1. 4. _'And the immortal stars awake again.'_ The imagery of this stanza (apart from the 'reptiles' and 'ephemeral insects') deserves a little consideration. The sun (says Shelley) arises, and then sets: when it sets, the immortal stars awake again. Similarly, a godlike mind (say the mind of Keats) appears, and its light illumines the earth, and veils the heaven: when it disappears, 'the spirit's awful night' is left to 'its kindred lamps.' This seems as much as to say that the splendour of a new poetic genius appears to contemporaries to throw preceding poets into obscurity; but this is only a matter of the moment, for, when the new genius sinks in death, the others shine forth again as stars of the intellectual zenith, to which the new genius is kindred indeed, but not superior. With these words concludes the speech of Urania, which began in stanza 25. +Stanza 30,+ 1. 1. _The Mountain Shepherds_. These are contemporary British poets, whom Shelley represents as mourning the death of Keats. Shepherds are such familiar figures in poetry--utilized for instance in Milton's _Lycidas_, as well as by many poets of antiquity--that the introduction of them into Shelley's Elegy is no matter for surprise. Why they should be '_mountain_ shepherds' is not so clear. Perhaps Shelley meant to indicate a certain analogy between the exalted level at which the shepherds dwelt and the exalted level at which the poets wrote. As the shepherds do not belong to the low-country, so neither do the poets belong to the flats of verse. Shelley may have written with a certain degree of reference to that couplet in _Lycidas_-- 'For we were nursed upon the self-same _hill_, Fed the same flock, by fountain, shade, and rill.' 1. 2. _Their garlands sere, their magic mantles rent._ The garlands or chaplets of the mountain shepherds have become sere because (it may be presumed) the wearers, in their grief for the mortal illness and death of Adonais, have for some little while left them unrenewed. Or possibly the garlands withered at the moment when Spring 'threw down her kindling buds' (stanza 16), I do not well understand the expression 'magic mantles.' There seems to be no reason why the mantles of the shepherds, considered as shepherds, should be magic. Even when we contemplate the shepherds as poets, we may fail to discern why any magical property should be assigned to their mantles. By the use of the epithet 'magic' Shelley must have intended to bridge over the gap between the nominal shepherds and the real poets, viewed as inspired singers: for this purpose he has adopted a bold verbal expedient, but not I think an efficient one. It may be noticed that the 'uncouth swain' who is represented in _Lycidas_ as singing the dirge (in other words, Milton himself) is spoken of as having a mantle--it is a 'mantle blue' (see the penultimate line of that poem).