, in " Cymbeline:" 
 
 " Hark, hark ! the lark at heaven's gate sings." 
 8. Prof. Craik maintains that the semi-colon should be after " springest." 
 for the prosaic reason that "a cloud does not spring from the ground." 
 This marking obviously would not give the poet's meaning. The lark is 
 already high up in the sky and in the second stanza he is mounting "higher 
 still," continuously, and swiftly like fire. (See Facsimile). Compare Proc- 
 ter's lines in " In vocation to Birds," describing the lark's flight : 
 "Sky-climbing bird, wakener of morn. 
 Who springeth like a thought unto the sun." 
 
 9 
 
10 TO A SKYLARK. 
 
 Ill the golden lightning 
 
 Of the sunken sun, 
 O'er which clouds are brightning, 
 Thou dost float and run ; 
 Like an unbodied joy whose race is just begun. 15 
 
 The pale purple even 
 
 Melts around thy flight ; 
 Like a star of heaven, 
 In the broad day-light 
 Thou art unseen, but yet I hear thy shrill delight, 20 
 
 Keen as are the arrows 
 
 Of that silver sphere, 
 Whose intense lamp narrows 
 
 In the white dawn clear, 
 Until we hardly see, we feel that it is there. 25 
 
 All the earth and air 
 
 With thy voice is loud, 
 As, when night is bare, 
 From one lonely cloud 
 The moon rains out her beams, and heaven is 30 
 
 overflowed. 
 
 What thou art we know not ; 
 
 What is most like thee ? 
 From rainbow clouds there flow not 
 Drops so bright to see, 
 As from thy presence showers a rain of melody. 35 
 
 15. Unbodied: Many editions have " embodied, 1 ' an " emendation 1 ' de- 
 fended by Prof. Craik. Upon this Prof. Baynes comments thus : " To the 
 swift sympathetic imagination of the poet, the scorner of the ground, float- 
 ing far up in the golden light, had become an aerial rapture, a disembodied 
 joy, a 'delighted spirit, 1 whose ethereal race had just begun. This is a rep- 
 resentation at once profoundly poetical and profoundly true. But its force 
 and consistency are destroyed by the so-called emendation.' 1 The MS. copy 
 of the poem gives unbodied. 
 
 20. Compare Tennyson's " In Memoriam, 1 ' cxv.: 
 
 " And drowned in yonder living blue 
 The lark becomes a sightless song." 
 
 21-25. In the poem " Evening" we have the "keen evening star," and in 
 tiit* •• Cloud" the morning star "shines dead." Ruskin speaks of the long 
 avalanches "cast down in keen streams brighter than the lightning." 
 
 31-32. The poet, unable to tell what this ethereal creature is, whether 
 "sprite or bird," now tells what is most like this " blithe spirit 1 ' in a series 
 
TO A SKYLARK. 11 
 
 Like a poet hidden 
 
 In the light of thought, 
 Singing hymns unbidden, 
 
 Till the world is wrought 
 To sympathy with hopes and fears it heeded not : 40 
 
 Like a high-born maiden 
 
 In a palace tower, 
 Soothing her love-laden 
 Soul in secret hour 
 With music sweet as love, which overflows her bower : 45 
 
 Like a glow-worm golden 
 
 In a dell of dew, 
 Scattering unbeholden 
 Its aerial hue 
 Among the flowers and grass, which screen it from 50 
 
 the view : 
 
 Like a rose embowered 
 
 In its own green leaves, 
 By warm winds deflowered, 
 Till the scent it gives 
 Makes faint with too much sweet these heavy-winged 55 
 thieves : 
 
 Sound of vernal showers 
 On the twinkling grass, 
 Rain-awakened flowers, 
 All that ever was 
 Joyous, and clear, and fresh, thy music doth surpass : 60 
 
 Teach us, sprite or bird, 
 What sweet thoughts are thine : 
 
 I have never heard 
 Praise of love or wine 
 That panted forth a flood of rapture so divine. 65 
 
 of similes of unapproachable beauty. A comparison of this lyric with James 
 Hoggs "Skylark" is interesting as showing the difference "between an in- 
 spired and an uninspired poet. 
 
 64. Praise of love or wine: Lyrical poetry in general, as love and 
 wine are the most common subjects of song. 
 
12 TO A SKYLARK. 
 
 Chorus Hymenceal, 
 
 Or triumphal chaunt, 
 Matched with thine would be all 
 
 But an empty vaunt, 
 A thing wherein we feel there is some hidden want. 70 
 
 What objects are the fountains 
 
 Of thy happy strain ? 
 What fields, or waves, or mountains? 
 
 What shapes of sky or plain ? 
 What love of thine own kind ? what ignorance of pain ? 75 
 
 With thy clear keen joyance 
 
 Languor caunot be : 
 Shadow of annoyance 
 Never came near thee : 
 Thou lovest ; but ne'er knew love's sad satiety. 80 
 
 Waking or asleep, 
 
 Thou of death must deem 
 Things more true and deep 
 
 Than we mortals dream, 
 Or how could thy notes flow in such a crystal stream ! 85 
 
 We look before and after, 
 
 And pine for what is not : 
 Our sincerest laughter 
 With some pain is fraught ; 
 Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest 90 
 
 thought. 
 
 Yet if we could scorn 
 
 Hate, and pride, and fear ; 
 If we were things born 
 
 Not to shed a tear, 
 I know not how thy joy we ever should come near. 95 
 
 80. " The sound of this lovely line." says Rossetti, li would be so spoiled by 
 changing the word into 'knew'st,' that no rectification of grammar is per- 
 missible." 
 
 90. Foe makes this thought a principle, applicable to all art; "Let me re- 
 mind you that (how or why we know not) this certain taint of sadness is insepa- 
 bly connected with all the higher manifestations of true beauty." 
 
HYMN TO INTELLECTUAL BEAUTY. 13 
 
 Better than all measures 
 
 Of delightful souud, 
 Better than all treasures 
 
 That in books are found, 
 Thy skill to poet were, thou scorner of the ground ! 100 
 
 Teach me half the gladness 
 
 That thy brain must know, 
 Such harmonious madness 
 From my lips would flow, 
 The world should listen then, as I am listening now. 105 
 
 Hymn to Intellectual Beauty. 
 
 This poem was written in 1816. It expresses the poet's earliest aspirations 
 and epitomizes his philosophy of life— consecration to the service of ideal 
 truth, love, and beauty. Its fundamental idea is that of Plato's "supreme 
 beauty," explained in the " Banquet. 11 which Shelley translated. It has 
 much in common with Wordsworth's great ode on the " Intimations of Im- 
 mortality," both in the thought and in the rhythm. 
 
 The awful shadow of some unseen Power 
 Floats tho' unseen amongst us, — visiting 
 This various world with an inconstant wing 
 As summer winds that creep from flower to flower, — 
 Like moonbeams that behind some piny mountain shower, 5 
 
 It visits with inconstant glance 
 
 Each human heart and countenance ; 
 Like hues and harmonies of evening, — 
 
 Like clouds in starlight widely spread, — 
 
 Like memory of music fled, — 10 
 
 Like aught that for its grace may be 
 Dear, and yet dearer for its mystery. 
 
 1. Awful : This word, as used throughout the poem in the sense of awe- 
 inspiring, significantly expresses the intensity of Shelley's feeling. 
 
14 HYMN TO INTELLECTUAL BEAUTY. 
 
 Spirit, of Beauty, that dost consecrate 
 With thine own hues all thou dost shine upon 
 Of human thought or form, — where art thou gone? 15 
 
 Why dost thou pass away and leave our state, 
 
 This dim vast vale of tears, vacant and desolate ? 
 Ask why the sunlight not forever 
 Weaves rainbows o'er yon mountain river, 
 
 Why aught should fail and fade that once is shown, ' 20 
 
 Why fear and dream and death and birth 
 Cast on the daylight of this earth 
 Such gloom, — why man has such a scope 
 
 For love and hate, despondency and hope ? 
 
 No voice from some sublimer world hath ever 25 
 
 To sage or poet these responses given — 
 Therefore the names of Demon, Ghost, and Heaven, 
 Remain the records of their vain endeavor, 
 Frail spells — whose uttered charm might not avail to sever, 
 
 From all we hear and all we see, 30 
 
 Doubt, chauce, and mutability. 
 Thy light alone — like mist o'er mountains driven, 
 
 Or music by the night wind sent, 
 
 Thro' strings of some still instrument, 
 
 Or moonlight on a midnight stream, 35 
 
 Gives grace and truth to life's unquiet dream. 
 
 Love, Hope, and Self-esteem, like clouds depart 
 And come, for some uncertain moments lent. 
 Man were immortal and omnipotent, 
 Didst thou, unknown and awful as thou art, 40 
 
 Keep with thy glorious train firm state within his heart. 
 
 Thou messenger of sympathies, 
 
 That wax and wane in lovers' eyes — 
 Thou— that to human thought art nourishment, 
 
 Like darkness to a dying flame ! 45 
 
 Depart not as thy shadow came, 
 
 Depart not — lest the grave should be, 
 Like life and fear, a dark reality. 
 
HFMN TO INTELLECTUAL BEAUTY. 15 
 
 While yet a boy I sought for ghosts, and sped 
 Thro' many a listening chamber, cave and ruin, 50 
 
 And starlight wood, with fearful steps pursuing 
 Hopes of high talk with the departed dead. 
 I called on poisonous names with which our youth is fed, 
 
 I was not heard — I saw them not — 
 
 When musing deeply on the lot 55 
 
 Of life, at that sweet time when winds are wooing 
 
 All vital things that wake to bring 
 
 News of birds and blossoming, — 
 
 Sudden, thy shadow fell on me ; 
 I shrieked, and clasped my hands in ecstasy ! 60 
 
 I vowed that I would dedicate my powers 
 To thee and thine — have I not kept the vow ? 
 With beating heart and streaming eyes, even now 
 I call the phantoms of a thousand hours [65 
 
 Each from his voiceless grave : they have in visioned bowers 
 
 Of studious zeal or love's delight 
 
 Outwatched with me the envious night — 
 They know that never joy illumined my brow 
 
 Unlinked with hope that thou wouldst free 
 
 This world from its dark slavery, 70 
 
 That thou— O awful Loveliness, 
 Wouldst give whate'er these words cannot express. 
 
 The day becomes more solemn and serene 
 
 When noon is past — there is a harmony 
 
 In autumn, and a lustre in its sky, 75 
 
 Which thro' the summer is not heard or seen, 
 As if it could not be, as if it had not been ! 
 
 50, 51. See note on the rhyme ruin, pursuing, p. 23, 11. 52, 53. 
 
 61. In the dedication to ''Revolt of Islam "'is another description of the 
 awakening of his spirit to its sublime mission. Similarly Wordsworth says 
 of himself, in describing his early aspirations : 
 
 "I made no vows, but vows 
 Wertt made for me ; bond unknown to me 
 Was given, that I should be, else sinning greatly, 
 A dedicated spirit." 
 
16 THE CLOUD. 
 
 Thus let thy power, which like the truth 
 
 Of nature on my passive youth 
 Descended, to my onward life supply 80 
 
 Its calm — to one who worships thee, 
 
 And every form containing thee, 
 
 Whom, Spirit fair, thy spells did bind 
 To fear himself, and love all human kind. 
 
 The Cloud. 
 
 I bring fresh showers for the thirsting flowers, 
 
 From the seas and the streams ; 
 I bear light shade for the leaves when laid 
 
 In their noon-day dreams. 
 From my wings are shaken the dews that waken 5 
 
 The sweet buds every one, 
 When rocked to rest on their mother's breast, 
 
 As she dances about the sun. 
 I wield the flail of the lashing hail, 
 
 And whiten the green plains under, 10 
 
 And then again I dissolve it in rain, 
 
 And laugh as I pass in thunder. 
 
 I sift the snow on the mountains below, 
 
 And their great pines groan aghast ; 
 And all the night 'tis my pillow white, 15 
 
 While I sleep in the arms of the blast. 
 Sublime on the towers of my skie}^ bowers, 
 
 Lightning my pilot sits, 
 In a cavern under is fettered the thunder, 
 
 It struggles and howls at fits ; 20 
 
 Over earth and ocean, with gentle motion, 
 
 This pilot is guiding me, 
 Lured by the love of the genii that move 
 
 In the depths of the purple sea ; 
 
 82. The repetition of thee, instead of making a rhyme, was undoubtedly 
 intended for emphasis. 
 
THE CLOUD. 17 
 
 Over the rills, and the crags, and the hills, 25 
 
 Over the lakes and the plains, 
 Wherever he dream, under mountain or stream, 
 
 The Spirit he loves remains ; 
 And I all the while bask in heaven's blue smile, 
 
 Whilst he is dissolving in rains. 30 
 
 The sanguine sunrise, with his meteor eyes, 
 
 And his burning plumes outspread, 
 Leaps on the back of my sailing rack, 
 
 When the morning star shines dead, 
 As on the jag of a mountain crag, 35 
 
 Which an earthquake rocks and swings, 
 An eagle alit one moment may sit 
 
 In the light of its golden wings. 
 And when Sunset may breathe, from the lit sea beneath, 
 
 Its ardors of rest and of love, 40 
 
 And the crimson pall of eve may fall 
 
 From the depth of heaven above, 
 With wings folded I rest, on mine airy nest, 
 
 As still as a brooding dove. 
 
 That orbed maiden with white fire laden, 45 
 
 Whom mortals call the moon, 
 Glides glimmering o'er ray fleece-like floor, 
 
 By the midnight breezes strewn, 
 And wherever the beat of her unseen feet, 
 
 Which only the angels hear, 50 
 
 May have broken the woof of my tent's thin roof, 
 
 The stars peep behind her and peer ; 
 And I laugh to see them whirl and flee 
 
 Like a swarm of golden bees, 
 When I widen the rent in my wind-built tent, 55 
 
 Till the calm rivers, lakes, and seas, 
 Like strips of the sky fallen through me on high, 
 
 Are each paved with the moon and these. 
 
 33. Rack : An old word, still used in northern England for light broken 
 vapory cloud sin motion ; as in "The Tempest," iv. 1, "like this insubstan- 
 
 vai.iu^ ouuus in umimum, «,» in nit; i empet 
 tial pageant faded, leave not a rack behind. " 
 
18 THE CLOUD. 
 
 I bind the sun's throne with a burning zone, 
 
 And the moon's with a girdle of pearl ; 60 
 
 The volcanos are dim, and the stars reel and swim, 
 
 When the whirlwinds my banner unfurl. 
 From cape to cape, with a bridge-like shape, 
 
 Over a torrent sea, 
 Sunbeam-proof, I hang like a roof, 65 
 
 The mountains its columns be. 
 The triumphal arch through which 1 march 
 
 With hurricane, fire and snow, 
 When the powers of the air are chained to my chair, 
 
 Is the million-colored bow ; 70 
 
 The sphere-fire above its soft colors wove, 
 
 While the moist earth was laughing below. 
 
 I am the daughter of earth and water, 
 
 And the nursling of the sky ; 
 I pass through the pores of the ocean and shores ; 75 
 
 I change, but I cannot die. 
 For after the rain when with never a stain, 
 
 The pavilion of heaven is bare, 
 And the winds and sunbeams with their convex gleams, 
 
 Build up the blue dome of air, 80 
 
 I silently laugh at my own cenotaph, 
 
 And out of the caverns of rain, 
 Like a child from the womb, like a ghost from the tomb, 
 
 I arise and unbuild it again. 
 
 77-84. Compare the following lines, written the nest year (1821): 
 
 "When soft winds and sunny skies 
 With the green earth harmonize, 
 And the young and dewy dawn, 
 Bold as an unlimited fawn, 
 Up the windless heaven is gone,— 
 Laugh — for ambushed in the day. 
 Clouds and whirlwinds watch their prey.' 1 
 
STANZAS. 19 
 
 The Poet's World. 
 
 (From "Prometheus Unbound.") 
 
 On a poet's lips I slept 
 
 Dreaming like a love adept 
 
 In the sound his breathing kept ; 
 
 Nor seeks nor finds he mortal blisses, 
 
 But feeds on the aerial kisses 
 
 Of shapes that haunt thought's wildernesses. 
 
 He will wateh from dawn to gloom 
 
 The lake-reflected sun illume 
 
 The yellow bees in the ivy bloom, 
 
 Nor heed nor see what things they be ; 
 
 But from these create he can 
 
 Forms more real than living man, 
 
 Nurslings of immortality ! 
 
 Stanzas. 
 
 WRITTEN IN DEJECTION, NEAR NAPLES. 
 
 Tiie sun is warm, the sky is clear, 
 
 The waves are dancing fast and bright, 
 
 Blue isles and snowy mountains wear 
 The purple noon's transparent might, 
 The breath of the moist earth is light, 
 
 Around its unexpanded buds ; 
 Like many a voice of one delight, 
 
 The winds, the birds, the ocean floods, 
 The City's voice itself is soft like Solitude's. 
 
20 STANZAS. 
 
 I see the Deep's untrampled floor 10 
 
 With green and purple seaweeds strown ; 
 I see the waves upon the shore, 
 
 Like light dissolved in star-showers, thrown : 
 
 I sit upon the sands alone, 
 The lightning of the noon-tide ocean 15 
 
 Is flashing round me, and a tone 
 Arises from its measured motion, 
 How sweet ! did any heart now share in ni}' emotion. 
 
 Alas ! I have nor hope nor health, 
 
 Nor peace within nor calm around, 20 
 
 Nor that content surpassing wealth 
 
 The sage in meditation found, 
 
 And walked with inward glory crowned — 
 Nor fame, nor power, nor love, nor leisure. 
 
 Others I see whom these surround — 25 
 
 Smiling they live, and call life pleasure ; — 
 To me that cup has been dealt in another measure. 
 
 Yet now despair itself is mild, 
 
 Even as the winds and waters are ; 
 I could lie down like a tired child, 30 
 
 And weep away the life of care 
 
 Which I have borne and yet must bear, 
 Till death like sleep might steal on me, 
 
 And I might feel in the warm air 
 My cheek grow cold, and hear the sea 35 
 
 Breathe o'er my dying brain its last monotony. 
 
 Some might lament that I were cold, 
 
 As I, when this sweet day is gone, 
 Which my lost heart, too soon grown old, 
 
 Insults with this untimely moan ; 40 
 
 They might lament — for I am one 
 Whom men love not,— and yet regret, 
 
 Unlike this day, which, when the sun 
 Shall on its stainless glory set, 
 Will linger, though enjoyed, like joy in memory yet. 45 
 
HYMN OF APOLLO. 21 
 
 Hymn of Apollo. 
 
 The sleepless Hours who watch me as I lie, 
 
 Curtained with star-inwoven tapestries, 
 From the broad moonlight of the sky, 
 
 Fanning the busy dreams from my dim ej^es, — 
 Waken me when their Mother, the gray Dawn, 5 
 
 Tells them that dreams and that the moon is gone. 
 
 Then I arise, and climbing Heaven's blue dome, 
 I walk over the mountains and the waves, 
 
 Leaving my robe upon the ocean foam ; 
 My footsteps pave the clouds with fire ; the caves 10 
 
 Are tilled with my bright presence, and the air 
 
 Leaves the green earth to my embraces bare. 
 
 The sunbeams are my shafts, with which I kill 
 Deceit, that loves the night and fears the day ; 
 
 All men who do or even imagine ill 15 
 
 Fly me, and from the glory of my ray 
 
 Good minds and open actions take new might, 
 
 Until diminished by the reign of night. 
 
 I feed the clouds, the rainbows and the flowers 
 With their oethereal colors ; the Moon's globe 20 
 
 And the pure stars in their eternal bowers 
 Are cinctured with my power as with a robe ; 
 
 Whatever lamps on Earth or Heaven may shine, 
 
 Are portions of one power, which is mine. 
 
 I stand at noon upon the peak of Heaven, 25 
 
 Then with unwilling steps I wander down 
 
 Into the clouds of the Atlantic even ; 
 
 For grief that I depart they weep and frown : 
 
 What look is more delightful than the smile 
 
 With which I soothe them from the western isle ? 30 
 
22 ARETHUSA. 
 
 I am the eye with which the Universe 
 
 Beholds itself and knows itself divine ; 
 All harmony of instrument or verse, 
 
 All prophecy, all medicine are mine, 
 All light of art or nature ;— to my song, 35 
 
 Victory and praise in their own right belong. 
 
 Arethusa. 
 
 Arethusa arose 
 
 From her couch of snows 
 In the Acroceraunian mountains, — 
 
 From cloud and from crag, 
 
 With many a jag, 5 
 
 Shepherding her bright fountains. 
 
 She leapt down the rocks, 
 
 With her rainbow locks 
 Streaming among the streams ; — 
 
 Her steps paved with green 10 
 
 The downward ravine 
 Which slopes to the western gleams : 
 
 And gliding and springing 
 
 She went, ever singing, 
 In murmurs as soft as sleep ; 15 
 
 The Earth seemed to love her, 
 
 And Heaven smiled above her, 
 As she lingered towards the deep. 
 
 Then Alpheus bold, 
 
 On his glacier cold, 20 
 
 1. Arethusa was a nymph of Arcadia, who, being pursued by the river- 
 god Alpheus, was changed into a stream by Diana; disappearing under 
 ground, she passed beneath the Ionian sea, and reappeared as a fountain 
 in the island of Ortygia. But the river-god, still pursuing, finally won her, 
 and they dwelt " single-hearted" in the fountains of Enna's mountains. 
 
 3. Acroceraunian: An epithet applied by the poets to several mountains 
 of Greece. From Gr. atcpov, peak, and (cepaui-ios, thunder-smitten. 
 
ARETHUSA. 23 
 
 With his trident the mountains strook 
 
 And opened a chasm 
 
 In the rocks ; — with the spasm 
 All Erymanthus shook. 
 
 And the black south wind 25 
 
 It concealed behind 
 The urns of the silent snow, 
 
 And earthquake and thunder 
 
 Did rend in sunder 
 The bars of the springs below : 30 
 
 The beard and .the hair 
 
 Of the River-god were 
 Seen through the torrent's sweep, 
 
 As he followed the light 
 
 Of the fleet nymph's flight 35 
 
 To the brink of the Dorian deep. 
 
 " Oh, save me ! Oh, guide me! 
 
 And bid the deep hide me, 
 For he grasps me now by the hair !" 
 
 The loud Ocean heard, 40 
 
 To its blue depth stirred, 
 And divided at her prayer ; 
 
 And under the water 
 
 The Earth's white daughter 
 Fled like a sunny beam ; 45 
 
 Behind her descended 
 
 Her billows, unblended 
 With the brackish Dorian stream : — 
 
 Like a gloomy stain 
 
 On the emerald main 50 
 
 Alpheus rushed behind, — 
 
 As an eagle pursuing 
 
 A dove to its ruin 
 Down the streams of the cloudy wind. 
 
 24. Erymanthus: A mountain of Arcadia, famous as the place where 
 Hercules killed the wild boar. 
 
 36. Dorian deep: The Ionian sea. The Dorians originally occupied 
 southern and western Peloponnesus; hence Dorcuiis often used for Grecian. 
 
 5:2,53. Upon tbe awkward rhyme Fonnan says: "I cannot think that 
 Shelley would have permitted himself to indulge in so indefensible a solecism 
 
24 ARETHUSA. 
 
 Under the bowers 55 
 
 Where the Ocean Powers 
 Sit on their pearled thrones, 
 
 Through the coral woods 
 
 Of the weltering floods, 
 Over heaps of unvalued stones ; 60 
 
 Through the dim beams 
 
 Which amid the streams 
 Weave a network of colored light ; 
 
 And under the caves, 
 
 Where' the shadowy waves 65 
 
 Are as green as the forest's night : — 
 
 Outspeeding the shark, 
 
 And the sword-fish dark, 
 Under the ocean foam, 
 
 And up through the rifts 70 
 
 Of the mountain clifts 
 They past to their Dorian home. 
 
 And now from their fountains 
 
 In Enna's mountains, 
 Down one vale where the morning basks, 75 
 
 Like friends once parted 
 
 Grown siugle-hearted, 
 They ply their watery tasks. 
 
 At sunrise they leap 
 
 From their cradles steep 80 
 
 In the cave of the shelving hill ; 
 
 At noon-tide they flow 
 
 Through the woods below 
 And the meadows of Asphodel ; 
 
 had the words not formed a rhyme to him; and it seems likely that, being 
 of the aristocratic caste, the habit of dropping the final g was indelibly 
 acquired as a child ami youth, and never struck him as a bad habit to be 
 got over. If so, to him ruin and pursuing were a perfect rhymn." 
 
 60, Unvalued stones: Stones of inestimable value. Compare " Richard 
 III.," I. 26: 
 
 " Wedges of gold, great anchors, heaps of pearl, 
 Inestimable stones, unvalued jewels. 
 All scattered in the bottom of the sea. 1 ' 
 So in Milton's sonnet, " On Shakespeare, 1 ' "thy unvalued book." 
 
 84. Asphodel: A plant associated by the ancients wit h the dead. Its 
 pale blossoms covered the meadows of Hades, where the ghosts of the dead 
 were wont to roam in search of the waters of Lethe, or oblivion. Corrupted 
 in English into daffodil. 
 
TO WORDSWORTH. 25 
 
 And at night they sleep 85 
 
 In the rockiug deep 
 Beneath the Ortygian shore ; — 
 
 Like spirits that lie 
 
 In the azure sky 
 When they love but live no more. 90 
 
 A Song. 
 
 A widow bird sate mourning for her love 
 
 Upon a wintry bough ; 
 The frozen wind crept on above, 
 
 The freezing stream below. 
 
 There was no leaf upon the forest bare, 
 
 No flower upon the ground, 
 And little motion in the air 
 
 Except the mill-wheel's sound. 
 
 To Wordsworth. 
 
 Poet of Nature, thou hast wept to know 
 That things depart which never may return : 
 Childhood and youth, friendship and love's first glow, 
 Have fled like sweet dreams, leaving thee to mourn. 
 These common woes I feel. One loss is mine 5 
 
 Which thou too feel'st yet I alone deplore. 
 Thou wert as a lone star, whose light did shine 
 On some frail bark in winter's midnight roar : 
 
 1-5. The allusion in these lines is to Wordsworth's " Ode on the Intima- 
 tions of Immortality." , „, ,, 
 
 7. Compare Wordsworth's lines on Milton in the sonnet " London, 180-J: 
 ° Thy soul was like a star, and dwelt apart." 
 
26 ODE TO THE WEST WIND. 
 
 Thou* hast like to a rock-built refuge stood 
 
 Above the bliud and battling multitude : 10 
 
 In honored poverty thy voice did weave 
 
 Songs consecrate to truth and liberty, — 
 
 Deserting these, thou leavest me to grieve, 
 
 Thus having been, that thou shouldst cease to be. 
 
 Ode to the West Wind. 
 
 "This poem," says Shelley, " was conceived and chiefly written in a wood 
 that skirts the Arno, near Florence, and on a day when that tempestuous 
 wind, whose temperature is at once mild and animating, was collecting the 
 vapors which pour down the autumnal rains. They began, as I foresaw, 
 at sunset, with a violent tempest of hail and rain, attended by that magnifi- 
 cent thunder and lightning peculiar to the Cis-alpine regions. The phe- 
 nomenon alluded to at the conclusion of the third stanza is well known to 
 naturalists. The vegetation at the bottom of the sea, of rivers, and of lakes, 
 sympathizes with that of the land in the change of seasons, and is conse- 
 quently influenced by the winds that announce it." 
 
 This poem alone, says Stopford Brooke, "is enough to place Shelley apart 
 from the other lyric poets of England. There is no song in the whole of our 
 literature more passionate, more penetrative, more full of the force by 
 which the idea and its form are united into one creation." 
 
 O, wild West Wind, thou breath of Autumn's being, 
 Thou, from whose unseen presence the leaves dead 
 Are driven, like ghosts from an enchanter fleeing, 
 
 Yellow, and black, and pale, and hectic red, 
 Pestilence-stricken multitudes : O, thou, 5 
 
 Who chariotest to their dark wintry bed 
 
 The winged seeds, where they lie cold and low, 
 Each like a corpse within its grave, until 
 Thine azure sister of the spring shall blow 
 
 13-14. Wordsworth had abandoned the principles of the French Revolution, 
 which he at first embraced with enthusiasm, and had gone back into the 
 Tory fold. Shelley regarded him as a deserter from the cause of liberty. 
 See Browning's "Lost Leader," which expresses the same feeling toward 
 Wordsworth. 
 
ODE TO THE WEST WIND. 27 
 
 Her clarion o'er the dreaming earth, and rill 10 
 
 (Driving sweet buds like flocks to feed in air) 
 With living hues and odors plain and hill : 
 
 Wild Spirit, which art moving every where ; 
 Destroyer and preserver ; hear, O, hear ! 
 
 ii. 
 
 Thou on whose stream, 'mid the steep sky's commotion, 15 
 Loose clouds like earth's decaying leaves are shed, 
 Shook from the tangled boughs of Heaven and Ocean, 
 
 Angels of rain and lightning : there are spread 
 
 On the blue surface of thine airy surge, 
 
 Like the bright hair uplifted from the head 20 
 
 Of some fierce Maenad, even from the dim verge 
 
 Of the horizon to the zenith's height 
 
 The locks of the approaching storm. Thou dirge 
 
 Of the dying year, to which this closing night 
 
 Will be the dome of a vast sepulcher, 25 
 
 Vaulted with all thy congregated might 
 
 Of vapors, from whose solid atmosphere 
 
 Black rain, and fire, and hail will burst : O, hear ! 
 
 in. 
 
 Thou who didst waken from his summer dreams 
 
 The blue Mediterranean, where he lay, 30 
 
 Lulled by the coil of his crystalline streams, 
 
 Beside a pumice isle in Baioe's bay, 
 And saw in sleep old palaces and towers 
 Quivering within the wave's intenser day, 
 
 All overgrown with azure moss and flowers 35 
 
 So sweet, the sense faints picturing them ! Thou 
 For whose path the Atlantic's level powers 
 
 Cleave themselves into chasms, while far below 
 The sea-blooms and the oozy woods which wear 
 The sapless foliage of the ocean, know 40 
 
28 ODE TO THE WEST WIND. 
 
 Thy voice, and suddenly grow gray with fear, 
 And tremble and despoil themselves : O, hear ! 
 
 IV. 
 
 If I were a dead leaf thou mightest bear ; 
 
 If I were a swift cloud to fly with thee ; 
 
 A wave to pant beneath thy power, and share 45 
 
 The impulse of thy strength, only less free 
 Than thou, O, uncontrollable ! If even 
 I were as in my boyhood, and could be 
 
 The comrade of thy wanderings over heaven, 
 
 As then, when to outstrip thy skiey speed 50 
 
 Scarce seemed a vision ; I would ne'er have striven 
 
 As thus with thee in prayer in my sore need. 
 Oh ! lift me as a wave, a leaf, a cloud ! 
 I fall upon the thorns of life ! I bleed ! 
 
 A heavy weight of hours has chained and bowed 55 
 
 One too like thee : tameless, and swift, and proud. 
 
 v. 
 
 Make me thy lyre, even as the forest is : 
 What if my leaves are falling like its own ! 
 The tumult of thy mighty harmonies 
 
 Will take from both a deep, autumnal tone, 60 
 
 Sweet though in sadness. Be thou, spirit fierce, 
 My spirit ! Be thou me, impetuous one ! 
 
 Drive my dead thoughts over the universe 
 
 Like withered leaves to quicken a new birth ! 
 
 And, by the incantation of this verse, 65 
 
 Scatter, as from an unextinguished hearth 
 Ashes and sparks, my words among mankind ! 
 Be through my lips to unawakened earth 
 
 The trumpet of a prophecy ! O, wind, 
 
 If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind? 70 
 
THE QUESTION. 29 
 
 The Question. 
 
 1 dreamed that , as I wandered by the way, 
 Bare winter suddenly was changed to spring, 
 
 And gentle odors led my steps astray, 
 Mixed with a sound of waters murmuring 
 
 Along a shelving bank of turf, which lay 5 
 
 Under a copse, and hardly dared to fling 
 
 Its green arms round the bosom of the stream. 
 
 But kissed it and then fled, as thou mightest in dream. 
 
 There grew pied wind-flowers and Violets, 
 
 Daisies, those pearled Arcturi of the earth, 10 
 
 The constellated flower that never sets ; 
 
 Faint oxlips; tender bluebells, at whose birth 
 The sod scarce heaved; and that tall flower that wets — 
 
 Like a child, half in tenderness and mirth- 
 Its mother's face with heaven-collected tears, 15 
 When the low wind, its playmate's voice, it hears. 
 
 And in the warm hedge grew lush eglantine, 
 Green cow-bind and the moonlight-colored May, 
 
 And cherry blossoms, and white cups, whose wine 
 
 Was the bright dew, yet drained not by the day; 20 
 
 And wild roses, and ivy serpentine, 
 
 With its dark buds and leaves, wandering astray; 
 
 And flowers azure, black, and streaked with gold, 
 
 Fairer than any wakened eyes behold. 
 
 And nearer to the river's trembling edge 25 
 
 There grew broad flag-flowers, purple prankt with white, 
 
 And starry river buds among the sedge, 
 And floating water-lilies, broad and bright, 
 
 10. Arcturi: Plural of Arcturus, the name of a beautiful star of the first 
 magnitude in the constellation Bootes, behind the Great Bear, In another 
 poem the daisy is " the daisy-star that never sets." 
 
30 ADONAIS. 
 
 Which lit the oak that overhung the hedge 
 
 With moonlight beams of their own watery light ; 30 
 And bulrushes, and reeds of such deep green 
 As soothed the dazzled eye with sober sheen. 
 
 Methought that of these visionary flowers 
 
 I made a nosegay, bound in such a way 
 That the same hues, which in their natural bowers 35 
 
 Were mingled or opposed, the like array 
 Kept these imprisoned children of the Hours 
 
 Within my hand, — and then, elate and gay, 
 I hastened to the spot whence I had come, 
 That I might there present it !— oh ! to whom ? 40 
 
 Adonais. 
 
 AN ELEGY ON THE DEATH OF JOHN KEATS. 
 
 Keats died at Rome, in 1820, in his twenty-fourth year. Shelley, then living 
 at Pisa, was profoundly moved by sorrow and indignation, and immediately 
 wrote this noble elegy, believing his brother poefs death to have been caused 
 by the attacks of ruffianly reviewers. " The genius of the lamented person 
 to whose memory I have dedicated these unworthy verses," he says, "was 
 not less delicate and fragile than it was beautiful; and where canker-worms 
 abound, what wonder if its young flower was blighted in the bud? The sav- 
 age criticism on his ' Endymion,' which appeared in the Quarterly Review, 
 produced the most violent effect upon his susceptible mind." 
 
 " Adonais" is equalled in our language only by Milton's " Lycidas," to which 
 it is even superior in passionate eloquence. It should also be compared with 
 Tennyson's ''In Memoriam " and Arnold's "Thyrsis." Shelley's own opin- 
 ion of the poem has generally been shared by appreciative readers. " The 
 'Adonais.' in spite of its mysticism," he wrote to a friend, " is the least 
 imperfect of my compositions. It is a highly wrought piece of art, and 
 perhaps better, in point of composition, than anything I have written." In 
 alluding to the stanzas against the infamous Quarterly reviewer, he said: "I 
 have dipped my pen in consuming fire for his destroyers; otherwise the 
 style is calm and solemn." 
 
 I weep for Adonais — he is dead ! 
 
 O, weep for Adonais ! though our tears 
 
 1 Adonais: The poet fancies a resemblance between the death of Keats 
 and tbat of Ado'nis, the beautiful youth, of Greek mythology, who was 
 gored to death by a wild boar in a hunt; hence Adona'is, 
 
ADONAIS. 31 
 
 Thaw not the frost which hinds so dear a head ! 
 And thou, sad Hour, selected from all years 
 To mourn our loss, rouse thy obscure compeers, 5 
 
 And teach them thine own sorrow, say: with me 
 Died Adonais; till the Future dares 
 Forget the Past, his fate and fame shall be 
 An echo and a light unto eternity ! 
 
 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 enamored breath, 15 
 
 Rekindled all the fading melodies, 
 With which, like flowers that mock the corse beneath, 
 He had adorned and hid the coming bulk of death. 
 
 O, weep for Adonais— he is dead ! 
 
 Wake, melancholy Mother, wake and weep ! 20 
 
 Yet wherefore? Quench within their burning bed 
 Thy fiery tears, and let thy loud heart keep 
 Like his, a mute and uncomplaining sleep; 
 For he is gone, where all things wise and fair 
 Descend ;— oh, dream not that the amorous Deep 25 
 
 Will yet restore him to the vital air; 
 Death feeds on his mute voice, and laughs at our despair. 
 
 Most musical of mourners, weep again ! 
 Lament anew, Urania ! — He died, 
 
 Who was the Sire of an immortal strain, 30 
 
 Blind, old, and lonely, when his country's pride, 
 The priest, the slave, and the liberticide, 
 Trampled and mocked with many a loathed rite 
 Of lust and blood; he went, unterrified, 
 Into the gulf of death; but his clear Sprite 35 
 
 Yet reigns o'er earth; the third among the sons of light. 
 
 4. Sad Hour: The hour of the poet* s death, whose fellow hours are "ob- 
 scure " because they have witnessed no such great event for mourning. 
 
 12. Urania: The Muse of Astronomy. Shelley follows Milton in making 
 her the muse of loftiest poetry, the true " Heavenly " muse, with voice "di- 
 vine." See "Paradise Lost," bk. vii. 1-10. 
 
 29-33. The allusion is to Milton, and the reaction against the Puritan 
 
32 ADONAIS. 
 
 Most musical of mourners, weep anew ! 
 Not all to that bright station dared to climb; 
 And happier they their happiness who knew, 
 Whose tapers yet burn through that night of time 40 
 
 In which suns perished; others more sublime, 
 Struck by the envious wrath of man or God, 
 Have sunk, extinct in their refulgent prime; 
 And some yet live, treading the thorny road, 
 Which leads, through toil and hate, to Fame's serene abode. 
 
 But now, thy youngest, dearest one has perished, 46 
 
 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; 
 Most musical of mourners, weep anew ! 50 
 
 Thy extreme hope, the loveliest and the last, 
 The bloom, whose petals nipt before they blew 
 Died on the promise of the fruit, is waste; 
 The broken lily lies — the storm is overpast. 
 
 To that high Capital, where kingly Death 55 
 
 Keeps his pale court in beauty and decay, 
 He came; and bought, with price of purest breath, 
 A grave among the eternal. — Come away! 
 Haste, while the vault of blue Italian day 
 Is yet his fitting charnel-roof ! while still 60 
 
 He lies, as if in dew} r sleep he lay; 
 Awake him not ! surely he takes his fill 
 Of deep and liquid rest, forgetful of all ill. 
 
 He will awake no more, oh, never more! — 
 
 Within the twilight chamber spreads apace 05 
 
 The shadow of white Death, and at the door 
 
 Invisible Corruption waits to trace 
 
 struggle for liberty under Charles II. The other two " sons of light " are 
 probably Homer and Dante. 
 
 38^45. " Not all poets have essayed such lofty nights as Milton, i.e , at- 
 tempted epic poetry, but some have wisely taken a lower level, i.e., at- 
 tempted lyric poetry, and are still remembered as lyric poets, as for 
 instance Gray or Burns; others, attempting a middle flight, have been cut 
 off in the midst of their work, as Spenser; others yet live, of whom nothing 
 definite can yet be said, e.g., Shelley himself, and Byron. ''—Prof. Hales. 
 
 55. Sigh Capital: Rome, the "lone mother of dead empires." 
 
ADONAIS. 33 
 
 His extreme way to her dim dwelling-place; 
 The eternal Hunger sits, but pity and awe 
 Soothe her pale rage, nor dares she to deface 70 
 
 So fair a prey, till darkness, and the law 
 Of change, shall o'er his sleep the mortal curtain draw. 
 
 O, weep for Adonais! — The quick Dreams, 
 The passion-winged Ministers of thought, 
 Who were his flocks, whom near the living streams 75 
 
 Of his young spirit he fed, and whom he taught 
 The love which was its music, wander not, — 
 Wander no more, from kindling brain to brain, 
 But droop there, whence they sprung ; and mourn their lot 
 Round the cold heart, where, after their sweet pain, 80 
 
 The} r ne'er will gather strength, or find a home again. 
 
 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. 90 
 
 One from a lucid urn of starry dew 
 Washed his light limbs as if embalming them ; 
 Another dipt her profvse locks, and threw 
 The wreath upon him, like an anadem, 
 
 Which frozen tears instead of pearls begem ; 95 
 
 Another in her wilful grief would break 
 Her bow and winged reeds, as if to stem 
 A greater loss with one which was more weak ; 
 And dull the barbed fire against his frozen cheek. 
 
 Another Splendor on his mouth alit, 100 
 
 That mouth, whence it was wont to draw the breath 
 
 84. Compare " Lycidas," 1. 166 : " For Lycidas your sorrow is not dead." 
 99. As if she would dull the piercing fire of her heart-grief by contact with 
 his death-cold cheek. 
 
34 
 
 ADONAIS. 
 
 Which gave it strength to pierce the guarded wit, 
 And pass -into the panting heart beneath 
 With lightning and with music : the damp death 
 Quenched its caress upon his icy lips ; 105 
 
 And, as a dying meteor stains a wreath 
 Of moonlight vapor, which the cold night clips, 
 It flushed through his pale limbs, and past tolts eclipse. 
 
 And others came . . . Desires and Adorations, 
 Winged Persuasions and veiled Destinies, 110 
 
 Splendors, and Glooms, and glimmering Incarnations 
 Of hopes and fears, and twilight Phantasies ; 
 And Sorrow, with her family of Sighs, 
 And Pleasure, blind with tears, led by the gleam 
 Of her own dying smile instead of eyes, 115 
 
 Came in slow pomp ;— the moving pomp might seem 
 Like pageantry of mist on an autumnal stream. 
 
 All he had loved, and molded into thought, 
 From shape, and hue, and odor, and sweet sound, 
 Lamented Adonais. Morning sought 120 
 
 Her eastern watch-tower, and her hair unbound, 
 Wet with the tears which should adorn the ground, 
 Dimmed the atrial eyes that kindle day ; 
 Afar the melancholy thunder moaned, 
 
 Pale Ocean in unquiet slumber lay, 125 
 
 And the wild winds flew round, sobbing in their dismay. 
 
 Lost Echo sits amid the voiceless mountains, 
 And feeds her grief with his remembered lay, 
 And will no more reply to winds or fountains, 
 Or amorous birds perched on the young green spray, 130 
 
 Or herdsman's horn, or bell at closing day ; 
 Since she can mimic not his lips, more dear 
 Than those for whose disdain she pined away 
 Into a shadow of all sounds : — a drear 
 Murmur, between their songs, is all the woodmen hear. 135 
 
 107. Clips: Embraces, holds; from A. S clyppan, to embrace. 
 133. Eclio was a nymph in love with Narcissus; but her love not being 
 returned, she pined away till only her voice remained. 
 
ADONATS, 35 
 
 Grief made the young Spring wild, and she threw down 
 Her kindling buds, as if she Auturau were, 
 Or they dead leaves ; since her delight is flown 
 For whom should she have waked the sullen year ? 
 To Phoebus was not Hyacinth so dear 140 
 
 Nor to himself Narcissus, as to both 
 Thou Adonais : wan they stand and sere 
 Amid the faint companions of their youth, 
 With dew all turned to tears ; odor, to sighing ruth. 
 
 Thy spirit's sister, the lorn nightingale 145 
 
 Mourns not her mate with such melodious pain ; 
 Not so the eagle, who like thee could scale 
 Heaven, and could nourish in the sun's domain 
 Her mighty youth with morning, doth complain, 
 Soaring and screaming round her empty nest, 150 
 
 As Albion wails for thee : the curse of Cain 
 Light on his head who pierced thy innocent breast, 
 And scared the angel soul that was its earthly guest ! 
 
 Ah woe is me ! Winter is come and gone, 
 But grief returns with the revolving year ; 155 
 
 The airs and streams renew their joyous tone ; 
 The ants, the bees, the swallows reappear ; 
 Fresh leaves and flowers deck the dead Seasons' bier ; 
 The amorous birds now pair in every brake, 
 And build their mossy homes in field and brere ; 160 
 
 And the green lizard, and the golden snake, 
 Like unimprisoned flames, out of their trance awake. 
 
 Through wood and stream and field and hill and Ocean 
 A quickening life from the Earth's heart has burst 
 As it has ever done, with change and motion, 165 
 
 From the great morning of the world when first 
 
 140-144. Hyacinth was a youth beloved by Phoebus, and killed by the 
 jealous Zephyr. From his blood sprang the flower, which bears upou its 
 petals the, words ai, ai, alas! alas! Narcissus, having fallen in love with his 
 own reflection in a fountain, pined away and was at last changed to a 
 flower (see CI. Die). The fancy is that the other flowers of spring, with the 
 Hyacinth and the Narcissus, droop and fade with grief. 
 
 145. An allusion, perhaps, to Keats 1 " Ode to the Nightingale. 1 ' 
 
 160. Brere : Briar ; hence, as here, a thicket. 
 
36 ADONAIS. 
 
 God dawned on Chaos ; in its steam immersed 
 The lamps of Heaven flash with a softer light ; 
 All baser things pant with life's sacred thirst ; 
 Diffuse themselves ; and spend in love's delight, 170 
 
 The beauty and the joy of their renewed might. 
 
 The leprous corpse touched by this spirit tender 
 Exhales itself in flowers of gentle breath ; 
 Like incarnations of the stars, when splendor 
 Is changed to fragrance, they illumine death 175 
 
 And mock the merry worm that wakes beneath , 
 Nought we know, dies. Shall that alone which knows 
 Be as a sword consumed before the sheath 
 By sightless lightning ? — th' intense atom glows 
 A moment, then is quenched in a most cold repose. 180 
 
 Alas ! that all we loved of him should be, 
 But for our grief, as if it had not been, 
 And grief itself be mortal ! Woe is me ! 
 "Whence are we, and why are we? of what scene 
 The actors or spectators? Great and mean 185 
 
 Meet massed in death, who lends what life must borrow. 
 As long as skies are blue, and fields are green, 
 Evening must usher night, night urge the morrow, 
 Month follow month with woe, and year wake year to 
 sorrow. 
 
 He will awake ho more, oh, never more ! 190 
 
 "Wake thou," cried Misery, "childless Mother, rise 
 Out of thy sleep, and slake, in thy heart's core, 
 A wound more fierce than his with tears and sighs." 
 And all the Dreams that watched Urania's eyes, 
 And all the Echoes whom their sister's song 195 
 
 Had held in holy silence, cried : " Arise !" 
 Swift as a Thought by the snake Memory stung, 
 From her ambrosial rest the fading Splendor sprung. 
 
 177. Knows : That alone which possesses the power of knowing. 
 
 179. Sightless lightning : Invisible lightning. 
 
 191-193. Wake thou, Urania, and allay with tears and sighs the wound at 
 thy heart, more fierce than that which killed Adnnais. 
 
 195. Sister's song : The Echo who "rekindled" the poet's melodies in 
 Urania's Paradise (.1. 15). 
 
ADONAIS. 37 
 
 She rose like an autumnal Night, that springs 
 Out of the East, and follows wild and drear 200 
 
 The golden Day, which, on eternal wings, 
 Even as a ghost abandoning a bier, 
 Had left the Earth a corpse. Sorrow and fear 
 So struck, so roused, so rapt Urania ; 
 
 So saddened round her like an atmosphere 205 
 
 Of stormy mist ; so swept her on her way 
 Even to the mournful place where Adonais lay. 
 
 Out of her secret Paradise she sped, 
 Through camps and cities rough with stone, and steel, 
 And human hearts, which to her^aery tread 210 
 
 Yielding not, wounded the invisible 
 Palms of her tender feet where er they fell : 
 And barbed tongues, and thoughts more sharp than they 
 Rent the soft Form they never could repel, 
 Whose sacred blood, like the young tears of May, 215 
 
 Paved with eternal flowers that undeserving way. 
 
 In the death chamber for a moment Death 
 Shamed by the presence of that living Might 
 Blushed to annihilation, and the breath 
 
 Revisited those lips, and life's pale light 220 
 
 Flashed through those limbs, so late her dear delight. 
 "Leave me not wild and drear and comfortless, 
 As silent lightning leaves the starless night ! 
 Leave me not !" cried Urania : her distress 
 Roused Death : Death rose and smiled, and met her vain caress. 
 
 •' Stay yet awhile ! speak to me once again ; 226 
 
 Kiss me, so long but as a kiss may live ; 
 And in my heartless breast and burning brain 
 That word, that kiss shall all thoughts else survive, 
 With food of saddest memory kept alive, 230 
 
 Now thou art dead, as if it were a £art 
 Of thee, my Adonais ! I would give 
 All that I am to be as thou now art ! 
 But I am chained to Time, and cannot thence depart I 
 
38 ADONAIS. 
 
 " Oh gentle child, beautiful as thou wert, 235 
 
 Why didst thou leave the trodden paths of men 
 Too soon, and with weak hands though mighty heart 
 Dare the unpastured dragon in his den ? 
 Defenceless as thou wert, oh where was then 
 Wisdom the mirrored shield, or scorn the spear? 240 
 
 Or hadst thou waited the full cycle, when 
 Thy spirit should have filled its crescent sphere, 
 The monsters of life's waste had fled from thee like deer. 
 
 " The herded wolves, bold only to pursue ; 
 The obscene ravens, clamorous o'er the dead ; 245 
 
 The vultures to the conqueror's banner true 
 Who feed where Desolation first has fed, 
 And whose wings rain contagion ; — how they fled, 
 When like Apollo, from his golden bow, 
 The Pythian of the age one arrow sped 250 
 
 And smiled ! — The spoilers tempt no second blow, 
 They fawn on the proud feet that spurn them lying low. 
 
 " The sun comes forth, and many reptiles spawn ; 
 He sets, and each ephemeral insect then 
 Is gathered into death without a dawn, 255 
 
 And the immortal stars awake again ; 
 So is it in the world of living men : 
 A godlike mind soars forth, in its delight 
 Making earth bare and veiling heaven, and when 
 It sinks, the swarms that dimmed or shared its light 260 
 
 Leave to its kindred lamps the spirit's awful night." 
 
 Thus ceased she : and the mountain shepherds came, 
 Their garlands sere, their magic mantles rent ; 
 
 238. Unpastured dragon : The unfed dragon, i.e., the savage critic, the 
 "monster of life's waste.'" 
 
 240. Mirrored shield : The shield of wisdom is a mirror in which folty 
 sees its own face. 
 
 245. Obscene : Latin obscenus, of evil omen ; hence repulsive, abominable. 
 
 249-250. Apollo slew the dragon Pj-thon at, Delphi (see CI. Die). The 
 "Pythian of the age" was Byron, who sped hi.; arrow at the whole brood of 
 ravenous critics in his " English Bards and Scotch Reviewers." 
 
 259. "Lighting up the earth so brightly that it is not possible to see the 
 stars." 
 
 263. Prospero, in the "Tempest, 1 '' wears a "magic mantle." Milton, in 
 
ADONAIS. 39 
 
 The Pilgrim of Eternity, whose fame 
 
 Over bis living bead like Heaven is bent, 265 
 
 An early but enduring monument, 
 Came, veiling all tbe ligbtuings of bis song 
 In sorrow ; from her wilds Ierne sent 
 Tbe sweetest lyrist of her saddest wrong, 
 And love taught grief to fall like music from his tongue. 270 
 
 Midst others of less note, came one frail Form, 
 • A phantom among men ; companionless 
 
 As tbe last cloud of an expiring storm 
 
 Whose thunder is its knell ; he, as I guess, 
 
 Had gazed on Nature's naked loveliness, 275 
 
 Actseon-like, and now he fled astray 
 
 With feeble steps o'er the world's wilderness, 
 
 And his own thoughts, along that rugged way, 
 Pursued, like raging hounds, their father and their prey. 
 
 A pardlike Spirit beautiful and swift— 280 
 
 A Love in desolation masked ; — a Power 
 
 Girt round with weakness ;— it can scarce uplift 
 
 The weight of the superincumbent hour ; 
 
 his essay on " Church Government," speaks of the "poet, soaring: on the 
 high reason of his fancies, with his garland and singing: robes about him. 1 ' 
 
 264. Pilgrim of Eternity: Byron, who was the Pilgrim of his"Childe 
 Harold's Pilgrimage." 
 
 267. Shelley misjudged Byron's nature; he felt no such generous sorrow 
 as here attributed to him, and wrote a flippant and unfeeling stanza upon 
 the event in " Don Juan" (xi. 60), which ends with the much quoted lines : 
 
 " Poor fellow! his was an untoward fate! 
 "lis strange the mind, that fiery particle. 
 Should let itself be snuffed out by an article." 
 
 268. Ierne : Ireland, called by the ancients Iverna, Juverna, and Hi 
 hernia. 
 
 269. Sweetest lyrist : Thomas Moore, who sang of Ireland's wrongs in 
 his " Irish Melodies." " Her saddest wrong" may refer to the insurrection of 
 1803 and the fate of Robert Emmet. See the song-s, " Oh. breathe not his 
 name," " When he who adores thee," and "She is far from the land." 
 
 271. Says Stopford Brooke: "'There is nothing in English poetry so steeped 
 in passionate personality as the description of himself in stanzas xxxi-iv. 
 It is almost too close, too unveiled, too intense to have been written. The 
 only other poet^for Byron's self-description is written with a view to effect— 
 who has approached the wild self-sorrow of it, is Cowper, and he uses the 
 same simile of the stricken stag." 
 
 276 Actseon-like : Actseon, the famous hunter, having come upon Diana 
 and her nymphs oathing, one day while hunting, was changed into a stag 
 and torn in pieces by his fifty hounds on Mount Cithseron. 
 
40 ADONA1S. 
 
 It is a dying lump, a falling shower, 
 
 A breaking billow ;— even whilst we speak 285 
 
 Is it not broken ? On the withering flower 
 The killing sun smiles brightly : on a cheek 
 The life can burn in blood, even while the heart may break. 
 
 His head was bound with pausies overblown, 
 And faded violets, white, and pied, and blue ; 290 
 
 And a light spear topped with a cypress cone, 
 Round whose rude shaft dark ivy tresses grew 
 Yet dripping with the forest's noonday dew, 
 Vibrated, as the ever-beating heart 
 
 Shook the weak hand that grasped it ; of that crew 295 
 
 He came the last, neglected and apart ; 
 A herd- abandoned deer struck by the hunter's dart. 
 
 All stood aloof, and at his partial moan 
 Smiled through their tears ; well knew that gentle band 
 Who in another's fate now wept his own ; 300 
 
 As in the accents of an unknown land, 
 He sung new sorrow ; sad Urania scanned 
 The Stranger's mien, and murmured : " Who art thou ?" 
 He answered not, but with a sudden hand 
 Made bare his branded and ensanguined brow, 305 
 
 Which was like Cain's or Christ's— Oh ! that it should be so ! — 
 
 What softer voice is hushed over the dead ? 
 Athwart what brow is that dark mantle thrown ? 
 What form leans sadly o'er the white death-bed, 
 In mockery of monumental stone, 310 
 
 The heavy heart heaving without a moan? 
 If it be He, who, gentlest of the wise, 
 Taught, soothed, loved, honored the departed one ; 
 Let me not vex, with inharmonious sighs 
 The silence of that heart's accepted sacrifice. 315 
 
 306. His enemies thought him to lie like Cain; his few real friends knew 
 him to he more like a martyr. 
 
 312. The "gentlest'of the wise" is Leigh Hunt, one of Keats' earliest and 
 most faithful friends. 
 
ADONAIS. 41 
 
 Our Adonais has drunk poison — oh ! 
 What deaf and viperous murderer could crown 
 Life's early cup with such a draught of woe ? 
 The nameless worm would now itself disown : 
 It felt, yet could escape the magic tone 320 
 
 Whose prelude held all envy, hate, and wrong, 
 But what was howling in one breast aloue, 
 Silent with expectation of the song, 
 Whose master's hand is cold, whose silver lyre unstrung. 
 
 Live thou, whose infamy is not thy fame ! 325 
 
 Live ! fear no heavier chastisement from me, 
 Thou noteless blot on a remembered name ! 
 But be thyself, and know thyself to be ! 
 And ever at thy season be thou free 
 
 To spill the venom when thy fangs o'erflow : 330 
 
 Remorse and Self-contempt shall cling to thee ; 
 Hot Shame shall burn upon thy secret brow, 
 And like a beaten hound tremble thou shalt — as now. 
 
 Nor let us weep that our delight is fled 
 Far from these carrion kites that scream below ; 335 
 
 He wakes or sleeps with the enduring dead ; 
 Thou canst not soar where he is sitting now. — 
 Dust to the dust ! but the pure spirit shall flow 
 Back to the burning fountain whence it came, 
 A portion of the Eternal, which must glow 340 
 
 Through time and change, uuquenchably the same, 
 Whilst thy cold embers choke the sordid hearth of shame. 
 
 Peace, peace ! he is not dead, he doth not sleep — 
 
 He hath awakened from the dream of life — 
 
 'Tis we, who lost in stormy visions, keep 345 
 
 With phantoms an unprofitable strife, 
 
 317. In his preface Shelley thus characterizes the Quarterly reviewer: 
 "Miserable man! you, one of the meanest, have wantonly defaced one of 
 the noblest specimens of the workmanship of God. Nor shall it be your ex- 
 cuse, that murderer as you are, you have spoken daggers but used none." 
 
 328. The heaviest curse that can rest upon him is to continue to be the 
 "viperous" thing that he is, and be conscious of it. 
 
 335. Carrion-kites: In prose Shelley says of the reviewers of the period: 
 "They scatter their insults and their slanders without heed as to whether 
 the poisoned shaft lights on a heart made callous by many blows, or one, like 
 Keats', composed of more penetrable stuff." 
 
42 ADONA1S. 
 
 And iu mad trance, strike with our spirit's knife 
 Invulnerable nothings. — We decay 
 Like corpses in a charnel ; fear and grief 
 Convulse us and consume us day by day, 350 
 
 And cold hopes swarm like worms within our living clay. 
 
 He has outsoared the shadow of our night ; 
 Envy and calumny and hate and pain, 
 And that unrest which men miscall delight, 
 Can touch him not and torture not again ; , 355 
 
 From the contagion of the world's slow stain 
 He is secure, and now can never mourn 
 A heart grown cold, a head grown gray in vain ; 
 Nor, when the spirit's self has ceased to burn, 
 With sparkless ashes load an unl amen ted urn. 360 
 
 He lives, he wakes — 'tis Death is dead, not he ; 
 Mourn not for Adonais. — Thou young Dawn 
 Turn all thy dew to splendor, for from thee 
 The spirit thou lamentest is not gone ; 
 Ye caverns and ye forests, cease to moan ! 365 
 
 Cease ye faint flowers and fountains, and thou Air 
 Which like a mourning veil thy scarf hadst thrown 
 O'er the abandoned Earth, now leave it bare 
 Even to the joyous stars which smile on its despair ! 
 
 He is made one with Nature : there is heard 370 
 
 His voice in all her music, from the moan 
 
 Of thunder, to the song of night's sweet bird ; 
 
 He is a presence to be felt and known 
 
 In darkness and in light, from herb and stone, 
 
 Spreading itself where'er that Power may move 375 
 
 Which has withdrawn his being to its own : 
 
 Which wields the world with never wearied love, 
 
 Sustains it from beneath, and kindles it above. 
 
 He is a portion of the loveliness 
 
 Which once he made more lovely : he doth bear 380 
 
 His part, while the one Spirit's plastic stress 
 
 Sweeps through the dull dense world, compelling there, 
 
ADONAIS. 43 
 
 All new successions to the forms they wear ; 
 Torturing th' unwilling dross that checks its flight 
 To its own likeness, as each mass may bear ; 385 
 
 And bursting in its beauty and its might 
 From trees and beasts and men into the Heaven's light. 
 
 The splendors of the firmament of time 
 May be eclipsed, but are extinguished not ; 
 Like stars to their appointed height they climb 390 
 
 And death is a low mist which cannot blot 
 The brightness it may veil. When lofty thought 
 Lifts a young heart above its mortal lair, 
 And love and life contend in it, for what 
 Shall be its earthly doom, the dead live there 395 
 
 And move like winds of light on dark and stormy air. 
 
 The inheritors of unfulfilled renown 
 Rose from their thrones, built beyond mortal thought, 
 Far in the Unapparent. Chatterton 
 
 Rose pale, his solemn agony had not 400 
 
 Yet faded from him ; Sidney, as he fought 
 And as he fell and as he lived and loved 
 Sublimely mild, a Spirit without spot, 
 Arose ; and Lucaju-by his death approved : 
 Oblivion as they rose shrank like a thing reproved. 405 
 
 And many more, whose names on Earth are dark, 
 But whose transmitted effluence cannot die 
 So long as fire outlives the parent spark, 
 Rose, robed in dazzling immortality. 
 
 "Thou art become as one of us," they cry, 410 
 
 " It was for thee yon kingless sphere has long 
 Swung blind in uuascended majesty, 
 Silent alone amid an Heaven of Song. 
 Assume thy winged throne, thou Vesper of our throng V 
 
 399. Chatterton : Thomas Chatterton. the poet, whom Wordsworth called 
 "the marvelous boy," and to whose memory Keats dedicated his " Endy- 
 mion.' 1 He was not eighteen when he committed suicide. 
 
 401. Sidney: Sir Philip Sidney, poet and " warbler of poetic prose," as 
 Cowper called him. His friend Spenser described him as " That most, heroic 
 spirit, the heaven's pride, and glory of our day." He died at thirty-two, 
 from a wound received while aiding the Dutch in their war for independence. 
 
 404. Lucau : A Roman poet, whose " Pharsalia" was left unfinished. He 
 
44 ADONAIS. 
 
 Who mourns for Adouais ? oh come forth 415 
 
 Fond wretch ! and know thyself and him aright. 
 Clasp with thy panting soul the pendulous Earth; 
 As from a center, dart thy spirit's light 
 Beyond all worlds, until its spacious might 
 Satiate the void circumference: then shrink 420 
 
 Even to a point within our day and night ; 
 And keep thy heart light lest it make thee sink 
 When hope has kindled hope, and lured thee to the brink. 
 
 Or go to Rome, which is the sepulcher 
 O, not of him, but of our joy : 'tis naught 425 
 
 That ages, empires, and religions there 
 Lie buried in the ravage they have wrought; 
 For such as he can lend, — they borrow not 
 Glory from those who made the world their prey; 
 And he is gathered to the kings of thought 430 
 
 Who waged contention with their time's decay, 
 And of the past are all that cannot pass away. 
 
 Go thou to Rome, — at once the Paradise, 
 The grave, the city, and the wilduerness ; 
 And where its wrecks like shattered mountains rise, 435 
 And flowering weeds, and fragrant copses dress 
 The bones of Desolation's nakedness 
 Pass, till the Spirit of the spot shall lead 
 Thy footsteps to a slope of green access 
 Where, like an infant's smile, over the dead, 440 
 
 A light of laughing flowers along the grass is spread. 
 
 engaged in a conspiracy against Nero, and on being condemned bled himself 
 to death. 
 
 417-420. "This seems to mean: Traverse the universe infancy: see how 
 vast it is, what a mere atom of it is this world of ours."— Prof. Hales. 
 
 424. Compare with these stanzas Byron's description of Rome— " lone 
 mother of dead empires," " the Niobe of nations," in " Childe Harold," bk. 
 IV. 
 
 439. Keats " was buried in the romantic and lonely cemetery of the Protes- 
 tants in that city, under the pyramid which is the tomb of Cestius. and the 
 massy walls and towers, now moldering and desolate, which formed the 
 circuit of ancient Rome. The cemetery is an open space among the ruins, 
 covered in winter with violets and daisies. It might make one in love with 
 death to think that one should be buried in so sweet a place."— Shelley's 
 Preface. 
 
ADONAIS. 
 
 45 
 
 And gray walls molder round, on which dull Time 
 Feeds, like slow fire upon a hoary brand ; 
 And one keen pyramid with wedge sublime, 
 Pavilioning the dust' of him who planned 445 
 
 This refuge for his memory, doth stand 
 Like flame transformed to marble ; and beneath, 
 A field is spread, on which a newer band 
 Have pitched in Heaven's smile their camp of death 
 Welcoming him we lose with scarce extinguished breath. 450 
 
 Here pause : these graves are all too young as yet 
 To have outgrown the sorrow which consigned 
 Its charge to each; and if the seal is set, 
 Here, on one fountain cf a mourning mind. 
 Break it not thou ! too surely shall thou find 455 
 
 Thine own well full if thou returnest home, 
 Of tears and gall. From the world's bitter wind 
 Seek shelter in the shadow of the tomb. 
 What Adonais is, why fear we to become? 
 
 The One remains, the many change and pass ; 460 
 
 Heaven's light forever shines, Earth's shadows fly ; 
 Life, like a dome of many-colored glass, 
 Stains the white radiance of Eternity, 
 Until Death tramples it to fragments.— Die, 
 If thou wouldst be with that which thou dost seek ! 465 
 Follow where all is fled !— Rome's azure sky, 
 Flowers, ruins, statues, music, words, are weak 
 The glory they transfuse with fitting truth to speak. 
 
 Why linger, why turn back, why shrink, my Heart ? 
 
 Thy hopes are gone before : from all things here 470 
 
 They have departed ; thou shouldst now depart I 
 
 A light is past from the revolving year, 
 
 And man, and woman ; and what still is dear — 
 
 
 449. The cemetery had only recently been made. 
 
 462. Like a colored dome through which the true beauty of the skies be- 
 yond cannot be seen, 
 
 463-465. " Nothing material can adequately express eternal beauty. 
 
 473. "There is terrible peril in mutual love, for the loved one maybe 
 lost; also in love which wins no response there is dire distress and pain. 1 '— 
 Prof. Hales. 
 
46 ADONAIS. 
 
 Attracts to crush, repels to make thee wither. 
 The soft sky smiles, — the low wind whispers near ; 475 
 ' Tis Adonais calls ! oh, hasten thither, 
 No more let Life divide what Death can join together. 
 
 That Light whose smile kindles the Universe, 
 That Beauty in which all things work and move, 
 That Benediction which the eclipsing Curse 480 
 
 Of birth can quench not, that sustaining Love 
 Which through the web of being blindly wove 
 By man and beast and earth and air and sea, 
 Burns bright or dim, as each are mirrors of 
 The fire for which all thirst ; now beams on me, 485 
 
 Consuming the last clouds of cold mortality. 
 
 The breath whose might I have invoked in song 
 Descends on me ; my spirit's bark is driven, 
 Far from the shore, far from the trembling throng 
 Whose sails were never to the tempest given ; 490 
 
 The massy earth and sphered skies are riven ! 
 I am borne darkly, fearfully, afar; 
 Whilst burning through the inmost veil of Heaven, 
 The soul of Adonais, like a star, 
 Beacons from the abode where the Eternal are. 495 
 
 485. The fire for which all thirst : The celestial fire, light of eternity. 
 495. A few months later, Shelley obeyed the summons. 
 
ENGLISH CLASSIC SERIES, 
 
 FOB 
 
 Classes in English Literature, Reading, Grammar, etc. 
 
 EDITED BY EMINENT ENGLISH ANO AMERICAN SCHOLARS. 
 
 Each Volume contains a Sketch of the Author's Life, Prefatory and 
 Explanatory _ >v >*es, etc., etc. 
 
 1 Byron's Prophecy of Dante. 
 
 (Cantos I. and II.) 
 
 2 Milton's L.' Allegro, and II Pen- 
 
 seroso. 
 
 3 Liord Bacon's Essays, Civil and 
 
 Moral. (Selected.; 
 
 4 Byron's Prisoner of Chillon. 
 
 5 Moore's Fire Worshippers. 
 
 (Lalla Rookh. Selected.) 
 
 6 Goldsmith's Deserted Tillage. 
 
 7 Scott's Marmion. (Selections 
 
 from Canto VI.) 
 
 8 Scott's Lay of the Last Minstrel. 
 
 (Introduction and Canto I.) 
 
 9 Burns'sCotter's Saturday Night, 
 
 and other Poems. 
 
 10 Crabhe's The Village. 
 
 11 Campbell's Pleasures of Hope. 
 
 (Abridgment of Part I.) 
 
 12 Macaulay's Essay on Bunyan's 
 
 Pilgrim's Progress. 
 
 13 Macaulay's Armada, and other 
 
 Poems. 
 
 14 Shakespeare's Merchant of Ve- 
 
 nice. (Selections from Acts I., 
 III., and IV.) 
 
 15 Goldsmith's Traveller. 
 
 16 Hogg's Queen's. Wake,' and Kil- 
 
 meny. 
 
 17 Coleridge's Ancient Mariner. 
 
 18 Addison's Sir Roger de Cover- 
 
 ley. 
 
 19 Gray's Elegy in a Country 
 
 Churchyard. 
 
 20 Scott's Lady of the Lake. (Canto 
 
 21 Shakespeare's As Ton Like It, 
 
 etc. (Selections.) 
 
 22 Shakespeare's King John, and 
 
 Richard II. (Selections.) 
 
 23 Shakespeare's Henry IV M Hen- 
 «. ™ ry , V *' Henr 7 VI. (Selections.) 
 
 24 Shakespeare's Henry VIII., and 
 
 Julius Caesar. (Selections.) 
 
 25 Wordsworth's Excursion. (Bk.I.) 
 
 26 Pope's Essay on Criticism. 
 
 2 7 Spenser's Faerie Queene. (Cantos 
 I. and II.) 
 
 28 Cowper's Task. (Book I.) 
 
 29 Milton's Comus. 
 
 30 Tennyson's Enoch Arden, The 
 
 Lotus Eaters, Ulysses, and 
 Tithonut. 
 
 31 Irving»s Sketch Book. (Selec- 
 
 tions.) 
 
 32 Dickens's Christmas Carol. 
 
 (Condensed.) 
 
 33 Carlyle's Hero as a Prophet. 
 
 34 Macaulay's Warren Hastings. 
 
 (Condensed.) 
 
 35 Goldsmith's Vicar of Wake- 
 
 field. (Condensed.) 
 
 36 Tennyson's The Two Voices, 
 
 and a Dream of Fair Women. 
 3 7 Memory Quotations. 
 
 38 Cavalier Poets. 
 
 39 Dryden's Alexander's Feast, 
 
 and MacFlecknoe. 
 
 40 Keats' The Eve of St. Agnes. 
 
 41 living's Legend of Sleepy Hol- 
 
 low. 
 
 42 Lamb's Tales from Shake- 
 
 speare. 
 
 43 Le Row's How to Teach Read- 
 
 ing. 
 
 44 Webster's Bunker Hill Ora- 
 
 tions. 
 
 45 The Academy Orthoepist. A 
 
 Manual of Pronunciation. 
 
 46 Milton's Lycidas, and Hymn 
 
 on the Nativity. 
 
 47 Bryant's Thanatopsis, and other 
 
 Poems. 
 
 48 Ruskin's Modern Painters. 
 
 (Selections.) 
 
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