[Corruption's] dim dwelling-place; the eternal Hunger [Corruption] sits
[at the door], but pity and awe soothe her pale rage, nor dares she,'
&c. The unwonted phrase 'his extreme way' seems to differ in meaning
little if at all from the very ordinary term 'his last journey.' The
statement in this stanza therefore is that corruption does not assail
Adonais lying on his deathbed; but will shortly follow his remains to
the grave, the dim [obscure, lightless] abode of corruption itself.

11. 8, 9. _Till darkness and the law Of change shall o'er his sleep the
mortal curtain draw._ Until the darkness of the grave and the universal
law of change and dissolution shall draw the curtain of death over his
sleep--shall prove his apparent sleep to be veritable death. The
prolonged interchange in _Adonais_ between the ideas of death and of
sleep may remind us that Shelley opened with a similar contrast or
approximation his first considerable (though in part immature) poem
_Queen Mab_--


'How wonderful is Death,--
Death, and his brother Sleep!' &c.


The mind may also revert to the noble passage in Byron's _Giaour_--


'He who hath bent him o'er the dead
Ere the first day of death is fled,' &c.--


though the idea of actual sleep is not raised in this admirably