After this, he says in this stanza no more
about Adonais, but only about the mourner. He calls upon the mourner to
consider (1) the magnitude of the planet earth; then, using the earth as
his centre, to consider (2) the whole universe of worlds, and the
illimitable void of space beyond all worlds; next he is to consider (3)
what he himself is--he is confined within the day and night of our
planet, and, even within those restricted limits, he is but an
infinitesimal point. After he shall have realised this to himself, and
after the tension of his soul in ranging through the universe and
through space shall have kindled hope after hope, wonderment and
aspiration after aspiration and wonderment, then indeed will he need to
keep his heart light, lest it make him sink at the contemplation of his
own nullity.
1. 9. _And lured thee to the brink._ This phrase is not definitely
accounted for in the preceding exposition. I think Shelley means that
the successive hopes kindled in the mourner by the ideas of a boundless
universe of space and of spirit will have lured him to the very brink of
mundane life--to the borderland between life and death: he will almost
have been tempted to have done with life, and to explore the
possibilities of death.
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