Adonais Keats and Shelley were not intimate friends but the former had produced some poetry that was highly admired by Shelley, who was also deeply stirred up by the fierce criticism with which Keats's poems had been assailed. While it is not probable that this criticism was at all instrumental in causing the poet's death yet Shelley attributed it to that cause. From his preface to Adonais the following selection is taken: "John Keats was buried in the romantic and lonely cemetery of the Protestants in that city (Rome) under the pyramid which is the tomb of Cestius, and the massy walls and towers, now mouldering and desolate, which formed the circuit of ancient Rome. The cemetery is an open space among the ruins, covered in winter with violets and daisies. It might make one in love with death to think that one should be buried in so sweet a place.. The genius of the lamented person to whose memory I have dedicated these unworthy verses was not less delicate and fragile than it was beautiful; and where canker-worms abound what wonder if its young flower was blighted in the bud? The savage criticism on his Endymion, which appeared in the Quarterly Review produced the most violent effect on his susceptible mind. The agitation thus originated ended in the rupture of a blood vessel in the lungs; a rapid consumption ensued; and the succeeding acknowledgments, from more candid critics, of the true greatness of his powers, were ineffectual to heal the wound wantonly inflicted. . . ." The poem is a most artistic creation and one of the best Shelley wrote. It is formed on the model of the Idyls of Bion and it is evident that even in the title Shelley calls attention to Adonis in whose unfortunate death he sees a prototype of that of Keats. It is interesting to remember in this connection that by that terrible tragedy in the Gulf of Spezia the genius of Shelley himself was lost to the world but a few months after the poem was written and that much of the perfect elegy is equally applicable to its author. The poem is of uniform structure so far as the stanzas are concerned but each stanza is so varied in rhythm and rhyme that its exquisite music never grows monotonous. Each stanza has nine verses, eight of iambic pentameter, and the last, iambic hexameter Alexandrine. The rhyme scheme is uniform but curious and varied. sionally there are imperfect rhymes but they are not unpleasant and the reader soon learns to admire the long-sustained regularity of its ababbcbcc. This is the Spenserian stanza and it was a Осса great favorite with Lord Byron, the intimate friend of Shelley. Shelley's own opinion of his work is the general verdict: "The Adonais in spite of its mysticism is the least imperfect of my compositions. It is a highly wrought piece of art, and perhaps better in point of composition, than anything I have written." Adonais An Elegy on the Death of John Keats I weep for Adonais he is dead!1 O, weep for Adonais! though our tears Thaw not the frost which binds so dear a head! And thou, sad Hour, selected from all years To mourn our loss, rouse thy obscure3 com peers, And teach them thine own sorrow, say: with me Died Adonais; till the Future dares Forget the Past, his fate and fame shall be An echo and a light unto eternity! 1. The first line of Bion's lament for Adonais is: "I mourn for Adonis; beauteous Adonis is dead." 2. The hour in which Keats died. 3. Why are they obscure? |