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Stanza 26
Line 226-234
'Stay yet awhile! speak to me once again!Kiss me, so long but as a kiss may live!And in my heartless breast and burning brainThat word, that kiss, shall all thoughts else survive,With food of saddest memory kept alive,Now thou art dead, as if it were a partOf thee, my Adonais! I would giveAll that I am, to be as thou now art:—But I am chained to Time, and cannot thence depart.
Summary
Urania pathetically asked for a kiss and for a word from Adonais so that she might preserve both as a treasure to herself. She would gladly die to be united to Adonais, but she being immortal could not do so.
Explanation
L. 226. Stay yet awhile—wait for a short time. L. 227. So long but—only for the brief time that. L. 228. Heartless breast—breast in which the heart is dead with grief; broken-hearted breast. L. 229. Shall all....survive—shall live longer than all other thoughts. L. 230 With food...alive—your 'word', your 'kiss'—if I have them— will be cherished in my memory for ever with the saddest associations. L. 231. As if it....thee—as if that last 'word', that last 'kiss' of yours were part and parcel of yourself—were your living representatives. L. 233. To be as... art—to be dead like you. L. 234. But I am chained...depart—Urania as a celestial spirit is bound to eternal time, i.e., to immortality; and cannot escape from her eternal life to join Keats through death. Shelley's philosophy seems to be that even the spirits themselves cannot change their condition of life—they are eternally to live their 'spiritual' life and cannot pass through death to a better state of existence as man can through death. To what 'loveliness' man’s soul can pass is told in St. 43.