+Stanza 50,+ 1. 3. _One keen pyramid._ The tomb (see last note) of Caius
Cestius, a Tribune of the People.
11. 4, 5. _The dust of him who planned This refuge for his memory._
Shelley probably means that this sepulchral pyramid alone preserves to
remembrance the name of Cestius: which is true enough, as next to
nothing is otherwise known about him.
1. 8. _Have pitched in heaven's smile their camp of death._ The practice
which Shelley follows in this line of making 'heaven' a dissyllable is
very frequent with him. So also with 'even, higher,' and other such
words.
+Stanza 51,+ 11. 3, 4. _If the seal is set Here on one fountain of a
mourning mind._ Shelley certainly alludes to himself in this line. His
beloved son William, who died in June 1819, in the fourth year of his
age, was buried in this cemetery: the precise spot is not now known.
11. 5-7. _Too surely shalt thou find Thine own well full, if thou
returnest home, Of tears and gall. From the world's bitter wind_, &c.
The apposition between the word 'well' and the preceding word 'fountain'
will be observed. The person whom Shelley addresses would, on returning
home from the cemetery, find more than, ample cause, of one sort or
another, for distress and discomposure. Hence follows the conclusion
that he would do well to 'seek shelter in the shadow of the tomb': he
should prefer the condition of death to that of life. And so we reach in
stanza 51 the same result which, in stanza 47, was deduced from a
different range of considerations.
+Stanza 52,+ 1. 1. _The One remains, the many change and pass._ See the
notes on stanzas 42 and 43. 'The One' is the same as 'the One Spirit' in
stanza 43--the Universal Mind. The Universal Mind has already been
spoken of (stanza 38) as 'the Eternal.' On the other hand, 'the many'
are the individuated minds which we call 'human beings': they 'change
and pass'--the body perishing, the mind which informed it being (in
whatever sense) reabsorbed into 'the Eternal.'
1. 2. _Heaven's light for ever shines, earth's shadows fly._ This is in
strictness a physical descriptive image: in application, it means the
same as the preceding line.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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