By Percy Bysshe Shelley (1821)
I weep for Adonais — he is dead!
Oh, weep for Adonais! though our tears
Thaw not the frost which binds so dear a head!
And thou, sad Hour, selected from all years
To mourn our loss, rouse thy obscure compeers,
And teach them thine own sorrow, say — “with me
Died Adonais; till the future dares
Forget the past, his fate and fame shall be
An echo and a light unto eternity!”
Peace, peace! he is not dead, he doth not sleep —
He hath awakened from the dream of life…
The One remains, the many change and pass;
Heaven’s light for ever shines, Earth’s shadows fly;
Life, like a dome of many-colour’d glass,
Stains the white radiance of Eternity,
Until Death tramples it to fragments. — Die,
If thou wouldst be with that which thou dost seek!
Originally published in Adonais: An Elegy on the Death of John Keats (1821) by Percy Bysshe Shelley. Public domain.
Analysis
Shelley’s elegy for Keats moves from personal lament to metaphysical consolation, using Spenserian stanzas to pace a rite of transfiguration. The poem first amplifies grief — calling on abstract Hours to mourn — then revises death as awakening, a Neoplatonic ascent from stained multiplicity to white radiance.
Yet the consolation is hard-won. “Adonais” keeps faith with the body’s pain even as it argues for the spirit’s release; its grandeur is ethical as much as metaphysical. Elegy becomes communal, enrolling the living into a fellowship of art that outlasts injury and rumor. To remember is to resist diminishment.