1. 7, The amorous deep. The depth of earth, or region of the dead; amorous, because, having once obtained possession of Adonais, it retains him in a close embrace, and will not restore him to the land of the living.  This passage has a certain analogy to that of Bion (p. 65), ’Not that he is loth to hear, but that the maiden of Hades will not let him go.’

+Stanza 4,+ 1. 1. Most musical of mourners. This phrase, applying to Urania, is one of those which might seem to favour the assumption that the deity here spoken of is the Muse Urania, and not Aphrodite Urania, But on this point see pp. 50 to 52.

1. 1. Weep again. The poem seems to indicate that Urania, slumbering, is not yet aware of the death of Adonais.  Therefore she cannot as yet have wept for his death:  but she may have wept in anticipation that he would shortly die, and thus can be now adjured to ‘weep again.’ (See also p. 143.)

1. 2. He died. Milton.

1. 4. When his country’s pride, &c.  Construe:  When the priest, the slave, and the liberticide, trampled his country’s pride, and mocked [it] with many a loathed rite of lust and blood.  This of course refers to the condition of public affairs and of court-life in the reign of Charles II.  The inversion in this passage is not a very serious one, although, for the sense, slightly embarrassing.  Occasionally Shelley conceded to himself great latitude in inversion:  as for instance in the Revolt of Islam, canto 3, st. 34,

’And the swift boat the little waves which bore Were cut by its keen keel, though slantingly,’

which means ’And the little waves, which bore the swift boat, were cut,’ &c.; also in the Ode to Naples, strophe 4,

      ’Florence, beneath the sun,
      Of cities fairest one,
Blushes within her bower for Freedom’s expectation.’

1. 8. His clear sprite. To substitute the word ‘sprite’ for ‘spirit,’ in an elevated passage referring to Milton, appears to me one of the least tolerable instances of make-rhyme in the whole range of English poetry.  ‘Sprite’ is a trivial and distorted misformation of ‘spirit’; and can only, I apprehend, be used with some propriety (at any rate, in modern poetry) in a more or less bantering sense.  The tricksy elf Puck may be a sprite, or even the fantastic creation Ariel; but neither Milton’s Satan nor Milton’s Ithuriel, nor surely Milton himself, could possibly be a sprite, while the limits of language and of common sense are observed.

1. 9. The third among the Sons of Light. At first sight this phrase might seem to mean ‘the third-greatest poet of the world’:  in which case one might suppose Homer and Shakespear to be ranked as the first and second.  But it may be regarded as tolerably clear that Shelley is here thinking only of epic poets; and that he ranges the epic poets according to a criterion of his own, which is