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Adonais
Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822) was one of the major English Romantic poets and is widely considered to be among the finest lyric poets of the English language. He received his early education at home, tutored by Reverend Evan Edwards of Warnham. In 1802, he entered the Syon House Academy of Brentford. He was routinely bullied while he was there, both because of his "girlish" appearance and his family's aristocratic ties. Shelley's unconventional life and uncompromising idealism, combined with his strong skeptical voice, made him a notorious and much denigrated figure during his life. Distracted by political events, he visited Ireland in order to engage in radical pamphleteering where he wrote the Address to the Irish People. His activities earned him the unfavourable attention of the British government. His first publication was a Gothic novel, Zastrozzi (1810). He is most famous for such anthology pieces as Ozymandias, Ode to the West Wind (1819) and To a Skylark (1820). His major works were long visionary poems including Alastor (1815), The Revolt of Islam (1817) and Adonais (1821).
144 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1821
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About the author
Percy Bysshe Shelley
1,614 books1,392 followersWorks of Percy Bysshe Shelley, British romantic poet, include "To a Skylark" in 1820;
Prometheus Unbound
, the lyric drama; and "Adonais," an elegy of 1821 to John Keats.
The Cenci , work of art or literature of Percy Bysshe Shelley of 1819, depicts Beatrice Cenci, Italian noblewoman.
People widely consider Percy Bysshe Shelley among the finest majors of the English language. He is perhaps most famous for such anthology pieces as Ozymandias , Ode to the West Wind , and The Masque of Anarchy . His major long visionary Alastor , The Revolt of Islam , and the unfinished The Triumph of Life .
Unconventional life and uncompromising idealism of Percy Bysshe Shelley combined with his strong skeptical voice to make an authoritative and much denigrated figure during his life. He became the idol of the next two or three generations, the major Victorian and Pre-Raphaelite Robert Browning, Alfred Tennyson, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Algernon Charles Swinburne, as well as William Butler Yeats and in other languages, such as Jibanananda Das and Subramanya Bharathy . Karl Marx, Henry Stephens Salt, and [authorm:Bertrand Russell] also admired him. Famous for his association with his contemporaries Lord Byron, he also married Mary Shelley, novelist.
The Cenci , work of art or literature of Percy Bysshe Shelley of 1819, depicts Beatrice Cenci, Italian noblewoman.
People widely consider Percy Bysshe Shelley among the finest majors of the English language. He is perhaps most famous for such anthology pieces as Ozymandias , Ode to the West Wind , and The Masque of Anarchy . His major long visionary Alastor , The Revolt of Islam , and the unfinished The Triumph of Life .
Unconventional life and uncompromising idealism of Percy Bysshe Shelley combined with his strong skeptical voice to make an authoritative and much denigrated figure during his life. He became the idol of the next two or three generations, the major Victorian and Pre-Raphaelite Robert Browning, Alfred Tennyson, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Algernon Charles Swinburne, as well as William Butler Yeats and in other languages, such as Jibanananda Das and Subramanya Bharathy . Karl Marx, Henry Stephens Salt, and [authorm:Bertrand Russell] also admired him. Famous for his association with his contemporaries Lord Byron, he also married Mary Shelley, novelist.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 52 reviews
September 8, 2016
Keats died. Shelley wrote this poem as recognition of the man’s talent. But the poem transcends the simple surfaces of its creation. Keats is the poet in question, though Shelley addresses a sense of universality in the term poet. It is not just about Keats: it is about the way the poetic “mind strips the veil of familiarity from the world and lays bare the naked beauty.”
This is a celebration of all poetry. Poets are the harbingers of history; they tell a story by capturing a moment, or several moments, forever fixed in time: they offer a lens to see the world through. And Shelley recognised this as a form of divinity. Shelly was an atheist. For him the existence of God (or Gods) couldn’t be proven. So he looked elsewhere. He followed in the footsteps of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and saw the poetic imagination as the highest potential for the human mind. For Shelley this was a thing born of divinity.
He saw it in Keats. He felt it in Keats’s death, and he knew that he’d have to die young to achieve the same renown. When Byron, and a few friends, burnt the body of Shelley, they plucked his heart from the flames and wrapped it in the manuscript pages of Adonais, I think Shelley would have approved.
This is a celebration of all poetry. Poets are the harbingers of history; they tell a story by capturing a moment, or several moments, forever fixed in time: they offer a lens to see the world through. And Shelley recognised this as a form of divinity. Shelly was an atheist. For him the existence of God (or Gods) couldn’t be proven. So he looked elsewhere. He followed in the footsteps of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and saw the poetic imagination as the highest potential for the human mind. For Shelley this was a thing born of divinity.
He saw it in Keats. He felt it in Keats’s death, and he knew that he’d have to die young to achieve the same renown. When Byron, and a few friends, burnt the body of Shelley, they plucked his heart from the flames and wrapped it in the manuscript pages of Adonais, I think Shelley would have approved.
August 15, 2020
اگر من بمیرم و دوستام برام همچین مرثیهای ننویسن تا ابد و ابد haunt شون میکنم تا یاد بگیرن این تو بمیری از اون تو بمیریها نیست.
December 10, 2015
IX
Oh, weep for Adonais!-- The quick Dreams,
The passion-winged Ministers of thought,
Who were his flocks, whom near the living streams
Of his young spirit he fed, and whom he taught
The love which was its music, wander not,--
Wander no more, from kindling brain to brain,
But droop there, whence they sprung; and mourn their lot
Round the cold heart, where, after their sweet pain,
They ne'er will gather strength, or find a home again.
"Adonais" is a profoundly beautiful poem addressing the death of John Keats, who was certainly a contemporary of Shelley. It is a poignant and flowery set of verses about a poet that means a lot personally to me because of the impact of his poetry, so how could I not enjoy this poem? Also contains some potent words agains Keats' critics.
Oh, weep for Adonais!-- The quick Dreams,
The passion-winged Ministers of thought,
Who were his flocks, whom near the living streams
Of his young spirit he fed, and whom he taught
The love which was its music, wander not,--
Wander no more, from kindling brain to brain,
But droop there, whence they sprung; and mourn their lot
Round the cold heart, where, after their sweet pain,
They ne'er will gather strength, or find a home again.
"Adonais" is a profoundly beautiful poem addressing the death of John Keats, who was certainly a contemporary of Shelley. It is a poignant and flowery set of verses about a poet that means a lot personally to me because of the impact of his poetry, so how could I not enjoy this poem? Also contains some potent words agains Keats' critics.
December 19, 2018
This is a masterpiece and a half. It was so moving to read Shelley's lament of the passing of the poet John Keats. Considering how young he died, it was filled with despair at losing a light so soon, yet contemplative of death itself and how those who are left behind handle it.
Shelley's references to Keats being beyond the pain and suffering of humans struck a chord with me. That he's become a part of the Nature that he loved and wrote about - beautiful.
It's such a stunning form of art and honestly, I'm still a bit speechless after reading it and moved by his praise. What a perfect way to remember someone's life and work.
Shelley's references to Keats being beyond the pain and suffering of humans struck a chord with me. That he's become a part of the Nature that he loved and wrote about - beautiful.
It's such a stunning form of art and honestly, I'm still a bit speechless after reading it and moved by his praise. What a perfect way to remember someone's life and work.
August 19, 2015
"Where wert thou, mighty Mother, when he lay,
When thy Son lay, pierc'd by the shaft which flies
In darkness?"
" He will awake no more, oh, never more!
Within the twilight chamber spreads apace
The shadow of white Death, and at the door
Invisible Corruption waits to trace
His extreme way to her dim dwelling-place;
The eternal Hunger sits, but pity and awe
Soothe her pale rage, nor dares she to deface
So fair a prey, till darkness and the law
Of change shall o'er his sleep the mortal curtain draw."
When thy Son lay, pierc'd by the shaft which flies
In darkness?"
" He will awake no more, oh, never more!
Within the twilight chamber spreads apace
The shadow of white Death, and at the door
Invisible Corruption waits to trace
His extreme way to her dim dwelling-place;
The eternal Hunger sits, but pity and awe
Soothe her pale rage, nor dares she to deface
So fair a prey, till darkness and the law
Of change shall o'er his sleep the mortal curtain draw."
June 1, 2017
مرثية رعوية في الشاعر الإنجليزي جون كيتس .. أعجبني هذا المقطع تحديدا :
XXVI
"Stay yet awhile! speak to me once again;
Kiss me, so long but as a kiss may live;
And in my heartless breast and burning brain
That word, that kiss, shall all thoughts else survive,
With food of saddest memory kept alive,
Now thou art dead, as if it were a part
Of thee, my Adonais! I would give
All that I am to be as thou now art!
But I am chain'd to Time, and cannot thence depart!
XXVI
"Stay yet awhile! speak to me once again;
Kiss me, so long but as a kiss may live;
And in my heartless breast and burning brain
That word, that kiss, shall all thoughts else survive,
With food of saddest memory kept alive,
Now thou art dead, as if it were a part
Of thee, my Adonais! I would give
All that I am to be as thou now art!
But I am chain'd to Time, and cannot thence depart!
November 3, 2024
3,5 ⭐️
February 7, 2024
“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.”
Perhaps it hit so hard because I read it in very particular circumstances. The rhythm, the composition - breathtaking! To die and have an elegy like this written about you is really not the worst way to go.
Incredible.
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.”
Perhaps it hit so hard because I read it in very particular circumstances. The rhythm, the composition - breathtaking! To die and have an elegy like this written about you is really not the worst way to go.
Incredible.
January 2, 2015
The One remains, the many change and pass;
Heaven's light forever shines,
Earth's shadows fly;
Life, like a dome of many-coloured glass,
Stains the white radiance of Eternity,
Until Death tramples it to fragments. - Die,I
If thou wouldst be with that which thou dost seek!
Follow where all is fled! - Rome's azure sky,
Flowers, ruins, statues, music, words, are weak
The glory they transfuse with fitting truth to speak.
Heaven's light forever shines,
Earth's shadows fly;
Life, like a dome of many-coloured glass,
Stains the white radiance of Eternity,
Until Death tramples it to fragments. - Die,I
If thou wouldst be with that which thou dost seek!
Follow where all is fled! - Rome's azure sky,
Flowers, ruins, statues, music, words, are weak
The glory they transfuse with fitting truth to speak.
September 26, 2025
Lectura para literatura inglesa.
Es bellísimo. El dolor de poner en palabras la pérdida de alguien cercano, el embellecer algo tan oscuro como la muerte, el poner en palabras algo tan abstracto y angustiante como lo es el no-ser-más de ese ser amado que ha fallecido... sin palabras.
Es bellísimo. El dolor de poner en palabras la pérdida de alguien cercano, el embellecer algo tan oscuro como la muerte, el poner en palabras algo tan abstracto y angustiante como lo es el no-ser-más de ese ser amado que ha fallecido... sin palabras.
December 14, 2019
"lost angel of a ruined paradise!"
March 3, 2018
It's a beautiful poem, albeit a bit long and a bit rambling in places. It's easy to see why Shelley is considered a master of the craft of poetry.
February 26, 2024
rip john keats he would've love adonais.
-
Ah woe is me! Winter is come and gone,
But grief returns with the revolving year.
-
Ah woe is me! Winter is come and gone,
But grief returns with the revolving year.
January 7, 2024
‘Adonais’, one of the finest poems ever penned by a poet, is classical, firstly, in its pastoral character. In writing it Shelley made use of two ancient Greek poems in the pastoral tradition of Theocritus. The first is the ‘Elegy of Adonis’ written by Bion, a pastoral poet, who was an imitator of Theocritus.
Shelley at times duplicates Bion's lament for Adonis meticulously, predominantly in the opening.
The second Greek poem is the ‘Elegy for Bion’, written by Moschus, who had been a pupil of Bion. In this elegy, Bion is alleged to have been cruelly poisoned by an unknown hand.
The form of Shelley's poem is thus the pastoral elegy which began with Bion's Lament for Adonis and Moschus's Lament for Bion, Greek poems of the 1st and 2nd century B.C. respectively. Spenser's lament for Sir Philip Sidney, Astrophel, and Milton's lament for Edward King, Lycidas, continue this custom of pastoral elegy which culminates in Shelley's Adonais.
Shelley's imaginings and metaphors in Adonais is both opulent as wqell as varied. We not only have here nonconcrete and otherworldly images so representative of Shelley's poetic mastermind, but also discover several concrete and tangible images. Some of the images are brilliantly colourful and opulent.
More than most his greatest verses, finest poems, Shelley's imagery here gives evidence of his fertile and winged imagination.
The poem contains one of the most illustrious images in all of Shelley's poetry. We are told that the ‘Divine Spirit’ is eternal, while the individual human lives are transitory:
"The One remains, the many change and pass".
The image which has become impartially prominent in all od Shelley’s canon is:
Life, like a dome of many-coloured glass,
Stains the white radiance of Eternity,
Until Death tramples it to fragments……….
This image has been called the best concise expression of Platonism in English verse.
While we live, Life with its diversity of momentary arrangements incompletely hides the static directness of Eternity, just as a coloured glass roof above our heads partially covers the vivacity, of the sky. Death is the devastating of the roof, which eliminates the illusory presence and shows us the sky as it really is.
The general imagery of this poem, then, is wide-ranging. Shelley explores folklore, antiquity, memoire, the Bible, Platonic thinking, and pantheistic principles so as to find imageries which would best define his thoughts and feelings.
The poet’s imagination travels from earth to heaven, and from heaven to earth, and on earth from England to Italy, in search of material for his metaphors. Especially, the imagery of Nature makes a rich contribution to the entire conclusion of the poem.
It is dazzling. Read it at least once in your lifetime guys!!
Shelley at times duplicates Bion's lament for Adonis meticulously, predominantly in the opening.
The second Greek poem is the ‘Elegy for Bion’, written by Moschus, who had been a pupil of Bion. In this elegy, Bion is alleged to have been cruelly poisoned by an unknown hand.
The form of Shelley's poem is thus the pastoral elegy which began with Bion's Lament for Adonis and Moschus's Lament for Bion, Greek poems of the 1st and 2nd century B.C. respectively. Spenser's lament for Sir Philip Sidney, Astrophel, and Milton's lament for Edward King, Lycidas, continue this custom of pastoral elegy which culminates in Shelley's Adonais.
Shelley's imaginings and metaphors in Adonais is both opulent as wqell as varied. We not only have here nonconcrete and otherworldly images so representative of Shelley's poetic mastermind, but also discover several concrete and tangible images. Some of the images are brilliantly colourful and opulent.
More than most his greatest verses, finest poems, Shelley's imagery here gives evidence of his fertile and winged imagination.
The poem contains one of the most illustrious images in all of Shelley's poetry. We are told that the ‘Divine Spirit’ is eternal, while the individual human lives are transitory:
"The One remains, the many change and pass".
The image which has become impartially prominent in all od Shelley’s canon is:
Life, like a dome of many-coloured glass,
Stains the white radiance of Eternity,
Until Death tramples it to fragments……….
This image has been called the best concise expression of Platonism in English verse.
While we live, Life with its diversity of momentary arrangements incompletely hides the static directness of Eternity, just as a coloured glass roof above our heads partially covers the vivacity, of the sky. Death is the devastating of the roof, which eliminates the illusory presence and shows us the sky as it really is.
The general imagery of this poem, then, is wide-ranging. Shelley explores folklore, antiquity, memoire, the Bible, Platonic thinking, and pantheistic principles so as to find imageries which would best define his thoughts and feelings.
The poet’s imagination travels from earth to heaven, and from heaven to earth, and on earth from England to Italy, in search of material for his metaphors. Especially, the imagery of Nature makes a rich contribution to the entire conclusion of the poem.
It is dazzling. Read it at least once in your lifetime guys!!
April 23, 2019
Maybe it's because I was half-awake while reading it, but this has to be one of the hardest pieces of literature I've read yet. The vocabulary isn't that bad, albeit with archaic variations. I read a version with footnotes explaining all the allusions, so that wasn't bad either. The elegy is also split up into short stanzas, so there are easy resting places and it's not that long overall. However, it's the construction of the elegy which makes it so difficult. Shelley continuously builds up on previous stanzas, switching between personifications, and it can be difficult to follow who or what is currently being talked about (though mostly "who" since everything is personified). The beginning is very strong and moving since it's the Ode to Keats, but the second half can be difficult since it becomes more abstract and dealing with themes like transcendence. I later read two essays and it seems Shelley was working on multiple levels here, transforming old works, using a false premise for Keats's death to vent his own feelings, and exploring the idea of the poet and the meaning of life itself. It's so dense, no wonder it was so troubling. Still, I can very much appreciate the writing, and Shelley was clearly a genius in this right. I hope to read Alastor next and maybe get a better rounded view of the other romanticists.
June 8, 2022
It's funny. I was reading this elegy written by Shelley, who wrote it when he was 29, for Keats, who died when he was 24(!). Here's the problem with education today: when our smartest people are in their most productive years, instead of writing great poetical works, they are sweating bullets of master's theses and dissertations that no one is every going to read.
This makes sense if they are in fields like organic chemistry, or computer engineering, but no sense at all if they are in literature. Why are we making potential future authors waste their time analyzing old works when they could be making new ones?
This is the problem with an education in the humanities in this day and age. Shelley, Byron, Keats, they NEVER would have been allowed to do today what they were able to do back then.
This makes sense if they are in fields like organic chemistry, or computer engineering, but no sense at all if they are in literature. Why are we making potential future authors waste their time analyzing old works when they could be making new ones?
This is the problem with an education in the humanities in this day and age. Shelley, Byron, Keats, they NEVER would have been allowed to do today what they were able to do back then.
August 30, 2023
What an elegy - Shelley envisions with the greatest sincerity Keats as an unjustly maligned great poet for whom death is merely a passage to an eternal fellowship with the greatest of poets. 'Adonais' weaves so tightly into its texture Keats' poetry that every act of reading brings Keats alive again through the rise and fall of the poetic breath.
Picked this poem up, by the way, as I was remembering a friend lost too young and too soon, and so some lines in memory of him from the poem:
Picked this poem up, by the way, as I was remembering a friend lost too young and too soon, and so some lines in memory of him from the poem:
He has outsoared the shadow of our night;
Envy and calumny and hate and pain,
And that unrest which men miscall delight,
Can touch him not and torture not again;
From the contagion of the world's slow stain
He is secure, and now can never mourn
A heart grow cold, a head grown grey in vain
August 5, 2025
“XVIII
Ah, woe is me! Winter is come and gone,
But grief returns with the revolving year;
The airs and streams renew their joyous tone;
The ants, the bees, the swallows reappear;
Fresh leaves and flowers deck the dead Seasons' bier;
The amorous birds now pair in every brake,
And build their mossy homes in field and brere;
And the green lizard, and the golden snake,
Like unimprison'd flames, out of their trance awake”
A stunning and beautiful work of poetry, well suited for those who have loved and lost deeply, and walked through the shadows of grief.
Ah, woe is me! Winter is come and gone,
But grief returns with the revolving year;
The airs and streams renew their joyous tone;
The ants, the bees, the swallows reappear;
Fresh leaves and flowers deck the dead Seasons' bier;
The amorous birds now pair in every brake,
And build their mossy homes in field and brere;
And the green lizard, and the golden snake,
Like unimprison'd flames, out of their trance awake”
A stunning and beautiful work of poetry, well suited for those who have loved and lost deeply, and walked through the shadows of grief.
Read
November 27, 2025“Peace, peace! he is not dead, he doth not sleep,
He hath awaken'd from the dream of life;
'Tis we, who lost in stormy visions, keep
With phantoms an unprofitable strife,
And in mad trance, strike with our spirit's knife
Invulnerable nothings. We decay
Like corpses in a charnel; fear and grief
Convulse us and consume us day by day,
And cold hopes swarm like worms within our
living clay.”
He hath awaken'd from the dream of life;
'Tis we, who lost in stormy visions, keep
With phantoms an unprofitable strife,
And in mad trance, strike with our spirit's knife
Invulnerable nothings. We decay
Like corpses in a charnel; fear and grief
Convulse us and consume us day by day,
And cold hopes swarm like worms within our
living clay.”
April 2, 2024
Not Just Shelley’s Superb Elegiac Poem
This isnt just the poem Adonais: it is an excellent exposition of the poem and analysis of structure and content. The poem is highly regarded ( and justifiably so) as one of Shelleys finest works.
This does it justice in its thorough and fair scrutiny of the work.
This isnt just the poem Adonais: it is an excellent exposition of the poem and analysis of structure and content. The poem is highly regarded ( and justifiably so) as one of Shelleys finest works.
This does it justice in its thorough and fair scrutiny of the work.
August 8, 2023
"All he had loved, and moulded into thought,
From shape, and hue, and odour, and sweet sound,
Lamented Adonais. Morning sought
Her eastern watch-tower, and her hair unbound,
Wet with the tears which should adorn the ground,
Dimmed the aereal eyes that kindle day;"
From shape, and hue, and odour, and sweet sound,
Lamented Adonais. Morning sought
Her eastern watch-tower, and her hair unbound,
Wet with the tears which should adorn the ground,
Dimmed the aereal eyes that kindle day;"
January 22, 2024
Αψεγάδιαστη σύνθεση, όπου ούτε μια στροφή δεν φαντάζει πλημμελής και όπου ούτε μια ρίμα περισσεύει ή ολιγωρεί.
Επί της ουσίας, ένας Επιτάφιος στον τότε προσφάτως θανόντα Keats, απ' τον μεγαλύτερο Ρομαντικό Άγγλο ποιητή μετά τον Βύρωνα.
Επί της ουσίας, ένας Επιτάφιος στον τότε προσφάτως θανόντα Keats, απ' τον μεγαλύτερο Ρομαντικό Άγγλο ποιητή μετά τον Βύρωνα.
December 28, 2024
i would love this more if it wasn't semi-autobiographical. shelley did not need to make the elegy of the death of his friend about himself idc all the people who are up shelley's bum can kiss mine. #all the homies hate percy shelley.
June 13, 2018
"no more let life divide what death can join together"
November 12, 2020
Snuggle up to this epic poem of love, mourning, and sadness. Beautifully written, typical of Shelley.
September 1, 2021
One dies while another is born.
September 21, 2021
so good--a true classic on how it is done.
Very worth reading!
Very worth reading!
January 14, 2022
Sé tú mismo y conócete cual eres,
y cuando llegue la hora y se desborden
tus colmillos descarga tu ponzoña
asco y remordimiento irán contigo.
y cuando llegue la hora y se desborden
tus colmillos descarga tu ponzoña
asco y remordimiento irán contigo.
April 14, 2022
I listened to this by the ever wonderful Vincent Price.
November 21, 2022
If you can count on Percy Shelley for one thing, it's that he will ALWAYS bring the drama.
A good audio version of this poem is available on YouTube & it is a poem meant to be read aloud.
A good audio version of this poem is available on YouTube & it is a poem meant to be read aloud.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 52 reviews