’Our feet now, every palm,
Are sandalled with calm’;

and The Triumph of Life:—­

’As she moved under the mass
Of the deep cavern, and, with palms so tender
Their tread broke not the mirror of the billow,
Glided along the river.’

Perhaps Shelley got this usage from the Italian:  in that language the web-feet of aquatic birds are termed ‘palme.’

11. 8, 9. Whose sacred blood, like the young tears of May, Paved with eternal flowers that undeserving way. The tears of May are rain-drops; young, because the year is not far advanced.  ‘That undeserving way’ seems a very poor expression.  See (p. 64) the passage from Bion:  ’A tear the Paphian sheds for each blood-drop of Adonis, and tears and blood on the earth are turned to flowers.’

+Stanza 25,+ 1. 3. Death ... blushed to annihilation. This very daring hyperbole will hardly bear—­nor does it want—­manipulation into prose.  Briefly, the nature of Death is to be pallid:  therefore Death, in blushing, abnegates his very nature, and almost ceases to be Death.

11. 3, 4. The breath Revisited those lips, &c.  As Death tended towards ‘annihilation,’ so Adonais tended towards revival.

1. 7. ’Silent lightning.’ This means, I suppose, lightning unaccompanied by thunder—­summer lightning.

+Stanza 26,+ 1. 1. ’Stay yet awhile.’ See Bion (p. 64):  ’Stay, Adonis! stay, dearest one!’

1. 2, ’Kiss me, so long but as a kiss may live.’ See as above:—­

’That I may kiss thee now for the last time—­ But for as long as one short kiss may live!’

1. 3. ’My heartless breast.’ Urania’s breast will henceforth be heartless, in the sense that, having bestowed her whole heart upon Adonais, she will have none to bestow upon any one else:  so I understand the epithet.

1. 4. ’That word, that kiss, shall all thoughts else survive,’ &c.  See Bion (p. 64):  ‘This kiss will I treasure,’ &c.

11. 7-9. ’I would give All that I am, to be as thou now art:—­But I am chained to Time, and cannot thence depart.’ Founded on Bion (p. 64):  ‘While wretched I yet live, being a goddess, and may not follow thee.’  The alteration of phrase is somewhat remarkable.  In Bion’s Elegy the Cyprian Aphrodite is ‘a goddess,’ and therefore immortal.  In Shelley’s Elegy the Uranian Aphrodite does not speak of herself under any designation of immortality or eternity, but as ‘chained to Time,’ and incapable of departing from Time.  As long as Time lives and operates, Urania must do the same.  The dead have escaped from the dominion of Time:  this Urania, cannot do.  There is a somewhat similar train of thought in Prometheus Unbound,—­where Prometheus the Titan, after enduring the torture of the Furies (Act 1), says—­

’Peace is in the grave: 
The grave holds all things beautiful and good,
I am a God, and cannot find it there.’