' The
statement in this stanza therefore is that corruption does not assail
Adonais lying on his deathbed; but will shortly follow his remains to
the grave, the dim [obscure, lightless] abode of corruption itself.
11. 8, 9. _Till darkness and the law Of change shall o'er his sleep the
mortal curtain draw._ Until the darkness of the grave and the universal
law of change and dissolution shall draw the curtain of death over his
sleep--shall prove his apparent sleep to be veritable death. The
prolonged interchange in _Adonais_ between the ideas of death and of
sleep may remind us that Shelley opened with a similar contrast or
approximation his first considerable (though in part immature) poem
_Queen Mab_--
'How wonderful is Death,--
Death, and his brother Sleep!' &c.
The mind may also revert to the noble passage in Byron's _Giaour_--
'He who hath bent him o'er the dead
Ere the first day of death is fled,' &c.--
though the idea of actual sleep is not raised in this admirably
beautiful and admirably realistic description. Perhaps the poem, of all
others, in which the conception of death is associated with that of
sleep with the most poignant pathos, is that of Edgar Poe entitled _For
Annie_--
'Thank Heaven, the crisis,
The danger, is past,
And the lingering illness
Is over at last,
And the fever called living
Is conquered at last,' &c.
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