1. 3. Not so the eagle, &c.  The general statement in these lines is that Albion wails for the death of Keats more melodiously than the nightingale mourning for her lost mate, and more passionately than the eagle robbed of her young.  This statement has proved true enough in the long run:  when Shelley wrote, it was only prospectively or potentially true, for the death of Keats excited no immediate widespread concern in England.  It should be observed that, by introducing Albion as a figurative personage in his Elegy, Shelley disregards his emblematic Grecian youth Adonais, and goes straight to the actual Englishman Keats.  This passage, taken as a whole, is related to that of Moschus (p. 65) regarding the nightingale, the sea-bird, and the bird of Memnon; see also the passage, ‘and not for Sappho, but still for thee,’ &c.

11. 4, 5. Could nourish in the sun’s domain Her mighty youth with morning. This phrase seems to have some analogy to that of Milton in his Areopagitica:  ’Methinks I see in my mind a noble and puissant nation rousing herself like a strong man after sleep and shaking her invincible locks.  Methinks I see her as an eagle muing her mighty youth, and kindling her undazzled eyes at the full mid-day beam—­purging and unsealing her long-abused sight at the fountain itself of heavenly radiance.’

11. 7, 8. The curse of Cain Light on his head, &c.  An imprecation against the critic of Keats’s Endymion in the Quarterly Review:  see especially p. 39, &c.  The curse of Cain was that he should be ’a fugitive and a vagabond,’ as well as unsuccessful in tilling the soil.  Shelley probably pays no attention to these details, but simply means ‘the curse of murder.’

+Stanza 18,+ 11. 1, 2. Ah woe is me!  Winter is come and gone, But grief returns with the revolving year, &c.  See the passage in Moschus (p. 65):  ‘Ah me! when the mallows wither,’ &c.  The phrase in Bion has also a certain but restricted analogy to this stanza:  ’Thou must again bewail him, again must weep for him another year’ (p. 65).  As to the phrase ‘Winter is come and gone,’ see the note (p. 111) on ’Grief made the young Spring wild.’

1. 5. Fresh leaves and flowers deck the dead Seasons’ bier. This phrase is barely consistent with the statement (st. 16) as to Spring throwing down her kindling buds.  Perhaps, moreover, it was an error of print to give ‘Seasons’ in the plural:  ‘Season’s’ (meaning winter) would seem more accurate.  A somewhat similar idea is conveyed in one of Shelley’s lyrics, Autumn, a Dirge, written in 1820:—­

               ’And the Year
On the earth her death-bed, in a shroud of leaves dead,
                Is lying.’

1. 7. Brere. An antiquated form of the word briar.

1. 9. Like unimprisoned flames. Flames which, after being pent up within some substance or space, finally find a vent.