’Come, be happy,—­sit by me,
Shadow-vested Misery: 
Coy, unwilling, silent bride,
Mourning in thy robe of pride,
Desolation deified.’

There is also the briefer lyric named Death, 1817, which begins—­

’They die—­the dead return not.  Misery
Sits near an open grave, and calls them over,
A youth with hoary hair and haggard eye.’

11. 3, 4. ’Slake in thy hearts core A wound—­more fierce than his, with tears and sighs.’ Construe:  Slake with tears and sighs a wound in thy heart’s core—­a wound more fierce than his.’  See (p. 101) the remarks, apposite to st. 4, upon the use of inversion by Shelley.

1. 5. All the Dreams that watched Urania’s eyes. We had not hitherto heard of ‘Dreams’ in connexion with Urania, but only in connexion with Adonais himself.  These ‘Dreams that watched Urania’s eyes’ appear to be dreams in the more obvious sense of that word-visions which had haunted the slumbers of Urania.

1. 8. Swift as a thought by the snake memory stung. The context suggests that the ‘thought’ here in question is a grievous thought, and the term ‘the snake memory’ conveys therefore a corresponding impression of pain.  Shelley however had not the usual feeling of repulsion or abhorrence for snakes and serpents.  Various passages could be cited to prove this; more especially Canto 1 of The Revolt of Islam, where the Spirit of Good is figured under the form of a serpent.

1. 9. Front her ambrosial rest the fading Splendour sprung. Urania.  She is in her own nature a splendour, or celestial deity:  at the present moment her brightness is ‘fading,’ as being overcast by sorrow and dismay.  ‘Her ambrosial rest’ does not appear to signify anything more precise than ‘her rest, proper to an immortal being.’  The forms ’sprung, sung,’ &c. are constantly used by Shelley instead of ‘sprang, sang,’ &c.

+Stanza 23,+ 1. 5. Had left the Earth a corpse. Shelley, in this quasi-Greek poem, takes no count of the fact that the sun, when it ceases to illumine one part of the earth, is shining upon another part.  He treats the unillumined part as if it were the whole earth—­which has hereby become ‘a corpse.’

+Stanza 24,+ 1. 2, Through camps and cities, &c.  In highly figurative language, this stanza pictures the passage of Urania from ’her secret paradise’ to the death-chamber of Adonais in Rome, as if the spiritual essence and external form of the goddess were wounded by the uncongenial atmosphere of human malice and detraction through which she has to pass.  The whole description is spiritualized from that of Bion (p. 63):—­

’Wildered, ungirt, unsandalled—­the thorns pierce Her hastening feet, and drink her sacred blood.’

11. 4,5. The invisible Palms of her tender feet. Shelley more than once uses ‘palms’ for ‘soles’ of the feet.  See Prometheus Unbound, Act 4:—­