ADONAIS, perhaps the most widely read of Shelley's longer poems, is together with Milton's (Lycidas) the most highly wrought and finished of English elegies. Composed on the death of Keats, it has gained further pathos and interest from the fact that, as Mrs. Shelley pointed out, "it now seems more appli cable to Shelley himself than to the young and gifted poet whom he mourned.° When Keats died in Rome on 23 Feb. 1821, Shelley was moved not only by the early death of a poet whose work he admired, but also by the un founded report that Keats' health had broken down under the savage criticisms of his poetry in the Quarterly Review. This absurd notion accounts for certain passages in the preface to and for the five stanzas (27-29, 37-38) which attack the critics. The poem, which is in 55 Spenserian stanzas, was com posed between the middle of May and the middle of June 1821; it was first printed at Pisa by 13 July, and shortly afterward in London. Shelley, whose criticism of his own poems is almost infallible, said that in spite of its mysticism, is the least imper fect of my compositions"; that it was highly wrought piece of art"; and that he should be surprised "if that poem were born to all immortality of oblivion." But Adonais was ignored by the contemporary public; only posterity has placed it among the supreme treasures of English song.
The first portion of
which fol lows the classical tradition in the tone of its lament, is based primarily upon two famous Greek elegies, Bion's
"Adonais,' as a work of art, effects this evolution of life out of death, with more un consciousness, greater unity and steadfast tendency, with passion more spontaneous and irresistible, with melody more plaintive, elo quence more sweet and springing, imagination more comprehensive and sublime, than any other English elegy. It is artificial only to those whose minds are not yet familiarized with the language of imagery,— those to whom the gods of Greece speak an unknown tongue; it is cold only to those who confound personal grief with that universal sorrow for youthful death which has been the burden of elegy from the first; it is dark with metaphysics only to those who have not yet caught a single ray from the spirit of Plato" (Woodberry, Cambridge ed. Shelley's Poetical Works). The most elo quent expression of Shelley's philosophy of life and death is found in the latter portion of Here the poet utters at first a kind of pantheism, but from this, as if un satisfied with so impersonal an immortality, he finally passes into a rapturous assertion of immortality conscious and personal. The con cluding stanzas attain a majesty and splendor unsurpassed in English lyrical poetry. was edited by Rossetti (Clarendon Press 1891). Consult also Dr. Richard Acker mann, Quellen, Vorbilder, Stoffe zu Shelley's Poetischen Werken (1890) ; and Woodberry's introduction and notes in the Cambridge ed. of Shelley. MARION TUCKER.