11. 5, 6. And ever at thy season be thou free To spill the venom when thy fangs o’erflow. This keeps up the image of the ‘viperous’ murderer—­the viper.  ‘At thy season’ can be understood as a reference to the periodical issues of the Quarterly Review.  The word ‘o’erflow’ is, in the Pisan edition, printed as two words—­’o’er flow.’

1. 7. Remorse and self-contempt. Shelley frequently dwells upon self-contempt as one of the least tolerable of human distresses.  Thus in the Revolt of Islam (Canto 8, st. 20): 

’Yes, it is Hate—­that shapeless fiendly thing
Of many names, all evil, some divine—­
Whom self-contempt arms with a mortal sting,’ &c.

And in Prometheus Unbound (Act i)—­

’Regard this earth
Made multitudinous with thy slaves, whom thou
Requitest for knee-worship, prayer, and praise? 
And toil, and hecatombs of broken hearts,
With fear and self-contempt and barren hope.’

Again (Act ii, sc. 4)—­

‘And self-contempt, bitterer to drink than blood.’

+Stanza 38,+ 1. 1. Nor let us weep, &c.  So far as the broad current of sentiment is concerned, this is the turning-point of Shelley’s Elegy.  Hitherto the tone has been continuously, and through a variety of phases, one of mourning for the fact that Keats, the great poetical genius, is untimely dead.  But now the writer pauses, checks himself, and recognises that mourning is not the only possible feeling, nor indeed the most appropriate one.  As his thought expands and his rapture rises, he soon acknowledges that, so far from grieving for Keats who is dead, it were far more relevant to grieve for himself who is not dead.  This paean of recantation and aspiration occupies the remainder of the poem.

1. 2. These carrion kites. A term of disparagement corresponding nearly enough to the ‘ravens’ and ‘vultures’ of st. 28.

1. 3. He wakes or sleeps with the enduring dead. With such of the dead as have done something which survives themselves.  It will be observed that the phrase ‘he wakes or sleeps’ leaves the question of personal or individual immortality quite open.  As to this point see the remarks on p. 54, &c.

1. 4.  Thou canst not soar where he is sitting now.  This is again addressed to the ‘deaf and viperous murderer,’ regarded for the moment as a ‘carrion kite.’  As kites are eminently high flyers, the phrase here used becomes the more emphatic.  This line of Shelley’s is obviously adapted from a passage in Milton’s Paradise Lost, where Satan addresses the angels in Eden (Book 4)—­

’Ye knew me once, no mate
For you, there sitting where ye durst not soar.’

1. 5. The pure spirit shall flow, &c.  The spirit which once was the vital or mental essence—­the soul—­of Adonais came from the Eternal Soul, and, now that he is dead, is re-absorbed into the Eternal Soul:  as such, it is imperishable.