s, more dear Than those for whose disdain she pined
away Into a shadow of all sounds._ Echo is, in mythology, a Nymph who
was in love with Narcissus. He, being enamoured of his own beautiful
countenance, paid no heed to Echo, who consequently 'pined away into a
shadow of all sounds.' In this expression one may discern a delicate
double meaning. (1) Echo pined away into (as the accustomed phrase goes)
'a mere shadow of her former self.' (2) Just as a solid body, lighted by
the sun, casts, as a necessary concomitant, a shadow of itself, so a
sound, emitted under the requisite conditions, casts an echo of itself;
echo is, in relation to sound, the same sort of thing as shadow in
relation to substance.

11. 8, 9. _A drear Murmur, between their songs, is all the woodmen
hear._ Echo will not now repeat the songs of the woodmen; she merely
murmurs some snatches of the 'remembered lay' of Adonais.

+Stanza 16+, 1. 1. _Grief made the young Spring wild._ This introduction
of Spring may be taken as implying that Shelley supposed Keats to have
died in the Spring: but in fact he died in the Winter--23 February. As
to this point see pp. 30 and 96.

11. 1-3. _And she threw down Her kindling buds, as if she Autumn were,
Or they dead leaves._ This corresponds to a certain extent with the
phrases in Bion, 'the flowers are withered up with grief,' and 'yea all
the flowers are faded' (p. 64); and in Moschus, 'and in sorrow for thy
fall the trees cast down their fruit, and all the flowers have faded'
(p. 65). It may be worth observing that Shelley says--'As if she Autumn
were, _or_ they dead leaves' (not '_and_ they dead leaves'). He
therefore seems to present the act of Spring from two separate points of
view: (1) She threw down the buds, as if she had been Autumn, whose
office it is to throw down, and not to cherish and develope; (2) she
threw down the buds as if they had been, not buds of the nascent year,
but such dead leaves of the olden year as still linger on the spray when
Spring arrives,

1. 4. _For whom should she have waked the sullen Year?_ The year,
beginning on 1 January, may in a certain sense be conceived as sleeping
until roused by the call of Spring. But more probably Shelley here
treats the year as beginning on 25 March--which date would witness its
awakening, and practically its first existence.

11. 5-7. _To Phoebus was not Hyacinth so dear, Nor to himself Narcissus,
as to both Thou, Adonais; wan they stand and ser