... Hard by Stood serene Cupids, watching silently. One, kneeling to a lyre, touched the strings, Muffling to death the pathos with his wings, And ever and anon uprose to look At the youth's slumber; while another took A willow-bough distilling odorous dew, And shoot it on his hair; another flew In through the woven roof, and fluttering-wise Rained violets upon his sleeping eyes.' 1. 2. _The passion-winged ministers of thought._ The 'Dreams' are here defined as being thoughts (or ministers of thought) winged with passion; not mere abstract cogitations, but thoughts warm with the heart's blood, emotional conceptions--such thoughts as subserve the purposes of poetry, and enter into its structure: in a word, poetic thoughts. 1. 3. _Who were his flocks_, &c. These Dreams were in fact the very thoughts of Adonais, as conveyed in his poems. He being dead, they cannot assume new forms of beauty in any future poems, and cannot be thus diffused from mind to mind, but they remain mourning round their deceased herdsman, or master. It is possible that this image of a flock and a herdsman is consequent upon the phrase in the Elegy of Moschus for Bion--'Bion the herdsman is dead' (p. 65). +Stanza 10,+ 1. 2. _And fans him with her moonlight wings._ See Bion (p. 65), 'and another, from behind him, with his wings is fanning Adonis.' The epithet 'moonlight' may indicate either delicacy of colour, or faint luminosity--rather the latter, 1. 6. _A tear some Dream has loosened from his brain._ I follow Shelley's edition in printing Dream with a capital letter. I do not however think this helpful to the right sense. The capitalized Dream might appear to be one of those impersonated Dreams to whom these stanzas relate: but in the present line the word 'dream' would be more naturally construed as meaning simply 'thought, mental conception.' 1. 7. _Lost angel of a ruined paradise._ The ruined paradise is the mind, now torpid in death, of Adonais. The 'Dream' which has been speaking is a lost angel of this paradise, in the sense of being a messenger or denizen of the mind of Adonais, incapacitated for exercising any further action: indeed, the Dream forthwith fades, and is for ever extinct. 1. 8. _With no stain._ Leaving no trace behind. The rhyme has entailed the use of the word 'stain,' which is otherwise a little arbitrary in this connexion.