Tyranny! beholdest now

Light around thee, and thou hearest
The loud flames ascend, and fearest.
Grovel on the earth! ay, hide
In the dust thy purple pride!'

+Stanza 3,+ 1. 1. _And then came one of sweet and earnest looks._ It is
sufficiently clear that this stanza, and also the fragmentary beginning
of stanza 4, refer to Leigh Hunt--who, in the body of the Elegy, is
introduced in st. 35. The reader will observe, on looking back to that
stanza, that the present one could not be added on to the description of
Hunt: it is an alternative form, ultimately rejected. Its tone is
ultra-sentimental, and perhaps on that account it was condemned. The
simile at the close of the present stanza is ambitious, but by no means
felicitous.

+Stanza 4,+ 11. 1, 2. _His song, though very sweet, was low and faint, A
simple strain._ It may be doubted whether this description of Hunt's
poetry, had it been published in _Adonais_, would have been wholly
pleasing to Hunt. Neither does it define, with any exceptional aptness,
the particular calibre of that poetry.

+Stanza 5,+ 11. 1, 2. _A mighty Phantasm, half concealed In darkness
of his own exceeding light._ It seems to have been generally
assumed that Shelley, in this stanza, describes one more of the
'Mountain Shepherds' (see st. 30)--viz. Coleridge. No doubt, if
any poet or person is here indicated, it must be Coleridge: and
the affirmative assumption is so far confirmed by the fact that in
another poem--the _Letter to Maria Gisborne_, 1820--Shelley spoke
of Coleridge in terms partly similar to these:--

'You will see Coleridge; he who sits obscure
In the exceeding lustre and the pure
Intense irradiation of a mind
Which, with its own internal lightning blind,
Flags wearily through darkness and despair--
A cloud-encircled meteor of the air,
A hooded eagle among blinking owls.'

But the first question is--Does this cancelled stanza relate to a
Mountain Shepherd at all? To speak of a Mountain Shepherd as
a 'mighty Phantasm,' having an 'awful presence unrevealed,'
seems to be taking a considerable liberty with language. To me
it appears more likely that the stanza relates to some abstract
impersonation--perhaps Death, or else Eternity. It is true that
Death figures elsewhere in _Adonais_ (stanzas 7, 8, 25) under an
aspect with which the present phrases are hardly consistent: but,
in the case of a cancelled stanza, that counts for very little. In
_Prometheus Unbound_ (Act ii,