resented as a dream, so the state of
existence in which it is enacted is here figured as night.

1. 5. _From the contagion of the world's slow stain._ It may be said
that 'the world's slow stain'--the lowering influence of the aims and
associations of all ordinary human life--is the main subject-matter of
Shelley's latest important poem, _The Triumph of Life._

1. 9. _With sparkless ashes._ See the cognate expression, 'thy cold
embers,' in st. 38.

+Stanza 41,+ 1. 1. _He lives, he wakes--'tis Death is dead, not he._ In
the preceding three stanzas Adonais is contemplated as being alive,
owing to the very fact that his death has awakened him 'from the dream
of life'--mundane life. Death has bestowed upon him a vitality superior
to that of mundane life. Death therefore has performed an act contrary
to his own essence as death, and has practically killed, not Adonais,
but himself.

1. 2. _Thou young Dawn._ We here recur to the image in st. 14, 'Morning
sought her eastern watch-tower,' &c.

1. 5. _Ye caverns and ye forests_, &c. The poet now adjures the caverns,
forests, flowers, fountains, and air, to 'cease to moan.' Of the flowers
we had heard in st. 16: but the other features of Nature which are now
addressed had not previously been individually mentioned--except, to
some extent, by implication, in st. 15, which refers more directly to
'Echo.' The reference to the air had also been, in a certain degree,
prepared for in stanza 23. The stars are said to smile on the Earth's
despair. This does not, I apprehend, indicate any despair of the Earth
consequent on the death of Adonais, but a general condition of woe. A
reference of a different kind to stars--a figurative reference--appears
in st. 29.

+Stanza 42,+ 1. 1. _He is made one with Nature._ This stanza ascribes to
Keats the same phase of immortality which belongs to Nature. Having
'awakened from the dream of [mundane] life,' his spirit forms an
integral portion of the universe. Those acts of intellect which he
performed in the flesh remain with us, as thunder and the song of the
nightingale remain with us.

11. 6, 7. _Where'er that power may move Which has withdrawn his being to
its own._ This corresponds to the expression in st. 38--'The pure spirit
shall flow Back to the burning fountain whence it came, A portion of the
Eternal.'

1. 8. _Who wields the world with never wearied love_, &c. These two
lines are about the nearest approach to definite Theism to be