Medwin describes the composition of this stanza: 'Plato's epigram on Aster, which

Shelley had applied to Keats, happened to be

mentioned, and I asked Shelley if he could render it. He took up the pen and improvised.'

It was published by Mrs. Shelley in her first collected edition, 1839, as was also the following.

THOU wert the morning star among the living,

Ere thy fair light had fled; Now, having died, thou art as Hesperus, giving

New splendor to the dead.

The lovely one lies wounded in the mountains,

His white thigh struck with the white tooth; he scarce

Yet breathes; and Venus hangs in agony there.

The dark blood wanders o'er his snowy limbs,

His eyes beneath their lids are lustreless, The rose has fled from his wan lips, and there

That kiss is dead, which Venus gathers yet.

A deep, deep wound Adonis

A deeper Venus bears upon her heart.
See, his beloved dogs are gathering round
The Oread nymphs are weeping. Aphrodite
With hair unbound is wandering through
the woods,

Wildered, ungirt, unsandalled — the thorns pierce

Her hastening feet and drink her sacred

The soft leaves, in our way let us pursue The melancholy loves of Gallus. List! We sing not to the dead; the wild woods knew

His sufferings, and their echoes Young Naiads, in what far woodlands wild Wandered ye when unworthy love possessed

Your Gallus? Not where Pindus is uppiled,

Nor where Parnassus' sacred mount, nor where

Aonian Aganippe expands

The laurels and the myrtle-copses dim. The pine-encircled mountain, Mænalus, The cold crags of Lycæus, weep for him; And Sylvan, crowned with rustic coronals,

Came shaking in his speed the budding wands

And heavy lilies which he bore; we knew Pan the Arcadian.