Adonais Part 13

Briefly, the nature of Death is to be pallid: therefore Death, in blus.h.i.+ng, abnegates his very nature, and almost ceases to be Death.

11. 3, 4. _The breath Revisited those lips_, &c. As Death tended towards 'annihilation,' so Adonais tended towards revival.

1. 7. _'Silent lightning.'_ This means, I suppose, lightning unaccompanied by thunder--summer lightning.

+Stanza 26,+ 1. 1. _'Stay yet awhile.'_ See Bion (p. 64): 'Stay, Adonis!

stay, dearest one!'

1. 2, _'Kiss me, so long but as a kiss may live.'_ See as above:--

'That I may kiss thee now for the last time-- But for as long as one short kiss may live!'

1. 3. _'My heartless breast.'_ Urania's breast will henceforth be heartless, in the sense that, having bestowed her whole heart upon Adonais, she will have none to bestow upon any one else: so I understand the epithet.

1. 4. _'That word, that kiss, shall all thoughts else survive,'_ &c. See Bion (p. 64): 'This kiss will I treasure,' &c.

11. 7-9. _'I would give All that I am, to be as thou now art:--But I am chained to Time, and cannot thence depart.'_ Founded on Bion (p. 64): 'While wretched I yet live, being a G.o.ddess, and may not follow thee.'

The alteration of phrase is somewhat remarkable. In Bion's Elegy the Cyprian Aphrodite is 'a G.o.ddess,' and therefore immortal. In Sh.e.l.ley's Elegy the Uranian Aphrodite does not speak of herself under any designation of immortality or eternity, but as 'chained to _Time_,' and incapable of departing from Time. As long as Time lives and operates, Urania must do the same. The dead have escaped from the dominion of Time: this Urania, cannot do. There is a somewhat similar train of thought in _Prometheus Unbound_,--where Prometheus the t.i.tan, after enduring the torture of the Furies (Act 1), says--

'Peace is in the grave: The grave holds all things beautiful and good, I am a G.o.d, and cannot find it _there_.'

+Stanza 27,+ 11. 1-4. _'O gentle child, beautiful as thou wert, Why didst thou leave,'_ &c. This is founded on--and as usual spiritualized from--the pa.s.sage in Bion (p. 64); 'For why, ah overbold! didst thou follow the chase, and, being so fair, why wert thou thus over-hardy to fight with beasts?'

1. 4. _'Dare the unpastured dragon in his den.'_ This phrase must no doubt be interpreted, not only in relation to the figurative Adonais.

but also to the actual Keats, Keats had dared the unpastured dragon in his den, in the sense that he made a bold adventure into the poetical field, under conditions certain to excite the ire of adherents of the old school, whether in literature or in politics.

1. 6. _'Wisdom the mirrored s.h.i.+eld, or scorn the spear.'_ Urania arraigns Keats for having made his inroad upon the dragon, unguarded by wisdom or by scorn. His want of wisdom was shown (we may a.s.sume) by the grave blemishes and defects in his _Endymion_, the wilful faults and perverse excesses and extravagances which mark its composition, and wantonly invited attack. His want of scorn was (according to Sh.e.l.ley's view of the facts), clear enough: he had not been equal to despising a spiteful attack, but had fretted himself to death under it. In terming these two defensive weapons, wisdom and scorn, a mirrored s.h.i.+eld and a spear, Sh.e.l.ley was, I apprehend, thinking of the Orlando Furioso of Ariosto. In that poem we read of a magic s.h.i.+eld which casts a supernatural and intolerable splendour, whereby every gazer is cast into a trance; and of a spear whose lightest touch overthrows every opponent.

A sea-monster--not a dragon, so far as I recollect--becomes one of the victims of the 'mirrored s.h.i.+eld.'

11. 7, 8. _'The full cycle when Thy spirit should have filled its crescent sphere.'_ The spirit of Keats is here a.s.similated to the moon, which grows from a crescent into a spherical form.

1. 9. _'The monsters of life's waste.'_ The noxious creatures which infest the wilderness of human life.

+Stanza 28,+ 1. 1. _'The herded wolves,'_ &c. These same 'monsters' are now pictured under three aspects. They are herded wolves, which will venture to pursue a traveller, but will not face him if he turns upon them boldly; and obscene ravens, which make an uproar over dead bodies, or dead reputations; and vultures, which follow in the wake of a conqueror, and gorge upon that which is already overthrown. In the succeeding stanza, 29, two other epithetal similes are bestowed upon the monsters--they become 'reptiles' and 'ephemeral insects.' All these repulsive images are of course here applied to critics of wilfully obtuse or malignant mind, such as Sh.e.l.ley accounted the _Quarterly_ reviewer of Keats to be.

1. 5, &c. _'How they fled When, like Apollo,'_ &c. The allusion is to perfectly well-known incidents in the opening poetic career of Lord Byron. His lords.h.i.+p, in earliest youth, published a very insignificant volume of verse named _Hours of Idleness_. The _Edinburgh Review_--rightly in substance, but with some superfluous harshness of tone--p.r.o.nounced this volume to be poor stuff. Byron retaliated by producing his satire ent.i.tled _English Bards and Scotch Reviewers_. With this book he scored a success. His next publication was the generally and enthusiastically admired commencement of _Childe Harold_, 1812; after which date the critics justly acclaimed him as a poet--although in course of time they grew lavishly severe upon him from the point of view of morals and religion. I reproduce from the Pisan edition the punctuation--'When like Apollo, from his golden bow'; but I think the exact sense would be better brought out if we read--'When, like Apollo from his golden bow, The Pythian,' &c.

11. 7, 8. _'The Pythian of the age one arrow sped, And smiled.'_ Byron is here a.s.similated to Apollo Pythius--Apollo the Python-slayer.

The statue named Apollo Belvedere is regarded as representing the G.o.d at the moment after he has discharged his arrow at the python (serpent), his countenance irradiated with a half-smile of divine scorn and triumph. The terms employed by Sh.e.l.ley seem to glance more particularly at that celebrated statue: this was the more appropriate as Byron had devoted to the same figure two famous stanzas in the 4th canto of _Childe Harold_--

'Or view the Lord of the unerring bow, The G.o.d of life and poesy and light,' &c.

1. 9. _'They fawn on the proud feet that spurn them lying low.'_ In the Pisan edition we read 'that spurn them as they go.' No doubt the change (introduced as in other instances named on pp. 105 and 113) must be Sh.e.l.ley's own. The picture presented to the mind is more consistent, according to the altered reading. The critics, as we are told in this stanza, had at first 'fled' from Byron's arrow; afterwards they 'fawned on his proud feet.' In order to do this, they must have paused in their flight, and returned; and, in the act of fawning on Byron's feet, they must have crouched down, or were 'lying low.' (Mr. Forman, in his edition of Sh.e.l.ley, pointed this out.) With the words 'as they go' the image was not self-consistent: for the critics could not be 'going,' or walking away, at the same time when they were fawning on the poet's feet. This last remark a.s.sumes that the words 'as they go' mean 'as the critics go ': but perhaps (and indeed I think this is more than probable) the real meaning was 'as the feet of Byron go'--as Byron proceeds disdainfully on his way. If this was Sh.e.l.ley's original meaning, he probably observed after a while that the words 'as _they_ go' seem to follow on with '_they_ fawn,' and not with 'the proud feet'; and, in order to remove the ambiguity, he subst.i.tuted the expression 'lying low.'

+Stanza 29,+ 11. 1-3. _'The sun comes forth, and many reptiles sp.a.w.n; He sets, and each ephemeral insect then Is gathered into death.'_ The sp.a.w.ning of a reptile (say a lizard or toad), and the death of an insect (say a beetle or gnat), are two things totally unconnected. Sh.e.l.ley however seems to link them together, as if this sp.a.w.ning were the origin of the life, the brief life, of the insect. He appears therefore to use 'reptile,' not in the defined sense which we commonly attach to the word, but in the general sense of 'a creeping creature,' such for instance as a grub or caterpillar, the first form of an insect, leading on to its final metamorphosis or development. Even so his natural history is curiously at fault: for no grub or caterpillar can sp.a.w.n--which is the function of the fully-developed insect itself, whether 'ephemeral' or otherwise. Can Sh.e.l.ley have been ignorant of this?

1. 4. _'And the immortal stars awake again.'_ The imagery of this stanza (apart from the 'reptiles' and 'ephemeral insects') deserves a little consideration. The sun (says Sh.e.l.ley) arises, and then sets: when it sets, the immortal stars awake again. Similarly, a G.o.dlike mind (say the mind of Keats) appears, and its light illumines the earth, and veils the heaven: when it disappears, 'the spirit's awful night' is left to 'its kindred lamps.' This seems as much as to say that the splendour of a new poetic genius appears to contemporaries to throw preceding poets into obscurity; but this is only a matter of the moment, for, when the new genius sinks in death, the others s.h.i.+ne forth again as stars of the intellectual zenith, to which the new genius is kindred indeed, but not superior. With these words concludes the speech of Urania, which began in stanza 25.

+Stanza 30,+ 1. 1. _The Mountain Shepherds_. These are contemporary British poets, whom Sh.e.l.ley represents as mourning the death of Keats.

Shepherds are such familiar figures in poetry--utilized for instance in Milton's _Lycidas_, as well as by many poets of antiquity--that the introduction of them into Sh.e.l.ley's Elegy is no matter for surprise. Why they should be '_mountain_ shepherds' is not so clear. Perhaps Sh.e.l.ley meant to indicate a certain a.n.a.logy between the exalted level at which the shepherds dwelt and the exalted level at which the poets wrote. As the shepherds do not belong to the low-country, so neither do the poets belong to the flats of verse. Sh.e.l.ley may have written with a certain degree of reference to that couplet in _Lycidas_--

'For we were nursed upon the self-same _hill_, Fed the same flock, by fountain, shade, and rill.'

1. 2. _Their garlands sere, their magic mantles rent._ The garlands or chaplets of the mountain shepherds have become sere because (it may be presumed) the wearers, in their grief for the mortal illness and death of Adonais, have for some little while left them unrenewed. Or possibly the garlands withered at the moment when Spring 'threw down her kindling buds' (stanza 16), I do not well understand the expression 'magic mantles.' There seems to be no reason why the mantles of the shepherds, considered as shepherds, should be magic. Even when we contemplate the shepherds as poets, we may fail to discern why any magical property should be a.s.signed to their mantles. By the use of the epithet 'magic'

Sh.e.l.ley must have intended to bridge over the gap between the nominal shepherds and the real poets, viewed as inspired singers: for this purpose he has adopted a bold verbal expedient, but not I think an efficient one. It may be noticed that the 'uncouth swain' who is represented in _Lycidas_ as singing the dirge (in other words, Milton himself) is spoken of as having a mantle--it is a 'mantle blue' (see the penultimate line of that poem).

1. 3. _The Pilgrim of Eternity._ This is Lord Byron. As inventor of the personage Childe Harold, the hero and so-called 'Pilgrim' of the poem _Childe Harold's Pilgrimage_, and as being himself to a great extent identical with his hero, Byron was frequently termed 'the Pilgrim.'

Sh.e.l.ley adopts this designation, which he magnifies into 'the Pilgrim of Eternity,' He admired Byron most enthusiastically as a poet, and was generally on easy--sometimes on cordial--terms with him as a man. He has left us a fine and discriminating portrait of Byron in the 'Count Maddalo' of his poem _Julian and Maddalo_, written in 1818. At times however Sh.e.l.ley felt and expressed great indignation against Byron, especially in reference to the ungenerous and cruel conduct of the latter towards Miss Clairmont. See some brief reference to this matter at p. 9.

11. 3-5. _Whose fame Over his living head like heaven is bent, An early but enduring monument._ These phrases are not very definite. When fame is spoken of as being bent over Byron's head, we must conceive of fame as taking a form cognizable by the senses. I think Sh.e.l.ley means to a.s.similate it to the rainbow; saying substantially--Fame is like an arc bent over Byron's head, as the arc of the rainbow is bent over the expanse of heaven. The ensuing term 'monument' applies rather to fame in the abstract than to any image of fame as an arc.

11. 6, 7. _Came, veiling all the lightnings of his song In sorrow._ No doubt it would have been satisfactory to Sh.e.l.ley if he could have found that Byron entertained or expressed any serious concern at Keats's premature death, and at the hard measure which had been meted out to him by critics. Byron did in fact admire _Hyperion_; writing (in November 1821, not long after the publication of _Adonais_)--'His fragment of _Hyperion_ seems actually inspired by the t.i.tans, and is as sublime as Aeschylus'; and other utterances of his show that--being with difficulty persuaded to suppose that Keats's health and life had succ.u.mbed to the attack in the _Quarterly_--he fittingly censured the want of feeling or want of reflection on the critic's part which had produced so deplorable a result. But on the whole Byron's feeling towards Keats was one of savage contempt during the young poet's life, and of bantering levity after his death. Here are some specimens.

(From a letter to Mr. Murray, 12 October, 1820). 'There is such a trash of Keats and the like upon my tables that I am ashamed to look at them.... No more Keats, I entreat. Flay him alive: if some of you don't, I must skin him myself. There is no bearing the drivelling idiotism of the manikin.'

'"Who killed John Keats?"

"I," says the Quarterly, So savage and Tartarly; "'Twas one of my feats."'

'John Keats, who was killed off by one critique Just as he really promised something great If not intelligible, without Greek Contrived to talk about the G.o.ds of late, Much as they might have been supposed to speak.

Poor fellow, his was an untoward fate!

'Tis strange the mind, that very fiery particle, Should let itself be snuffed out by an article.'

11. 7-9. _From her wilds Ierne sent The sweetest lyrist of her saddest wrong, And love taught grief to fall like music from his tongue._ Ierne (Ireland) sent Thomas Moore, the lyrist of her wrongs--an allusion to the _Irish Melodies_, and some other poems. There is not, I believe, any evidence to show that Moore took the slightest interest in Keats, his doings or his fate: Sh.e.l.ley is responsible for Moore's love, grief, and music, in this connexion. A letter from Keats has been published showing that at one time he expected to meet Moore personally (see p. 45).

Whether he did so or not I cannot say for certain, but I apprehend not: the published Diary of Moore, of about the same date, suggests the negative.

+Stanza 31,+ 1. 1. _'Midst others of less note._ Sh.e.l.ley clearly means 'less note' than Byron and Moore--not less note than the 'one frail form.'

1. 2. _Came one frail form,_ &c. This personage represents Sh.e.l.ley himself. Sh.e.l.ley here describes himself under a profusion of characteristics, briefly defined: it may be interesting to summarize them, apart from the other details with which they are interspersed. He is a frail form; a phantom among men; companionless; one who had gazed Actaeon-like on Nature's naked loveliness, and who now fled with feeble steps, hounded by his own thoughts; a pard-like spirit beautiful and swift; a love masked in desolation; a power begirt with weakness, scarcely capable of lifting the weight of the hour; a breaking billow, which may even now be broken; the last of the company, neglected and apart--a herd-abandoned deer struck by the hunter's dart; in Keats's fate, he wept his own; his brow was branded and ensanguined. Most of these attributes can be summed up under one heading--that of extreme sensitiveness and susceptibility, which meet with no response or sustainment, but rather with misjudgment, repulse, and outrage. Some readers may think that Sh.e.l.ley insists upon this aspect of his character to a degree rather excessive, and dangerously near the confines of feminine sensibility, rather than virile fort.i.tude. Apart from this predominant type of character, Sh.e.l.ley describes his spirit as 'beautiful and swift'--which surely it was: and he says that, having gazed upon Nature's naked loveliness, he had suffered the fate of a second Actseon, fleeing 'o'er the world's wilderness,' and pursued by his own thoughts like raging hounds. By this expression Sh.e.l.ley apparently means that he had over-boldly tried to fathom the depths of things and of mind, but, baffled and dismayed in the effort, suffered, as a man living among men, by the very tension and vividness of his thoughts, and their daring in expression. See what he says of himself, in prose, on p. 92.

11. 4, 5. _He, as I guess, Had gazed,_ &c. The use of the verb 'guess'

in the sense of 'to surmise, conjecture, infer,' is now mostly counted as an Americanism. This is not correct; for the verb has often been thus used by standard English authors. Such a practice was not however common in Sh.e.l.ley's time, and he may have been guided chiefly by the rhyming.

+Stanza 32,+ 1. 4. _The weight of the superinc.u.mbent hour._ This line is scarcely rhythmical: to bring it within the ordinary scheme of ryhthm, one would have to lay an exaggerated stress on two of its feet--'the superinc.u.mbent.' Neither this treatment of the line, nor the line itself apart from this treatment, can easily be justified.

+Stanza 33,+ 11. 1, 2. _His head was bound with pansies overblown, And faded violets._ The pansy is the flower of thought, or memory: we commonly call it heartsease, but Sh.e.l.ley no doubt uses it here with a different, or indeed contrary, meaning. The violet indicates modesty. A stanza from one of his lyrics may be appropriately cited--_Remembrance_, dated 1821:--

'Lilies for a bridal bed, Roses for a matron's head, Violets for a maiden dead, Pansies let _my_ flowers be.

On the living grave I bear Scatter them without a tear; Let no friend, however dear, Waste a hope, a fear, for me.'

1. 3. _A light spear topped with a cypress cone._ The funereal cypress explains itself.

1. 4. _Dark ivy tresses._ The ivy indicates constancy in friends.h.i.+p.