viperous murderer' gave him the envenomed draught.

[I must here point out a singular discrepancy in the poem of _Adonais_,
considered as a narrative or apologue. Hitherto we had been told that
Adonais was killed by an arrow or dart--he was 'pierced by the shaft
which flies in darkness,' and the man who 'pierced his innocent breast'
had incurred the curse of Cain: he had 'a wound' (stanza 22). There was
also the alternative statement that Adonais, unequipped with the shield
of wisdom or the spear of scorn, had been so rash as to 'dare the
unpastured dragon in his den'; and from this the natural inference is
that not any 'shaft which flies in darkness,' but the dragon himself,
had slaughtered the too-venturous youth. But now we hear that he was
done to death by poison. Certainly when we look beneath the symbol into
the thing symbolized, we can see that these divergent allegations
represent the same fact, and the readers of the Elegy are not called
upon to form themselves into a coroner's jury to determine whether a
'shaft' or a 'dragon' or 'poison' was the instrument of murder:
nevertheless the statements in the text are neither identical nor
reconcileable for purposes of mythical narration, and it seems strange
that the author should not have taken this into account. It will be
found as we proceed (see p. 66) that the reference to 'poison' comes
into the poem as a direct reproduction from the Elegy of Moschus upon
Bion--being the passage which forms the second of the two mottoes to
_Adonais_.]

(36) This murderer, a 'nameless worm,' was alone callous to the prelude
of the forthcoming song. (37) Let him live on in remorse and
self-contempt. (38) Neither should we weep that Adonais has 'fled far
from these carrion-kites that scream below.' His spirit flows back to
its fountain, a portion of the Eternal. (39) Indeed, he is not dead nor