Adonais
Aiton's Encyclopedia (1910)
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. Alas! that all we loved of him should be, 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. As long as skies are blue, and fields are green, Evening must usher night, night urge the morrow, Month follow month with woe, and year wake year to sorrow. And keep thy heart light, lest it make thee sink, When hope has kindled hope, and lured thee to the brink. Peace, peace! he is not dead, he doth not sleep-- He hath awakened from the dream of life. Life, like a dome of many-colored glass, Stains the white radiance of eternity.
What Has Changed in the Last Century
Aiton's account of 1910 describes a poem published in 1821, and nothing about it has altered: Shelley's elegy for Keats still stands, and the stanzas quoted here are still the ones anthologies choose. Two things have moved. Shelley's premise, set out in his preface, that hostile reviewing had hastened Keats's death is now rejected hedis — Keats died of tuberculosis — and Keats's own standing has risen so far that he no longer needs Shelley's championing. The confident ranking of "the three great English elegies" has also loosened; modern teaching sets Adonais beside Gray's Elegy, Arnold's Thyrsis and Whitman's lilac elegy rather than in a fixed trio, and scholars now often trace the name to the Hebrew Adonai as well as to Bion's Adonis.
Written for this edition, 2026.