Mythical Figures
With a title like Adonais, you can bet that at least one Greek god is going to show up. Shelley relied pretty heavily on Greek myth, and those tragic, dramatic characters suit his Romantic elegy qu...
Personification
Personification, the giving of human traits to non-human things, is all over this poem. Whether it is nature, Death, or inanimate objects, Shelley gives emotion to non-living things to show just ho...
The Afterlife
The speaker's concept of the afterlife isn't taken from any traditional religious beliefs. His concept involves a type of energy or force that involves every living thing; when you die, he says, yo...
Rome
Near the end of the poem, the speaker urges mourners to visit Rome, where Keats is buried. It serves as a place for both contemplation and peace, and these finals stanzas contain quite a bit of Rom...