105. Whether it is a change
for the better may admit of some question. The faint companions of the
youth of the hyacinth and the narcissus must be other flowers, such as
Spring had thrown down.
1. 9. _With dew all turned to tears,--odour, to sighing ruth._ The dew
upon the hyacinth and narcissus is converted into tears: they exhale
sighs, instead of fragrance. All this is in rather a _falsetto_ tone. It
has some resemblance to the more simple and touching phrase in the Elegy
by Moschus (p. 65): 'Ye flowers, now in sad clusters breathe yourselves
away.'
+Stanza 17+, 1. 1. _Thy spirits sister, the lorn nightingale, Mourns not
her mate_, &c. The reason for calling the nightingale the sister of the
spirit of Keats (Adonais) does not perhaps go beyond this--that, as
the nightingale is a supreme songster among birds, so was Keats a
supreme songster among men. It is possible however--and one
willingly supposes so--that Shelley singled out the nightingale for
mention, in recognition of the consummate beauty of Keats's _Ode to
the Nightingale_, published in the same volume with _Hyperion_. The
epithet 'lorn' may also be noted in the same connexion; as Keats's
Ode terminates with a celebrated passage in which 'forlorn' is the
leading word (but not as an epithet for the nightingale itself)--
'Forlorn!--the very word is as a knell,' &c.
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