s eventually poured forth in the _Lamia_ volume, and
especially (as our poet opined) in _Hyperion_. But now Keats's hand is
cold in death, and his lyre unstrung. As I have already observed--see p.
35, &c.--Shelley was mistaken in supposing that the _Quarterly Review_
had held a monopoly of 'envy, hate, and wrong'--or, as one might now
term them, detraction, spite, and unfairness--in reference to Keats.

+Stanza 37,+ 1. 4. _But be thyself, and know thyself to be!_ The precise
import of this line is not, I think, entirely plain at first sight. I
conceive that we should take the line as immediately consequent upon the
preceding words--'Live thou, live!' Premising this, one might amplify
the idea as follows; 'While Keats is dead, be it thy doom, thou his deaf
and viperous murderer, to live! But thou shalt live in thine own
degraded identity, and shalt thyself be conscious how degraded thou
art.' Another suggestion might be that the words 'But be thyself are
equivalent to 'Be but thyself.'

11. 5, 6. _And ever at thy season be thou free To spill the venom when
thy fangs o'erflow._ This keeps up the image of the 'viperous'
murderer--the viper. 'At thy season' can be understood as a reference to
the periodical issues of the _Quarterly Review_. The word 'o'erflow' is,
in the Pisan edition, printed as two words--'o'er flow.'

1. 7. _Remorse and self-contempt._ Shelley frequently dwells upon
self-contempt as one of the least tolerable of human distresses.
Thus in the _Revolt of Islam_ (Canto 8, st. 20):

'Yes, it is Hate--that shapeless fiendly thing
Of many names, all evil, some divine--
Whom self-contempt arms with a mortal sting,' &c.

And in _Prometheus Unbound_ (Act i)--

'Regard this earth
Made multitudinous with thy slaves, whom thou
Requitest for knee-worship, prayer, and praise?
And toil, and hecatombs of broken hearts,
With fear and self-contempt and barren hope.'

Again (Act ii, sc. 4)--

'And self-contempt, bitterer to drink than blood.'

+Stanza 38,+ 1. 1. _Nor let us weep,_ &c. So far as the broad current of
sentiment is concerned, this is the turning-point of Shelley's Elegy.
Hitherto the tone has been continuously, and through a variety of
phases, one of mourning for the fact that Keats, the great poetical
genius, is untimely dead. But now the writer pauses, checks himself, and
recognises that mourning is not the only possible feeling, nor indeed
the most appropriate one. As his thou