Adonais Part 15

11. 6, 7. _Where'er that power may move Which has withdrawn his being to its own._ This corresponds to the expression in st. 38--'The pure spirit shall flow Back to the burning fountain whence it came, A portion of the Eternal.'

1. 8. _Who wields the world with never wearied love_, &c. These two lines are about the nearest approach to definite Theism to be found in any writing of Sh.e.l.ley. The conception, which may amount to Theism, is equally consistent with Pantheism. Even in his most anti-theistic poem, _Queen Mab_, Sh.e.l.ley said in a note--'The hypothesis of a pervading Spirit, co-eternal with the universe, remains unshaken.'

+Stanza 43,+ 11. 1-3. _He is a portion of the loveliness Which ones he made more lovely. He doth bear his part_, &c. The conception embodied in this pa.s.sage may become more clear to the reader if its terms are pondered in connexion with the pa.s.sage of Sh.e.l.ley's prose extracted on p. 56--'The existence of distinct individual minds,' &c. Keats, while a living man, had made the loveliness of the universe more lovely by expressing in poetry his acute and subtle sense of its beauties--by lavis.h.i.+ng on it (as we say) 'the colours of his imagination,' He was then an 'individual mind'--according to the current, but (as Sh.e.l.ley held) inexact terminology. He has now, by death, wholly pa.s.sed out of the cla.s.s of individual minds; and he forms a portion of the Universal Mind (the 'One Spirit') which is the animation of the universe.

11. 3, 4. _While the One Spirit's plastic stress Sweeps through the dull dense world_, &c. The function ascribed in these lines to the One Spirit is a formative or animating function: the Spirit const.i.tutes the life of 'trees and beasts and men.' This view is strictly within the limits of Pantheism.

+Stanza 44,+ 1. 1. _The splendours of the firmament of time_, &c. As there are stars in the firmament of heaven, so are there splendours--luminous intellects--in the firmament of time. The stars, though at times eclipsed, are not extinguished; nor yet the mental luminaries. This a.s.severation may be considered in connexion with the pa.s.sage in st. 5: 'Others more sublime, Struck by the envious wrath of man or G.o.d, Have sunk, extinct in their refulgent prime.'

11. 5, 6. _When lofty thought Lifts a young heart_, &c. The sense of this pa.s.sage may be paraphrased thus:--When lofty thought lifts a young heart above its mundane environments, and when its earthly doom has to be determined by the conflicting influences of love, which would elevate it, and the meaner cares and interests of life, which would drag it downwards, then the ill.u.s.trious dead live again in that heart--for its higher emotions are nurtured by their n.o.ble thoughts and aspirations,--and they move, like exhalations of light along dark and stormy air. This ill.u.s.trates the previous proposition, that the splendours of the firmament of time are not extinguished; and, in the most immediate application of the proposition, Keats is not extinguished--he will continue an enn.o.bling influence upon minds struggling towards the light.

+Stanza 45,+ 1. 2. _The inheritors of unfulfilled renown Rose from their thrones._ There is a grand abruptness in this phrase, which makes it--as a point of poetical or literary structure--one of the finest things in the Elegy. We are to understand (but Sh.e.l.ley is too great a master to formulate it in words) that Keats, as an 'inheritor of unfulfilled renown'--i.e. a great intellect cut off by death before its maturest fruits could be produced--has now arrived among his compeers: they rise from their thrones to welcome him. In this connexion Sh.e.l.ley chooses to regard Keats as still a living spiritual personality--not simply as 'made one with Nature.' He is one of those 'splendours of the firmament of time' who 'may be eclipsed, but are extinguished not.'

11. 3-5. _Chatterton Rose pale, his solemn agony had not Yet faded from him._ For precocity and exceptional turn of genius Chatterton was certainly one of the most extraordinary of 'the inheritors of unfulfilled renown'; indeed, the most extraordinary: he committed suicide by poison in 1770, before completing the eighteenth year of his age. His supposit.i.tious modern-antique _Poems of Rowley_ may, as actual achievements, have been sometimes overpraised: but at the lowest estimate they have beauties and excellences of the most startling kind.

He wrote besides a quant.i.ty of verse and prose, of a totally different order. Keats admired Chatterton profoundly, and dedicated _Endymion_ to his memory. I cannot find that Sh.e.l.ley, except in _Adonais_, has left any remarks upon Chatterton: but he is said by Captain Medwin to have been, in early youth, very much impressed by his writings.

1. 5. _Sidney, as he fought_, &c. Sir Philip Sidney, author of _The Countess of Pembroke's Arcadia_, the _Apology for Poetry_, and the sonnets named _Astrophel and Stella_, died in his thirty-second year, of a wound received in the battle of Zutphen, 1586. Sh.e.l.ley intimates that Sidney maintained the character of being 'sublimely mild' in fighting, falling (dying), and loving, as well as generally in living. The special references appear to be these. (1) Sidney, observing that the Lord Marshal, the Earl of Leicester, had entered the field of Zutphen without greaves, threw off his own, and thus exposed himself to the cannon-shot which slew him. (2) Being mortally wounded, and receiving a cup of water, he handed it (according to a tradition which is not unquestionable) to a dying soldier. (3) His series of sonnets record his love for Penelope Devereux, sister to the Earl of Ess.e.x, who married Lord Rich. She had at one time been promised to Sidney. He wrote the sonnets towards 1581: in 1583 he married another lady, daughter of Sir Francis Walsingham. It has been said that Sh.e.l.ley was wont to make some self-parade in connexion with Sir Philip Sidney, giving it to be understood that he was himself a descendant of the hero--which was not true, although the Sidney blood came into a different line of the family. Of this story I have not found any tangible confirmation.

1. 8. _Lucan, by his death approved._ Lucan, the author of the _Pharsalia_, was condemned under Nero as being an accomplice in the conspiracy of Piso: he caused his veins to be opened, and died magnanimously, aged about twenty-six, A.D. 65. Sh.e.l.ley, in one instance, went so far as to p.r.o.nounce Lucan superior to Vergil.

+Stanza 46,+ 11. 1, 2. _And many more, whose names on earth are dark, But whose transmitted effluence cannot die_, &c. This glorious company would include no doubt, not only the recorders of great thoughts, or performers of great deeds, which are still borne in memory although the names of the authors are forgotten, but also many whose work is as totally unknown as their names, but who exerted nevertheless a bright and elevating ascendant over other minds, and who thus conduced to the greatness of human-kind.

1. 6. _It was for thee_, &c. The synod of the inheritors of unfulfilled renown here invite Keats to a.s.sume possession of a sphere, or constellation, which had hitherto been 'kingless,' or unappropriated. It had 'swung blind in unascended majesty': had not been a.s.signed to any radiant spirit, whose brightness would impart brilliancy to the sphere itself.

1. 8. _Silent alone amid an heaven of song._ This phrase points primarily to 'the music of the spheres': the sphere now a.s.signed to Keats had hitherto failed to take part in the music of its fellows, but henceforward will chime in. Probably there is also a subsidiary, but in its context not less prominent meaning--namely, that, while the several poets (such as Chatterton, Sidney, and Lucan) had each a vocal sphere of his own, apposite to his particular poetic quality, the sphere which Keats is now to control had hitherto remained unoccupied because no poet of that special type of genius which it demanded had as yet appeared.

Its affinity was for Keats, and for no one else. This is an implied attestation of Keats's poetic originality.

1. 9. _a.s.sume thy winged throne, thou Vesper of our throng!_ The winged throne is, I think, a synonym of the 'sphere' itself--not a throne within the sphere: 'winged,' because the sphere revolves in s.p.a.ce. Yet the statement in stanza 45 that 'the inheritors of unfulfilled renown rose from their thrones' (which cannot be taken to represent distinct spheres or constellations) suggests the opposite interpretation. Keats is termed 'thou Vesper of our throng' because he is the latest member of this glorified band--or, reckoning the lapse of ages as if they were but a day, its 'evening star.' The exceptional brilliancy of the Vesper star is not, I think, implied--though it may be remotely suggested.

+Stanza 47,+ 1. 3. _Clasp with thy panting soul_, &c. The significance of this stanza--perhaps a rather obscure one--requires to be estimated as a whole. Sh.e.l.ley summons any person who persists in mourning for Adonais to realise to his own mind what are the true terms of comparison between Adonais and himself. After this, he says in this stanza no more about Adonais, but only about the mourner. He calls upon the mourner to consider (1) the magnitude of the planet earth; then, using the earth as his centre, to consider (2) the whole universe of worlds, and the illimitable void of s.p.a.ce beyond all worlds; next he is to consider (3) what he himself is--he is confined within the day and night of our planet, and, even within those restricted limits, he is but an infinitesimal point. After he shall have realised this to himself, and after the tension of his soul in ranging through the universe and through s.p.a.ce shall have kindled hope after hope, wonderment and aspiration after aspiration and wonderment, then indeed will he need to keep his heart light, lest it make him sink at the contemplation of his own nullity.

1. 9. _And lured thee to the brink._ This phrase is not definitely accounted for in the preceding exposition. I think Sh.e.l.ley means that the successive hopes kindled in the mourner by the ideas of a boundless universe of s.p.a.ce and of spirit will have lured him to the very brink of mundane life--to the borderland between life and death: he will almost have been tempted to have done with life, and to explore the possibilities of death.

+Stanza 48,+ 1. 1. _Or go to Rome._ This is still addressed to the mourner, the 'fond wretch' of the preceding stanza. He is here invited to adopt a different test for 'knowing himself and Adonais aright'; namely, he is to visit Rome, and muse over the grave of the youthful poet.

11. 1, 2. _Which is the sepulchre, Oh not of him, but of our joy._ Keats is not entombed in Rome: his poor mortal remains are there entombed, and, along with them, the joy which we felt in him as a living and breathing presence.

11. 2, 3. _'Tis nought That ages, empires, and religions, &c._ Keats, and others such as he, derive no advent.i.tious honour from being buried in Rome, amid the wreck of ages, empires, and religions: rather they confer honour. He is among his peers, the kings of thought, who, so far from being dragged down in the ruin of inst.i.tutions, contended against that ruin, and are alone immortal while all the rest of the past has come to nought. This consideration may be said to qualify, but not to reverse, that which is presented in stanza 7, that Keats 'bought, with price of purest breath, a grave among the eternal'; those eternal ones, buried in Rome, include many of the 'kings of thought.'

+Stanza 46,+ 11. 3, 4. _And where its wrecks like shattered mountains rise, And flowering weeds_, &c. These expressions point more especially, but not exclusively, to the Coliseum and the Baths of Caracalla. In Sh.e.l.ley's time (and something alike was the case in 1862, the year when the present writer saw them first) both these vast monuments were in a state wholly different from that which they now, under the hands of learned archaeologists and skilled restorers, present to the eye.

Sh.e.l.ley began, probably in 1819, a romantic or ideal tale named _The Coliseum_; and, ensconced amid the ruins of the Baths of Caracalla, he composed, in the same year, a large part of _Promethens Unbound_. A few extracts from his letters may here be given appropriately. (To T.L.

Peac.o.c.k, 22 December, 18i8). 'The Coliseum is unlike any work of human hands I ever saw before. It is of enormous height and circuit, and the arches, built of ma.s.sy stones, are piled, on one another, and jut into the blue air, shattered into the forms of overhanging rocks. It has been changed by time into the image of an amphitheatre of rocky hills overgrown by the wild olive, the myrtle, and the figtree, and threaded by little paths which wind among its ruined stairs and immeasurable galleries: the copsewood overshadows you as you wander through its labyrinths.'--(To the same, 23 March, 1819). 'The next most considerable relic of antiquity, considered as a ruin, is the Thermae of Caracalla.

These consist of six enormous chambers, above 200 feet in height, and each enclosing a vast s.p.a.ce like that of a field. There are in addition a number of towers and labyrinthine recesses, hidden and woven over by the wild growth of weeds and ivy. Never was any desolation so sublime and lovely.... At every step the aerial pinnacles of shattered stone group into new combinations of effect, and tower above the lofty yet level walls, as the distant mountains change their aspect to one travelling rapidly along the plain.... Around rise other crags and other peaks--all arrayed, and the deformity of their vast desolation softened down, by the undecaying invest.i.ture of Nature.'

1. 7. _A slope of green access._ The old Protestant Cemetery. Sh.e.l.ley described it thus in his letter to Mr. Peac.o.c.k of 22 December, 1818.

'The English burying-place is a green slope near the walls, under the pyramidal tomb of Cestius, and is, I think, the most beautiful and solemn cemetery I ever beheld. To see the sun s.h.i.+ning on its bright gra.s.s, fresh, when we visited it, with the autumnal dews, and hear the whispering of the wind among the leaves of the trees which have overgrown the tomb of Cestius, and the soil which is stirring in the sun-warm earth, and to mark the tombs, mostly of women and young people who were buried there, one might, if one were to die, desire the sleep they seem to sleep. Such is the human mind, and so it peoples with its wishes vacancy and oblivion.'--See also pp. 69, 70.

+Stanza 50,+ 1. 3. _One keen pyramid._ The tomb (see last note) of Caius Cestius, a Tribune of the People.

11. 4, 5. _The dust of him who planned This refuge for his memory._ Sh.e.l.ley probably means that this sepulchral pyramid alone preserves to remembrance the name of Cestius: which is true enough, as next to nothing is otherwise known about him.

1. 8. _Have pitched in heaven's smile their camp of death._ The practice which Sh.e.l.ley follows in this line of making 'heaven' a dissyllable is very frequent with him. So also with 'even, higher,' and other such words.

+Stanza 51,+ 11. 3, 4. _If the seal is set Here on one fountain of a mourning mind._ Sh.e.l.ley certainly alludes to himself in this line. His beloved son William, who died in June 1819, in the fourth year of his age, was buried in this cemetery: the precise spot is not now known.

11. 5-7. _Too surely shalt thou find Thine own well full, if thou returnest home, Of tears and gall. From the world's bitter wind_, &c.

The apposition between the word 'well' and the preceding word 'fountain'

will be observed. The person whom Sh.e.l.ley addresses would, on returning home from the cemetery, find more than, ample cause, of one sort or another, for distress and discomposure. Hence follows the conclusion that he would do well to 'seek shelter in the shadow of the tomb': he should prefer the condition of death to that of life. And so we reach in stanza 51 the same result which, in stanza 47, was deduced from a different range of considerations.

+Stanza 52,+ 1. 1. _The One remains, the many change and pa.s.s._ See the notes on stanzas 42 and 43. 'The One' is the same as 'the One Spirit' in stanza 43--the Universal Mind. The Universal Mind has already been spoken of (stanza 38) as 'the Eternal.' On the other hand, 'the many'

are the individuated minds which we call 'human beings': they 'change and pa.s.s'--the body peris.h.i.+ng, the mind which informed it being (in whatever sense) reabsorbed into 'the Eternal.'

1. 2. _Heaven's light for ever s.h.i.+nes, earth's shadows fly._ This is in strictness a physical descriptive image: in application, it means the same as the preceding line.

11. 3-5. _Life, like a dome of many-coloured gla.s.s, Stains the white radiance of eternity, Until Death tramples it to fragments._ Perhaps a more daring metaphorical symbol than this has never been employed by any poet, nor one that has a deeper or a more s.p.a.cious meaning. Eternity is figured as white light--light in its quintessence. Life, mundane life, is as a dome of gla.s.s, which becomes many-coloured by its prismatic diffraction of the white light: its various prisms reflect eternity at different angles. Death ultimately tramples the gla.s.s dome into fragments; each individual life is shattered, and the whole integer of life, const.i.tuted of the many individual lives, is shattered. If everything else written by Sh.e.l.ley were to perish, and only this consummate image to remain--so vast in purport, so terse in form--he would still rank as a poet of lofty imagination. _Ex pede Herculem._

11. 5, 6. _Die, If thou wouldst be with that which thou dost seek._ This phrase is addressed by the poet to anybody, and more especially to himself. As in stanza 38--'The pure spirit shall flow Back to the burning fountain whence it came, A portion of the Eternal.'

11. 7-9. _Rome's azure sky, Flowers, ruins, statues, music, words, are weak The glory thy transfuse with fitting truth to speak._ I follow here the punctuation of the Pisan edition--with a comma after 'words,' as well as after 'sky, flowers,' &c. According to this punctuation, the words of Rome, as well as her sky and other beautiful endowments, are too weak to declare at full the glory which they impart; and the inference from this rather abruptly introduced recurrence to Rome is (I suppose), that the spiritual glory faintly adumbrated by Rome can only be realised in that realm of eternity to which death gives access. Taken in this sense, the 'words' of Rome appear to mean 'the beautiful language spoken in Rome'--the Roman or Latin language, as modified into modern Italian. The p.r.o.nunciation of Italian in Rome is counted peculiarly pure and rich: hence the Italian axiom, 'lingua toscana in bocca romana'--Tuscan tongue in Roman mouth. At first sight, it would seem far more natural to punctuate thus: Rome's azure sky, Flowers, ruins, statues, music,--words are weak The glory, &c. The sense would then be--Words are too weak to declare at full the glory inherent in the sky, flowers, &c. of Rome. Yet, although this seems a more straightforward arrangement for the words of the sentence, as such, it is not clear that such a comment on the beauties of Rome would have any great relevancy in its immediate context.

+Stanza 53,+ 1. 2. _Thy hopes are gone before_, &c. This stanza contains some very pointed references to the state of Sh.e.l.ley's feelings at the time when he was writing _Adonais_; pointed, but not so clearly defined as to make his actual meaning transparent. We are told that his hopes are gone before (i.e. have vanished before the close of his life has come), and have departed from all things here. This may partly refer to the deaths of William Sh.e.l.ley and of Keats; but I think the purport of the phrase extends further, and implies that Sh.e.l.ley's hopes generally--those animating conceptions which had inspired him in early youth, and had buoyed him up through many adversities--are now waning in disappointment. This is confirmed by the ensuing statement--that 'a light is past from the revolving year [a phrase repeated from stanza 18], and man and woman.' Next we are told that 'what still is dear Attracts to crush, repels to make thee [me] wither.' The _persons_ who were more particularly dear to Sh.e.l.ley at this time must have been (not to mention the two children Percy Florence Sh.e.l.ley and Allegra Clairmont) his wife, Miss Clairmont, Emilia Viviani, and Lieutenant and Mrs. Williams: Byron, Leigh Hunt, and G.o.dwin, can hardly be in question.

No doubt Sh.e.l.ley's acute feelings and mobile sympathies involved him in some considerable agitations, from time to time, with all the four ladies here named: but the strong expressions which he uses as to attracting and repelling, crus.h.i.+ng and withering, seem hardly likely to have been employed by him in this personal sense, in a published book.

Perhaps therefore we shall be safest in supposing that he alludes, not to _persons_ who are dear, but to circ.u.mstances and conditions of a more general kind--such as are involved in his self-portraiture, stanzas 31-34.

1. 8. _'Tis Adonais calls! oh hasten thither!_ 'Thither' must mean 'to Adonais': a laxity of expression.

+Stanza 64,+ 1. 1. _That light whose smile kindles the universe_, &c.

This is again the 'One Spirit' of stanza 43. And see, in stanza 42, the cognate expression, 'kindles it above.'

11. 3, 4. _That benediction which the eclipsing curse Of birth can quench not._ The curse of birth is, I think, simply the calamitous condition of mundane life--so often referred to in this Elegy as a condition of abjection and unhappiness. The curse of birth can eclipse the benediction of Universal Mind, but cannot quench it: in other words, the human mind, in its pa.s.sage from the birth to the death of the body, is still an integral portion of the Universal Mind.

1. 7. _Each are mirrors._ This is of course a grammatical irregularity--the verb should be 'is.' It is not the only instance of the same kind in Sh.e.l.ley's poetry.

1. 9. _Consuming the last clouds of cold mortality._ This does not imply that Sh.e.l.ley is shortly about to die. 'Cold mortality' is that condition in which the human mind, a portion of the Universal Mind, is united to a mortal body: and the general sense is that the Universal Mind at this moment beams with such effulgence upon Sh.e.l.ley that his mind responds to it as if the mortal body no longer interposed any impediment.

+Stanza 55,+ 1. 1. _The breath whose might I have invoked in song._ The breath or afflatus of the Universal Mind. It has been 'invoked in song'

throughout the whole later section of this Elegy, from stanza 38 onwards.

1. 2. _My spirits bark is driven_, &c. As was observed with reference to the preceding stanza, line 9, this phrase does not forecast the author's death: it only re-emphasises the abnormal illumination of his mind by the Universal Mind--as if his spirit (like that of Keats) 'had flowed back to the burning fountain whence it came, a portion of the Eternal'

(stanza 38). Nevertheless, it is very remarkable that this image of 'the spirit's _bark_,' beaconed by 'the soul of Adonais,' should have been written so soon before Sh.e.l.ley's death by drowning, which occurred on 8 July, 1822,--but little more than a year after he had completed this Elegy. Besides this pa.s.sage, there are in Sh.e.l.ley's writings, both verse and prose, several other pa.s.sages noticeable on the same account--relating to drowning, and sometimes with a strong personal application; and in various instances he was in imminent danger of this mode of death before the end came.

11. 3, 4. _Far from the sh.o.r.e, far from the trembling throng Whose sails were never to the tempest given._ In saying that his spirit's bark is driven far from the sh.o.r.e, Sh.e.l.ley apparently means that his mind, in speculation and aspiration, ranges far beyond those mundane and material interests with which the ma.s.s of men are ordinarily concerned. 'The trembling throng' is, I think, a throng of men: though it might be a throng of barks, contrasted with 'my spirit's bark.' Their sails 'were never to the tempest given,' in the sense that they never set forth on a bold ideal or spiritual adventure, abandoning themselves to the stress and sway of a spiritual storm.

1. 5. _The ma.s.sy earth_, &c. As the poet launches forth on his voyage upon the ocean of mind, the earth behind him seems to gape, and the sky above him to open: his course however is still held on in darkness--the arcanum is hardly or not at all revealed.

1. 7. _Whilst burning through the inmost veil_, &c. A star pilots his course: it is the soul of Adonais, which, being still 'a portion of the Eternal' (st. 38), is in 'the abode where the Eternal are,' and testifies to the eternity of mind. In this pa.s.sage, and in others towards the conclusion of the poem, we find the nearest approach which Sh.e.l.ley can furnish to an answer to that question which he asked in stanza 20--'Shall that alone which knows Be as a sword consumed before the sheath By sightless lightning?'

+Stanzas 4. to 6+--(I add here a note out of its due place, which would be on p. 101: at the time when it occurred to me to raise this point, the printing had gone too far to allow of my inserting the remark there.)--On considering these three stanzas collectively, it may perhaps be felt that the references to Milton and to Keats are more advisedly interdependent than my notes on the details of the stanzas suggest.

Sh.e.l.ley may have wished to indicate a certain affinity between the inspiration of Milton as the poet of _Paradise Lost_, and that of Keats as the poet of _Hyperion_. Urania had had to bewail the death of Milton, who died old when 'the priest, the slave, and the liberticide,' outraged England. Now she has to bewail the death of her latest-born, Keats, who has died young, and (as Sh.e.l.ley thought) in a similarly disastrous condition of the national affairs. Had he not been 'struck by the envious wrath of man,' he might even have 'dared to climb' to the 'bright station' occupied by Milton.--The phrase in st. 4, 'Most musical of mourners, weep again,' with what follows regarding grief for the loss of Milton, and again of Keats, is modelled upon the pa.s.sage in Moschus (p. 65)--'This, O most musical of rivers, is thy second sorrow,--this, Meles, thy new woe. Of old didst thou love Homer:... now again another son thou weepest.' My remark upon st. 13, that there Sh.e.l.ley first had direct recourse to the Elegy of Moschus, should be modified accordingly.