LYRICS. Two essential elements in Shelley's poetry are its remoteness from the world of fact and its lyrical quality. Even in most of his longer poems it is the atmosphere peculiar to his filmy and prismatic world, and the spring of the lyrical movement, which especially attract us. That atmosphere, that lyrical movement, impetuous and rapid, gliding or fluent, is at least equally present in his shorter lyrics. And, in addition, we have in these shorter poems a proportion and a perfection, a power which comes from concentration, to which a longer work can hardly attain. Shelley is consequently represented far more adequately by his short lyrical pieces than are those poets who, beside their lyrical gifts, have a dramatic or narrative power which Shelley did not, to any degree, possess. In such wonderful creations as the Ode to the West Wind, Night, The Skylark, and The Cloud, we feel the throb of those emotions which were a part of the poet and an animating principle in his more extended work. A fellowship with the free, elemental forces of nature, and a half-primitive feeling for them as personal living things; a restless desire for the impossible"the desire of the moth for the star"; a recurrent tone of personal sadness and despondency, as of one hurt on the thorns of life; a note of hopefulness for the future of the world, and a desire to share in bringing in that happier future for which he longs, these moods and emotions we have no difficulty in recognizing as controlling elements in Shelley's lyrical work. ADONAIS. 416. Adonais, a poem which challenges comparison with the greatest elegies of the world, was written in 1821-probably in the latter part of May. It is a lament for John Keats, who had died at Rome on the twenty-third of the preceding February. Shelley had a sincere and increasing, although not an unreserved, admiration for Keats's genius; and while he was not blind to the youthful shortcomings of Endymion, he regarded Hyperion as “second to nothing that was ever produced by a writer of the same years." (Shelley's Preface to Adonais.) A born champion of those whom he considered victims of cruelty or persecution, Shelley was profoundly moved by the opinion (since discredited, but then generally entertained) that Keats' untimely death was the result of a brutal criticism of Endymion which had appeared in the Quarterly Review. Regret that a poet "capable of the greatest things" should have been thus earlyhooted from the stage of life," and a passionate indignation against those who had (as he thought) perpetrated such a wrong,-these two feelings, rather than any keen sense of a personal loss, are the motive impulses back of the poem. In fact while the feeling between the two poets was kindly, especially on Shelley's side, they were hardly more than acquaintances, and the bond between them was not personal affection, but a common devotion to their art. Accordingly in Adonais, even more than in Lycidas, the note of individual grief is conspicuously absent. The mourners for Adonais are insubstantial personifications, Poetry, Dreams, Persuasions, Splendors, Glooms, and Glimmering Incarnations, and the cry of human suffering seems far off. The very occasion of their grief, the dead poet himself, remains almost as vague and impersonal as the majestic but shadowy abstractions which surround him. To say this is not to disparage the poem, but to suggest its indescribably elusive and phantasmal beauty; it is simply to indicate that the lament is for Keats the poet, not for Keats the man, and that its true theme is the loss that Poetry, not Shelley himself, has sustained. From this the poem rises toward the close into the lofty and difficult region of philosophical speculation on life, death, and the hereafter. In spite of Shelley's own fear that the poem was "too metaphysical," some of the noblest stanzas occur in this latter and more purely speculative part. Shelley's general idea appears to be that there is back of the world of man and nature an Anima Mundi, the single Absolute Energy, the sustaining Power, the source of all beauty, goodness, and love. This Power reveals itself through life and nature, so far as the obscurity and imperfection of the media will permit. Man in this earthly life is really dead; being partially separated from this Power, when he dies (at least if he have an affiliation with the Divine) that Power which produced him "withdraws his being" into its own. (Cf. Asia in Shelley's Prometheus Unbound, the Lady of the Garden in The Sensitive Plant, etc.) Adonais is classical in form and is obviously modelled on two Greek elegies, that of Bion on Adonis, and of Moschus on Bion; it also suggests comparison with Lycidas. It should be read in conjunction with these poems. (See Lang's Theocritus, Bion, and Moschus, rendered into English Prose.) Adonais was first published at Pisa in small quarto in June, 1821; it has been reprinted in fac-simile by the Shelley Society. The reasons which led Shelley to choose this name Adonais have not been satisfactorily explained. The name is apparently not Greek, but its close resemblance to Adonis, the youth beloved by Aphrodite and slain by the boar, cannot fail to impress us. It has not escaped the critics that the untimely death of Adonis is the subject of that elegy of Bion's on which Shelley's is modelled, and Rossetti suggests that Shelley wished in this way to indirectly suggest his in debtedness to his Greek master. Dr. Furnivall suggests that Adonais is" Shelley's variant of Adonias, the women's yearly mourning for Adonis." The fact that this festival symbolized the dying and reviving of nature (see stanza xviii, etc., and cf. Theocritus, Idyll XV) gives a faint probability to this conjecture. Perhaps Shelley may have had Keats' association with the nightingale in mind (see stanza XVII and Keats' Ode to a Nightingale) and given to the dead singer of the bird "not born for death" a náme suggested by the Greek ἀηδόνιος of a nightingale. The necessities of the verse may account for the modification. 1. I weep for Adonais, etc. Cf. opening of Bion's Elegy for Adonis.-5. Obscure compeers. The other hours are obscure because no one of them stands out from the rest as distinguished by the death of Adonais.-12. Urania, literally the heavenly one (ovpavia), was the muse of Astronomy, but this seems to be no sufficient reason for Shelley's making her the mighty mother" of the dead poet. Hales reminds us that Milton, using the word in its literal sense, makes Urania the goddess of the loftiest poetry," and bids her "descend from Heaven." (See Par. Lost, VII. 11. 1-15, and also Tennyson's In Mem. XXXVII.) Rossetti thinks that Aphrodite Urania, and not the Muse, is intended. He says: "She is the daughter of Heaven (Uranus) and Light; her influence is heavenly; she is heavenly or spiritual love, as distinct from earthly or carnal love... What Aphrodite Cypris does in the Adonis [of Bion], that Urania does in the Adonais." In either case we may conclude that by Urania Shelley meant that higher or heavenly Power back of the world, and the parent of all that is most elevated and beautiful. (Cf. stanzas XLIII and LIV, and the Lady of the Garden in The Sensitive Plant.)—18. Bulk of death. The impression produced by "bulk" here can be felt better than closely analyzed. Bulk here carries with it the idea of weight, as an inert, lifeless mass. 417.-35. Sprite spirit. 36. The third, etc. Rossetti thinks that Shelley was thinking here of epic poets only, and that the two other poets besides Milton here placed among the "sons of Light" are Homer and Dante. He quotes a passage from Shelley's Defence of Poetry in which Homer is spoken of as the first, Dante as the second, and Milton as the third epic poet of the world.-39. Happier they, etc. This passage, usually spoken of as " obscure," may possibly be thus explained: The minor poets celebrated perhaps for some slight lyrics, although they aspired less high than the great epic masters just alluded to, are in one respect more fortunate, Lofty aspirations often lead to failure and unhappiness, so far as this world goes: the happiness of Milton and Dante was in a posthumous fame which they could not "know" except by anticipation, while a lesser poet, more in accord with the world, could “know” the happiness of life directly. Moreover, not all those who aspire highly win even posthumous houor: they may give up this world and get nothing. Still a third class are those who are now treading the thorny road" which leads to fame.-47. Nursling of thy widowhood. Rossetti takes this to mean that Keats "was born out of timeborn in an unpoetical and unappreciative age." Is it not rather intended to suggest the intense devotion of Urania, who mourned for him as a mother for the child who was "the nursling of her widowhood"? 418.-55. That high Capital. Rome, where Keats died in 1821. He was buried in the Protestant cemetery there, thus having literally in that Eternal City "a grave among the eternal."-69. The eternal Hunger. Probably "Invisible Corruption," just pictured as "at the door" waiting "to trace (i.e., point out, indicate) his (Keats') extreme (or last) journey to the tomb, which is her dim dwelling. By the eternal Hunger" Shelley doubtless means more than the forces which bring the body to decay; he probably means the mysterious and everlasting Antagonist of the durability of things.—75. Who were his docks. While Shelley has followed accepted models in making his elegy pastoral in character, the pastoral element is barely suggested. As in stanza xxx the poets who assemble to mourn for Keats are spoken of as "mountain shepherds," so here Keats is represented as the Shepherd of his flock of thoughts. "He being dead," says Rossetti, “they cannot assume new forms of beauty in any future poems, and cannot be thus diffused from mind to mind, but they remain mourning round their deceased herdsman, or master." = 420.-107. Clips encircles, or encompasses. (Cf. "Yon fair sea that clips thy shores." (Tennyson.)-109. And others came, etc. The Beings here introduced, the emotions which the dead poet had loved and to which he had given a more definite form by moulding them into thought (XIV), are surrounded with a vague and mysterious suggestiveness that makes this one of the most distinctively beautiful passages in the poem. Cf. the much more concrete and definite personifications in Spenser or Collins, where, although the outline is sharper, there is a loss in delicacy and suggestiveness. 422.-149. Her mighty youth. The allusion to the eagle nourishing his mighty youth would seem to be a reminder of the familiar passage in Milton's Areopagitica: "Methinks I see her as an eagle mewing her mighty youth, and kindling her undazzled eyes at the full mid-day beam," etc.-151, 152. The curse of Cain light on his head, etc., i.e., on the head of the critic whose review of Endymion in the Quarterly was erroneously supposed by Shelley to have caused Keats' death. By "the curse of Cain" is probably meant merely the penalty or retribution that should fall on a murderer (cf. Rossetti's Adonais), not the specific curse of Genesis iv. 11, 12.-154. Winter is come and gone, etc. Cf. the passage in the Elegy of Moschus beginning “Ah me! when the mallows wither in the garden"; Tennyson's In Mem. CXV.; and Arnold's Thyrsis, stanza VIII. 423.-177. Nought we know dies, etc. If matter is imperishable, never absolutely destroyed, but only changed from one form to another, if even the body, the sheath, or scabbard of the soul does not perish, but, touched by the recreative principle in things, exhales itself in flowers, shall the soul die like a sword (the higher thing) consumed before its sheath, meant but to screen and protect it? Shelley does not really answer this question here, but implies that the soul goes out like an extinguished spark.-187. As long as skies are blue. Cf. Mach. Act V. 5. 519. = = 426.-238. Unpastured dragon the savage critic, ravening for prey. Unpastured unfed, hungry (Lat. impastus).-250. The Pythian of the age, i.e., Byron, who slew the wolves, ravens, and vultures of the critical Reviews by his counter-attack in English Bards and Scotch Reviewers. He is here likened to Apollo Pythius, or Apollo the Python-slayer.256. And the immortal stars, etc. Keats' genius, which has, like the sun, eclipsed the stars for a time, now takes its place among them in the heaven of poetry. 427.-262. After Urania, the lofty mother of Keats, has finished her lament, the "mountain shepherds," Keats' brother-poets, their "magic mantles" or singing robes" rent, as a sign of mourning, assemble about his bier. First the poet of Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, who, generally identified with the "Pilgrim's" hero, is here spoken of as "the Pilgrim of Eternity," i.e., the Pilgrim who is placed by the greatness of his work above the mutations of time and change. (In Childe Harold, Canto IV. CLXXV, Byron speaks of "having won my pilgrim shrine"; see also his Letter to Hobhouse introductory to this canto.) Next Thomas Moore, who is described as the "sweetest lyrist" of Ierne, or Ireland. Rossetti suggests that by the "saddest wrong" of Ireland Shelley may mean the fate of Emmet and the suppression of the Insurrection of 1803. He cites the songs O breathe not his name," "When he who adores thee," and "She is far from the land."-271. Came one frail form. In this and the follow |