Adonais by Percy Bysshe Shelley
"Adonais" is an elegiac poem written by Percy Bysshe Shelley, commemorating the death of John Keats, a fellow poet. The poem opens with the narrator expressing profound grief for Adonais, invoking the Muse Urania to lament the loss of a talented yet unfulfilled poet. Set against a backdrop of nature's contrasts, the poem juxtaposes the cycle of life and death, illustrating how the beauty of spring coexists with the sorrow of mortality. Shelley personifies Death and depicts a mystical interaction with Urania, who represents inspiration and artistic creation.
As the poem unfolds, Adonais's fellow poets gather to mourn him, with one figure notably resembling both Cain and Christ, suggesting themes of suffering and redemption. The poem critiques the uncaring nature of the world, symbolized by a "poetically deaf serpent," while also celebrating the enduring spirit of the poet, who transcends death to join the celestial realm. Ultimately, "Adonais" reflects on the nature of existence, unity, and the legacy of creative spirits, inviting readers to contemplate their own relationship with mortality and the eternal. The poem stands as a testament to the power of art and memory in the face of loss.
Adonais by Percy Bysshe Shelley
First published: 1821
Type of work: Poetry
Type of plot: Mythic
Time of plot: 1818–1821 and mythic time
Locale: England, Rome, and mythic space
Principal Characters
The narrator , the speaker of the poemAdonais , a young poet and shepherdUrania , the Muse of great poetryDeath , a kingThe quick Dreams and the like , Adonais’s living thoughts, presented as sheep in his flockThe frail Form , a mourning poet and shepherdThe nameless worm , the serpent that murders AdonaisThe Fond wretch , a mourner whom the narrator orders to Rome
The Poem
The narrator proclaims grief for Adonais and calls upon the Muse Urania to wake and weep for her son, who died before fulfilling his great promise. In Rome, says the narrator, Adonais lies in his death chamber as if he were sleeping, with his flesh as yet uncorrupted. A shepherd-poet, Adonais is survived by his flock of dreams and other poetic thoughts, who mourn the one who fed them. Spring has come, but, as life returns throughout the natural world, sorrow also returns to those who know death. While worms eat corpses, flowers bloom atop the graves. The narrator questions the origin and purpose of humans, who recognize their individual mortality.
In stanza 22, Urania awakes. While she hastens to Adonais from her paradise, the hateful world wounds her feet, but her blood causes everlasting flowers to bloom. In the death chamber, Death vanishes momentarily when Urania arrives, and a glimmer of life returns to the corpse before, roused by Urania’s suffering, Death rises to meet her embrace. Exclaiming that she would join Adonais were she not bound to Time, Urania asks why he left his ordinary ways prematurely to face vile animals, such as vultures, and states that, when the sun rises, insects that live just one day flourish, only to die when the sun sets and the eternal stars can be seen.
Starting in stanza 30, Adonais’s fellow shepherds arrive from the mountains to mourn him. Most noticeable among them is a solitary figure, powerful in spirit but bleeding and weak in flesh. While that shepherd weeps, he recognizes his own destiny in Adonais’s, and, when Urania asks who he is, he suddenly pulls back his hood to reveal his resemblance to Cain, the first vagabond, or to Christ.
Stanza 36 begins a denunciation of the anonymous, poetically deaf serpent that, according to the narrator, poisoned Adonais and will grow still older and die unlamented. Within the denunciation comes the narrator’s effort to find joy amid the sorrow of the young poet’s death. Adonais’s spirit will return to the everlasting fountain of fire from which it came, unlike the serpent’s spirit. Leaving invective behind with stanza 40, the narrator declares that Death has died, not Adonais, who has achieved unity with the impersonal Power that animates nature and who has ascended to join other poets who died before they could reach on Earth the greatness that should have been theirs. Adonais will become the guiding spirit of Venus and shine amid the stars.
In stanza 47, the narrator asks who grieves for Adonais and, with one person in mind, calls him foolishly unhappy and urges that he travel to Rome. There, he will find a graveyard beside the decaying city wall, where an ancient pyramidal tomb stands beside more recent graves, including one that holds intensely personal meaning for the unhappy man. The narrator asks why people fear to become like Adonais: Unity abides, unchanging, while multiplicity changes and passes away. When death shatters life’s many-hued dome, eternity’s white light becomes visible. Finally, the narrator asks himself why he remains in his hopeless life. The eternal light shines on him, the narrator says, removing mortal clouds, and a freshening wind fills his soul’s sails and drives him far from the safety of land, while Adonais’s soul, an eternal star, guides him through the frightening dark.
Bibliography
Bieri, James. Percy Bysshe Shelley: A Biography. 2 vols. Newark: U of Delaware P, 2004–5. Print.
Elmore, Lauren T. "The Implications of Immortal Grief in Shelley's 'Adonais' and Keats's 'The Fall of Hyperion.'" Explicator 68.1 (2010): 15–18. Print.
Jackson, H. J. "The 'ai' in 'Adonais.'" Rev. of English Studies 62.257 (Nov. 2011): 777–84. Print.
Johnson, Paul. Intellectuals: From Marx and Tolstoy to Sartre and Chomsky. 1988. New York: Harper, 2007. Print.
Keats, John. Keats’s Poetry and Prose: Authoritative Texts, Criticism. Ed. Jeffrey N. Cox. New York: Norton, 2009. Print.
Knerr, Anthony D., ed. Shelley’s “Adonais”: A Critical Edition. New York: Columbia UP, 1984. Print.
Shelley, Percy Bysshe. Shelley’s Poetry and Prose: Authoritative Texts, Criticism. Ed. Donald H. Reiman, and Neil Fraistat. New York: Norton, 2002. Print.
Wroe, Ann. Being Shelley: The Poet's Search for Himself. London: Vintage, 2008. Print.