+Stanza 2,+ 1. 1. _Where wert thou, mighty Mother._ Aphrodite Urania.
See pp. 51, 52. Shelley constantly uses the form 'wert' instead
of 'wast.' This phrase may be modelled upon two lines near the
opening of Milton's _Lycidas_--

'Where were ye, nymphs, when the remorseless deep
Closed o'er the head of your loved Lycidas?'


1. 2. _The shaft which flies In darkness._ As Adonis was mortally
wounded by a boar's tusk, so (it is here represented) was Adonais slain
by an insidiously or murderously launched dart: see p. 49. The allusion
is to the truculent attack made upon Keats by the _Quarterly Review_. It
is true that 'the shaft which flies in darkness' might be understood in
merely a general sense, as the mysterious and unforeseen arrow of Death:
but I think it clear that Shelley used the phrase in a more special
sense.

1. 4. _With veiled eyes_, &c. Urania is represented as seated in her
paradise (pleasure-ground, garden-bower), with veiled eyes--
downward-lidded, as in slumber: an Echo chaunts or recites the
'melodies,' or poems, which Adonais had composed while Death was rapidly
advancing towards him: Urania is surrounded by other Echoes, who
hearken, and repeat the strain. A hostile reviewer might have been
expected to indulge in one of the most familiar of cheap jokes, and to
say that Urania had naturally fallen asleep over Keats's poems: but I am
not aware that any critic of _Adonais_ did actually say this. The
phrase, 'one with soft enamoured breath,' means 'one of the Echoes';
this is shown in stanza 22, 'all the Echoes whom _their sister's song_.'