The poem, which is in 495 lines in 55 Spenserian stanzas, was composed in the spring of 1821 immediately after 11 April, when Shelley heard of Keats' death (seven weeks earlier). It is a pastoral elegy, in the English tradition of John Milton's Lycidas. Shelley had studied and translated classical elegies.
It was published by Charles Ollier in July 1821 (see 1821 in poetry) with a preface in which Shelley made the mistaken assertion that Keats had died from a rupture of the lung induced by rage at the unfairly harsh reviews of his verse in the Quarterly Review and other journals.
The English Protestant Cemetery in Rome
Adonais
II(2)
Where wert thou, mighty Mother, when he lay,
When thy Son lay, pierc'd by the shaft which flies
In darkness?(the ananymity of the review of Endymion) where was lorn(forlorn)Urania(She had originally been the Muse of astronomy, but the name was also an epithet for Venus. Shelley converts Venus Urania into the mother of Adonais)
When Adonais died? With veiled eyes,
'Mid listening Echoes, in her Paradise
She sate, while one, with soft enamour'd breath,
Rekindled all the fading melodies,
With which, like flowers that mock the corse(corpse)beneath,
He had adorn'd and hid the coming bulk(A heap, or a dead body, carcase) of Death.
XXI(21)
Alas! that all we lov'd 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(low)
Meet mass'd 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.
XXXIV(34)
All stood aloof, and at his partial moan
Smil'd through their tears; well knew that gentle band
Who in another's fate now wept his own,
As in the accents of an unknown land
He sung new sorrow; sad Urania scann'd
The Stranger's mien, and murmur'd: "Who art thou?"
He answer'd not, but with a sudden hand
Made bare his branded and ensanguin'd(bloodied) brow,
Which was like Cain's or Christ's(like that which God had branded Cani for murdering Abel-or like that left by Christ's crown of thorns)—oh! that it should be so!
XXXIX(39)
Peace, peace! he is not dead, he doth not sleep,
He hath awaken'd from the dream of life;
'Tis we, who lost in stormy visions, keep
With phantoms an unprofitable strife,
And in 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,
And cold hopes swarm like worms within our living clay.
"On July 3, 1969, two days before the Rolling Stones were to headline a free music festival in Hyde Park, their former guitarist Brian Jones drowned in his swimming pool. What was supposed to have been a party became, instead, a memorial. About half a million people saw the Stones perform. Before they played, Jagger read out Shelley's poem Adonais, and 3,500 white butterflies were released..." from The Times Magazine
Until Death tramples it to fragments.(Earthly life colors["stains"] the pure white light of the One, which is the source of all light. The azure sky, flower, etc., exemplify earthly colors that, however beautiful, fall far short of the "glory" of the pure Light that they transmit but also refract["transfuse"])—Die, If thou wouldst be with that which thou dost seek!
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.
LV(55)
The breath whose might I have invok'd 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;
The massy earth and sphered skies are riven!
I am borne darkly, fearfully, afar;(Mary Shelley in 1839 asked: "Who but will regard as a prophecy the last stanza of the 'Adonais'?")
Whilst, burning through the inmost veil of Heaven,
The poem, which is in 495 lines in 55 Spenserian stanzas, was composed in the spring of 1821 immediately after 11 April, when Shelley heard of Keats' death (seven weeks earlier). It is a pastoral elegy, in the English tradition of John Milton's Lycidas. Shelley had studied and translated classical elegies.
It was published by Charles Ollier in July 1821 (see 1821 in poetry) with a preface in which Shelley made the mistaken assertion that Keats had died from a rupture of the lung induced by rage at the unfairly harsh reviews of his verse in the Quarterly Review and other journals.
The English Protestant Cemetery in Rome
Adonais
II(2)
Where wert thou, mighty Mother, when he lay,
When thy Son lay, pierc'd by the shaft which flies
In darkness?(the ananymity of the review of Endymion) where was lorn(forlorn)Urania(She had originally been the Muse of astronomy, but the name was also an epithet for Venus. Shelley converts Venus Urania into the mother of Adonais)
When Adonais died? With veiled eyes,
'Mid listening Echoes, in her Paradise
She sate, while one, with soft enamour'd breath,
Rekindled all the fading melodies,
With which, like flowers that mock the corse(corpse)beneath,
He had adorn'd and hid the coming bulk(A heap, or a dead body, carcase) of Death.
XXI(21)
Alas! that all we lov'd 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(low)
Meet mass'd 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.
XXXIV(34)
All stood aloof, and at his partial moan
Smil'd through their tears; well knew that gentle band
Who in another's fate now wept his own,
As in the accents of an unknown land
He sung new sorrow; sad Urania scann'd
The Stranger's mien, and murmur'd: "Who art thou?"
He answer'd not, but with a sudden hand
Made bare his branded and ensanguin'd(bloodied) brow,
Which was like Cain's or Christ's(like that which God had branded Cani for murdering Abel-or like that left by Christ's crown of thorns)—oh! that it should be so!
XXXIX(39)
Peace, peace! he is not dead, he doth not sleep,
He hath awaken'd from the dream of life;
'Tis we, who lost in stormy visions, keep
With phantoms an unprofitable strife,
And in 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,
And cold hopes swarm like worms within our living clay.
"On July 3, 1969, two days before the Rolling Stones were to headline a free music festival in Hyde Park, their former guitarist Brian Jones drowned in his swimming pool. What was supposed to have been a party became, instead, a memorial. About half a million people saw the Stones perform. Before they played, Jagger read out Shelley's poem Adonais, and 3,500 white butterflies were released..." from The Times Magazine
Until Death tramples it to fragments.(Earthly life colors["stains"] the pure white light of the One, which is the source of all light. The azure sky, flower, etc., exemplify earthly colors that, however beautiful, fall far short of the "glory" of the pure Light that they transmit but also refract["transfuse"])—Die, If thou wouldst be with that which thou dost seek!
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.
LV(55)
The breath whose might I have invok'd 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;
The massy earth and sphered skies are riven!
I am borne darkly, fearfully, afar;(Mary Shelley in 1839 asked: "Who but will regard as a prophecy the last stanza of the 'Adonais'?")
Whilst, burning through the inmost veil of Heaven,