1. 8. _'Tis Adonais calls! oh hasten thither!_ 'Thither' must mean 'to
Adonais': a laxity of expression.
+Stanza 64,+ 1. 1. _That light whose smile kindles the universe_, &c.
This is again the 'One Spirit' of stanza 43. And see, in stanza 42, the
cognate expression, 'kindles it above.'
11. 3, 4. _That benediction which the eclipsing curse Of birth can
quench not._ The curse of birth is, I think, simply the calamitous
condition of mundane life--so often referred to in this Elegy as a
condition of abjection and unhappiness. The curse of birth can eclipse
the benediction of Universal Mind, but cannot quench it: in other words,
the human mind, in its passage from the birth to the death of the body,
is still an integral portion of the Universal Mind.
1. 7. _Each are mirrors._ This is of course a grammatical
irregularity--the verb should be 'is.' It is not the only instance of
the same kind in Shelley's poetry.
1. 9. _Consuming the last clouds of cold mortality._ This does not imply
that Shelley is shortly about to die. 'Cold mortality' is that condition
in which the human mind, a portion of the Universal Mind, is united to a
mortal body: and the general sense is that the Universal Mind at this
moment beams with such effulgence upon Shelley that his mind responds to
it as if the mortal body no longer interposed any impediment.
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