Adonais
ad-o-na'is, a poem by Percy Bysshe Shelley. The poem is an elegy on the death of Keats. The name Adonais was coined by Shelley, perhaps in imitation of an elegy on the death of Adonis by the classic poet Bion, a contemporary of Theocritus. This poem begins "I mourn for Adonis, beauteous Adonis is dead." The first line of Shelley's elegy is:
I weep for Adonais--he is dead!
This poem is regarded by critics as one of the three great English elegies, the others being Milton's Lycidas, and Tennyson's In Memoriam. While Lycidas surpasses it in perfection of execution, and In Memoriam is more profound, Adonais is considered by many the most beautiful. Shelley himself said of it, "The Adonais, in spite of its mysticism, is the least imperfect of my compositions."
QUOTATIONS.
But for our grief, as if it had not been,
And grief itself be mortal! Woe is me!
Whence are we, and why are we? of what scene
The actors or spectators? Great and mean
Meet massed in death, who lends what life must borrow.
Evening must usher night, night urge the morrow,
Month follow month with woe, and year wake year to sorrow.
When hope has kindled hope, and lured thee to the brink.
He hath awakened from the dream of life.
Stains the white radiance of eternity.