Adonaïs Adonaïs Adonaïs: An Elegy on the Death of John Keats, Author of Endymion, Hyperion, etc. , also spelled Adonaies, is a pastoral elegy written by Percy Bysshe Shelley for John Keats in 1821, and widely regarded as one of Shelley's best and most well-known works. The poem, which is in 495 lines in 55 Spenserian stanzas, was composed in the spring of 1821 immediately after 11 April, when Shelley heard of Keats' death (seven weeks earlier). It is a pastoral elegy, in the English tradition of John Milton's "Lycidas". Shelley had studied and translated classical elegies. The title of the
Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard “The Magdalens: an elegy” (1763); “The Nun: an elegy” (1764); and “An Elegy Written Among the Ruins of an Abbey” (1765), which is derivative of the earlier poems on ruins by Moore and Cunningham. At the opposite extreme, Gray's poem provided a format for a surprising number that purport to be personal descriptions of life in gaol, starting with “An elegy in imitation of Gray, written in the King's Bench Prison by a minor “ (London 1790), which is close in title to William Thomas Moncrieff’s later "Prison Thoughts: An elegy, written in the King's Bench Prison", dating from 1816