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. +Stanza 55,+ 1. 1. _The breath whose might I have invoked in song._ The breath or afflatus of the Universal Mind. It has been 'invoked in song' throughout the whole later section of this Elegy, from stanza 38 onwards. 1. 2. _My spirits bark is driven_, &c. As was observed with reference to the preceding stanza, line 9, this phrase does not forecast the author's death: it only re-emphasises the abnormal illumination of his mind by the Universal Mind--as if his spirit (like that of Keats) 'had flowed back to the burning fountain whence it came, a portion of the Eternal' (stanza 38). Nevertheless, it is very remarkable that this image of 'the spirit's _bark_,' beaconed by 'the soul of Adonais,' should have been written so soon before Shelley's death by drowning, which occurred on 8 July, 1822,--but little more than a year after he had completed this Elegy. Besides this passage, there are in Shelley's writings, both verse and prose, several other passages noticeable on the same account--relating to drowning, and sometimes with a strong personal application; and in various instances he was in imminent danger of this mode of death before the end came. 11. 3, 4. _Far from the shore, far from the trembling throng Whose sails were never to the tempest given._ In saying that his spirit's bark is driven far from the shore, Shelley apparently means that his mind, in speculation and aspiration, ranges far beyond those mundane and material interests with which the mass of men are ordinarily concerned. 'The trembling throng' is, I think, a throng of men: though it might be a throng of barks, contrasted with 'my spirit's bark.' Their sails 'were never to the tempest given,' in the sense that they never set forth on a bold ideal or spiritual adventure, abandoning themselves to the stress and sway of a spiritual storm. 1. 5. _The massy earth_, &c. As the poet launches forth on his voyage upon the ocean of mind, the earth behind him seems to gape, and the sky above him to open: his course however is still held on in darkness--the arcanum is hardly or not at all revealed.