Despite the poem’s ornate language, considerable length, and erudite, heavy subject matter, “Adonais” is at its heart a disturbing and angry poem with a radical message as unsettling as it is inspiring. At the turn of the 19th century, death was defined largely by a Christian worldview. Freed by death, the soul was then judged by a merciful but just God who assigned that soul the eternal reward of Heaven or the damnation of Hell. The dead would be kept alive for a time within the memories and recollections of family and friends, but within a generation or two would chill into oblivion. Shelley breaks from this Christian worldview to suggest instead an oblivion crowned with beauty and truth divorced from any traditional viewpoint. Ironically, the poem reflects both first- and second-generation Romantic ideals by placing Shelley’s impassioned verse in an older, traditional form. In Shelley’s hands, however, these ideals contextualize Keats’s specific death to better reflect on the larger role of poetry and poets.

For conventional readers of Shelley’s day, Shelley’s vision of redefining death as something less than the bugaboo of mortality would hardly comfort. They’d also take issue with the thematic concerns of High

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