+Stanza 8,+ 1. 3. The shadow of white Death, &c.  The use of ‘his’ and ‘her’ in this stanza is not wholly free from ambiguity.  In st. 7 Death was a male impersonation—­’kingly Death’ who ‘keeps his pale court.’  It may be assumed that he is the same in the present stanza.  Corruption, on the other hand, is a female impersonation:  she (not Death) must be the same as ‘the eternal Hunger,’ as to whom it is said that ’pity and awe soothe her pale rage.’  Premising this, we read:—­’Within the twilight chamber spreads apace the shadow of white Death, and at the door invisible Corruption waits to trace his [Adonais’s] extreme way to her [Corruption’s] dim dwelling-place; the eternal Hunger [Corruption] sits [at the door], but pity and awe soothe her pale rage, nor dares she,’ &c.  The unwonted phrase ‘his extreme way’ seems to differ in meaning little if at all from the very ordinary term ‘his last journey.’  The statement in this stanza therefore is that corruption does not assail Adonais lying on his deathbed; but will shortly follow his remains to the grave, the dim [obscure, lightless] abode of corruption itself.

11. 8, 9. Till darkness and the law Of change shall o’er his sleep the mortal curtain draw. Until the darkness of the grave and the universal law of change and dissolution shall draw the curtain of death over his sleep—­shall prove his apparent sleep to be veritable death.  The prolonged interchange in Adonais between the ideas of death and of sleep may remind us that Shelley opened with a similar contrast or approximation his first considerable (though in part immature) poem Queen Mab—­

’How wonderful is Death,—­
Death, and his brother Sleep!’ &c.

The mind may also revert to the noble passage in Byron’s Giaour—­

’He who hath bent him o’er the dead
Ere the first day of death is fled,’ &c.—­

though the idea of actual sleep is not raised in this admirably beautiful and admirably realistic description.  Perhaps the poem, of all others, in which the conception of death is associated with that of sleep with the most poignant pathos, is that of Edgar Poe entitled For Annie—­

’Thank Heaven, the crisis,
  The danger, is past,
And the lingering illness
  Is over at last,
And the fever called living
  Is conquered at last,’ &c.—­

where real death is spoken of throughout, in a series of exquisite and thrilling images, as being real sleep.  In Shelley’s own edition of Adonais, the lines which we are now considering are essentially different.  They run

’Till darkness and the law
Of mortal change shall fill the grave which is her maw.’

This is comparatively poor and rude.  The change to the present reading was introduced by Mrs. Shelley in her edition of Shelley’s Poems in 1839.  She gives no information as to her authority:  but there can be no doubt that at some time or other Shelley himself made the improvement.  See p. 33.