of Adonais (Keats). But the more cogent argument
in favour of Aphrodite Urania is to be based upon
grounds of analogy or transfer, rather than upon any
reasons of antecedent probability. The part assigned
to Urania in Shelley’s Elegy is very closely
modelled upon the part assigned to Aphrodite in the
Elegy of Bion upon Adonis (see the section in this
volume, Bion and Moschus). What Aphrodite
Cypris does in the Adonis, that Urania does
in the Adonais. The resemblances are exceedingly
close, in substance and in detail: the divergences
are only such as the altered conditions naturally
dictate. The Cyprian Aphrodite is the bride of
Adonis, and as such she bewails him: the Uranian
Aphrodite is the mother of Adonais, and she laments
him accordingly. Carnal relationship and carnal
love are transposed into spiritual relationship and
spiritual love. The hands are the hands, in both
poems, of Aphrodite: the voices are respectively
those of Cypris and of Urania.
It is also worth observing that the fragmentary poem
of Shelley named Prince Athanase, written in
1817, was at first named Pandemos and Urania;
and was intended, as Mrs. Shelley informs us, to embody
the contrast between ‘the earthly and unworthy
Venus,’ and the nobler ideal of love, the heaven-born
or heaven-sent Venus. The poem would thus have
borne a certain relation to Alastor, and also
to Epipsychidion. The use of the name
‘Urania’ in this proposed title may help
to confirm us in the belief that there is no reason
why Shelley should not have used the same name in
Adonais with the implied meaning of Aphrodite
Urania.
On the whole I am strongly of opinion that the Urania
of Adonais is Aphrodite, and not the Muse.
GENERAL EXPOSITION.
The consideration which, in the preceding section,
we have bestowed upon the ‘Argument’ of
Adonais will assist us not a little in grasping
the full scope of the poem. It may be broadly
divided into three currents of thought, or (as one
might say) into three acts of passion. I. The
sense of grievous loss in the death of John Keats
the youthful and aspiring poet, cut short as he was
approaching his prime; and the instinctive impulse
to mourning and desolation. 2. The mythical or
symbolic embodiment of the events in the laments of
Urania and the Mountain Shepherds, and in the denunciation
of the ruthless destroyer of the peace and life of
Adonais. 3. The rejection of mourning as one-sided,
ignorant, and a reversal of the true estimate of the
facts; and a recognition of the eternal destiny of
Keats in the world of mind, coupled with the yearning
of Shelley to have done with the vain shows of things
in this cycle of mortality, and to be at one with Keats
in the mansions of the everlasting. Such is the
evolution of this Elegy; from mourning to rapture:
from a purblind consideration of deathly phenomena
to the illumination of the individual spirit which
contemplates the eternity of spirit as the universal
substance.
