hyacinth,-- 'As the _blue bells_ Of hyacinth tell Apollo's written grief.' 1. 8. _Amid the faint companions of their youth._ In Shelley's edition the words are 'Amid the drooping comrades,' &c. The change was made under the same circumstances as noted on p. 105. Whether it is a change for the better may admit of some question. The faint companions of the youth of the hyacinth and the narcissus must be other flowers, such as Spring had thrown down. 1. 9. _With dew all turned to tears,--odour, to sighing ruth._ The dew upon the hyacinth and narcissus is converted into tears: they exhale sighs, instead of fragrance. All this is in rather a _falsetto_ tone. It has some resemblance to the more simple and touching phrase in the Elegy by Moschus (p. 65): 'Ye flowers, now in sad clusters breathe yourselves away.' +Stanza 17+, 1. 1. _Thy spirits sister, the lorn nightingale, Mourns not her mate_, &c. The reason for calling the nightingale the sister of the spirit of Keats (Adonais) does not perhaps go beyond this--that, as the nightingale is a supreme songster among birds, so was Keats a supreme songster among men. It is possible however--and one willingly supposes so--that Shelley singled out the nightingale for mention, in recognition of the consummate beauty of Keats's _Ode to the Nightingale_, published in the same volume with _Hyperion_. The epithet 'lorn' may also be noted in the same connexion; as Keats's Ode terminates with a celebrated passage in which 'forlorn' is the leading word (but not as an epithet for the nightingale itself)-- 'Forlorn!--the very word is as a knell,' &c. The nightingale is also introduced into the Elegy of Moschus for Bion; 'Ye nightingales that lament,' &c. (p. 65), and 'Nor ever sang so sweet the nightingale on the cliffs.' Poets are fond of speaking of the nightingale as being the hen-bird, and Shelley follows this precedent. It is a fallacy, for the songster is always the cock-bird. 1. 3. _Not so the eagle_, &c. The general statement in these lines is that Albion wails for the death of Keats more melodiously than the nightingale mourning for her lost mate, and more passionately than the eagle robbed of her young. This statement has proved true enough in the long run: when Shelley wrote, it was only prospectively or potentially true, for the death of Keats excited no immediate widespread concern in England. It should be observed that, by introducing Albion as a figurative personage in his Elegy, Shelley disregards his emblematic Grecian youth Adonais, and goes straight to the actual Englishman Keats. This passage, taken as a whole, is related to that of Moschus (p. 65) regarding the nightingale, the sea-bird, and the bird of Memnon; see also the passage, 'and not for Sappho, but still for thee,' &c.