11. 7-9. _'I would give All that I am, to be as thou now art:--But I am chained to Time, and cannot thence depart.'_ Founded on Bion (p. 64): 'While wretched I yet live, being a goddess, and may not follow thee.' The alteration of phrase is somewhat remarkable. In Bion's Elegy the Cyprian Aphrodite is 'a goddess,' and therefore immortal. In Shelley's Elegy the Uranian Aphrodite does not speak of herself under any designation of immortality or eternity, but as 'chained to _Time_,' and incapable of departing from Time. As long as Time lives and operates, Urania must do the same. The dead have escaped from the dominion of Time: this Urania, cannot do. There is a somewhat similar train of thought in _Prometheus Unbound_,--where Prometheus the Titan, after enduring the torture of the Furies (Act 1), says-- 'Peace is in the grave: The grave holds all things beautiful and good, I am a God, and cannot find it _there_.' +Stanza 27,+ 11. 1-4. _'O gentle child, beautiful as thou wert, Why didst thou leave,'_ &c. This is founded on--and as usual spiritualized from--the passage in Bion (p. 64); 'For why, ah overbold! didst thou follow the chase, and, being so fair, why wert thou thus over-hardy to fight with beasts?' 1. 4. _'Dare the unpastured dragon in his den.'_ This phrase must no doubt be interpreted, not only in relation to the figurative Adonais. but also to the actual Keats, Keats had dared the unpastured dragon in his den, in the sense that he made a bold adventure into the poetical field, under conditions certain to excite the ire of adherents of the old school, whether in literature or in politics. 1. 6. _'Wisdom the mirrored shield, or scorn the spear.'_ Urania arraigns Keats for having made his inroad upon the dragon, unguarded by wisdom or by scorn. His want of wisdom was shown (we may assume) by the grave blemishes and defects in his _Endymion_, the wilful faults and perverse excesses and extravagances which mark its composition, and wantonly invited attack. His want of scorn was (according to Shelley's view of the facts), clear enough: he had not been equal to despising a spiteful attack, but had fretted himself to death under it. In terming these two defensive weapons, wisdom and scorn, a mirrored shield and a spear, Shelley was, I apprehend, thinking of the Orlando Furioso of Ariosto. In that poem we read of a magic shield which casts a supernatural and intolerable splendour, whereby every gazer is cast into a trance; and of a spear whose lightest touch overthrows every opponent. A sea-monster--not a dragon, so far as I recollect--becomes one of the victims of the 'mirrored shield.' 11. 7, 8. _'The full cycle when Thy spirit should have filled its crescent sphere.'_ The spirit of Keats is here assimilated to the moon, which grows from a crescent into a spherical form. 1. 9. _'The monsters of life's waste.'_ The noxious creatures which infest the wilderness of human life.