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 verbal parallels, chose similar backgrounds to signal their parentage. One favourite theme was a meditation among ruins, such as John Langhorne's “Written among the ruins of Pontefract Castle” (1756), Edward Moore’s “An elegy, written among the ruins of a nobleman's seat in Cornwall” (1756) and John Cunningham’s “An elegy on a pile of ruins" (1761). Gray's friend William Mason chose an actual churchyard in South Wales for his “Elegy VI” (1787), adding a reference to the poet in the text. He also provided a final note explaining that the poem was written “to make it appear a day scene, and