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
Pastoral elegy Shelley's grief is also palpable in the subsequent mourning: Thyrsis Written by Matthew Arnold in December 1865, "Thyrsis" is a personal elegy that mourns the death of Matthew's friend Arthur Hugh Clough. Clough died in November 1861 at the age of 42. The poem's plot revolves around the main character Thyrsis, a shepherd in Virgil's seventh Eclogue, who loses a singing match against Corydon. Matthew Arnold's character Thyrsis represents Matthew's friend Arthur Clough. Keeping with the tradition of pastoral elegy poetry, Arnold displays pastoral elements in the poem as he describes the nature surrounding Oxford. Literary criticism on Pastoral Literature