11. 5, 6. Die, If thou wouldst be with that which thou dost seek. This phrase is addressed by the poet to anybody, and more especially to himself.  As in stanza 38—­’The pure spirit shall flow Back to the burning fountain whence it came, A portion of the Eternal.’

11. 7-9. Rome’s azure sky, Flowers, ruins, statues, music, words, are weak The glory thy transfuse with fitting truth to speak. I follow here the punctuation of the Pisan edition—­with a comma after ‘words,’ as well as after ‘sky, flowers,’ &c.  According to this punctuation, the words of Rome, as well as her sky and other beautiful endowments, are too weak to declare at full the glory which they impart; and the inference from this rather abruptly introduced recurrence to Rome is (I suppose), that the spiritual glory faintly adumbrated by Rome can only be realised in that realm of eternity to which death gives access.  Taken in this sense, the ‘words’ of Rome appear to mean ’the beautiful language spoken in Rome’—­the Roman or Latin language, as modified into modern Italian.  The pronunciation of Italian in Rome is counted peculiarly pure and rich:  hence the Italian axiom, ’lingua toscana in bocca romana’—­Tuscan tongue in Roman mouth.  At first sight, it would seem far more natural to punctuate thus:  Rome’s azure sky, Flowers, ruins, statues, music,—­words are weak The glory, &c.  The sense would then be—­Words are too weak to declare at full the glory inherent in the sky, flowers, &c. of Rome.  Yet, although this seems a more straightforward arrangement for the words of the sentence, as such, it is not clear that such a comment on the beauties of Rome would have any great relevancy in its immediate context.

+Stanza 53,+ 1. 2. Thy hopes are gone before, &c.  This stanza contains some very pointed references to the state of Shelley’s feelings at the time when he was writing Adonais; pointed, but not so clearly defined as to make his actual meaning transparent.  We are told that his hopes are gone before (i.e. have vanished before the close of his life has come), and have departed from all things here.  This may partly refer to the deaths of William Shelley and of Keats; but I think the purport of the phrase extends further, and implies that Shelley’s hopes generally—­those animating conceptions which had inspired him in early youth, and had buoyed him up through many adversities—­are now waning in disappointment.  This is confirmed by the ensuing statement—­that ’a light is past from the revolving year [a phrase repeated from stanza 18], and man and woman.’  Next we are told that ’what still is dear Attracts to crush, repels to make thee [me] wither.’  The persons who were more particularly dear to Shelley at this time must have been (not to mention the two children Percy Florence Shelley and Allegra Clairmont) his wife, Miss Clairmont, Emilia Viviani, and Lieutenant and Mrs. Williams:  Byron, Leigh Hunt, and Godwin, can hardly be in question.