Adonais

About “Adonais”

Adonais: An Elegy on the Death of John Keats is a pastoral elegy written by Percy Bysshe Shelley in 1821. It was composed in the spring of that year, shortly after Shelley learned of John Keats's death. The poem, which contains 495 lines in 55 Spenserian stanzas, follows the tradition of English elegies, such as John Milton's Lycidas. Shelley was influenced by classical elegies and may have drawn inspiration from Virgil's tenth Eclogue. The title references the ancient Greek myth of Adonis, a god of fertility, and is modeled on works like Achilleis by the Roman poet Statius. The poem is considered one of Shelley's most significant works. (Summary adapted from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0.)