🌹 Stanza 188 - Literary Analysis

Shakespeare's Venus and Adonis

📖 Original Stanza

Sho looks upon his lips, and they are pale;
She takes him by the hand, and that is cold;       
She whispers in his ears a heavy tale,
As if they heard the woeful words she told;
She lifts the coffer-lids that close his eyes,
Where, lo! two lamps, burnt out, in darkness lies;

🔍 Line-by-Line Analysis

Line 1: "Sho looks upon his lips, and they are pale;"

"Sho looks upon his lips": She gazes at his lips. Venus examines the features she once desired to kiss.
"and they are pale": And they are colorless, bloodless. Death has drained the life and color from his lips.
Meaning: "She looks at his lips, and they are pale;"

Line 2: "She takes him by the hand, and that is cold;"

"She takes him by the hand": She grasps his hand, she holds his hand. Venus attempts physical contact with the dead body.
"and that is cold": And it is cold, without warmth. The hand lacks the warmth of life.
Meaning: "She takes his hand, and it is cold;"

Line 3: "She whispers in his ears a heavy tale,"

"She whispers in his ears": She speaks softly into his ears. Venus attempts to communicate with the dead.
"a heavy tale": A sad story, a sorrowful narrative. Her words are weighed down with grief.
Meaning: "She whispers a sad story in his ears,"

Line 4: "As if they heard the woeful words she told;"

"As if they heard": As though his ears could hear her. Venus behaves as if death hasn't ended communication.
"the woeful words she told": The sorrowful words she spoke. Her message is full of woe and sadness.
Meaning: "As if his ears could hear the sorrowful words she spoke;"

Line 5: "She lifts the coffer-lids that close his eyes,"

"She lifts the coffer-lids": She raises the eyelids, compared to the lids of a treasure chest. Eyes are treasures now locked away.
"that close his eyes": That keep his eyes shut. Death has closed his eyes permanently.
Meaning: "She lifts the eyelids that close his eyes,"

Line 6: "Where, lo! two lamps, burnt out, in darkness lies;"

"Where, lo!": Where, behold! Venus discovers what lies beneath the eyelids.
"two lamps, burnt out": Two lights that have been extinguished. His eyes were once bright like lamps but are now dark.
"in darkness lies": Rest in darkness, exist in darkness. The light of life has gone out.
Meaning: "Where, behold! two lamps, burned out, lie in darkness;"

🎭 Literary Devices

Device	Example	Effect
Systematic Examination	Looking, taking, whispering, lifting	Shows Venus's desperate attempt to find life
Sensory Details	"pale," "cold," "heavy," "darkness"	Makes death tangible through physical description
Metaphor	"coffer-lids" for eyelids	Compares eyes to treasure chests, now locked
Extended Metaphor	"two lamps, burnt out"	Transforms eyes into extinguished lights
Personification	"As if they heard"	Treats dead ears as if still capable of hearing
Exclamation	"Where, lo!"	Creates moment of dramatic discovery
Contrast	Former beauty vs. present death	Emphasizes the transformation death has wrought
Futile Communication	Whispering to dead ears	Shows denial of death's finality

🎯 Overall Meaning & Significance in the Context of the Poem

This stanza presents Venus's intimate physical examination of Adonis's corpse, showing her desperate attempt to find signs of life and her gradual acceptance of death's reality through sensory evidence.

The Systematic Search for Life: Venus examines Adonis systematically—lips, hands, ears, eyes—as if conducting a medical examination to find any remaining spark of life. This shows her desperate denial of death's finality.

The Sensory Reality of Death: Each sense confirms death's reality: sight shows paleness, touch reveals coldness, hearing gets no response, and vision finds only darkness. Venus must accept death through accumulated sensory evidence.

The Treasure Metaphor: Calling eyelids "coffer-lids" transforms Adonis's eyes into precious treasures now locked away forever. This elevates his beauty to the level of valuable possessions that death has stolen.

The Extinguished Light: The metaphor of eyes as "lamps, burnt out" suggests that Adonis was a source of illumination in the world—his death has literally darkened the universe.

Futile Communication: Venus's whispered "heavy tale" to dead ears shows her inability to accept that communication has ended. She still needs to speak to him even though he cannot hear.

The Intimacy of Death: This physical examination is intensely intimate—Venus touches and examines Adonis's body in death as she tried to do in life. Death has made him accessible in a way life never did.

The Finality of Darkness: The progression from pale lips to cold hands to unresponsive ears to dark eyes creates a crescendo of death's completeness. Each detail confirms that life has fully departed.

The Reversal of Seduction: Instead of trying to awaken desire, Venus now tries to awaken life itself. Her examination parallels her earlier seductive touches but serves the opposite purpose.

The Physical Truth: After all her elaborate rhetoric and theories, Venus is confronted with the simple physical truth of death—coldness, paleness, silence, and darkness.

The Treasure Lost: The "coffer-lids" metaphor suggests that Adonis's eyes contained treasures of beauty that are now permanently locked away, making his death a cosmic robbery.

This stanza strips away all of Venus's elaborate explanations and theories, reducing her to the basic human experience of touching the dead and confirming through physical evidence that life has indeed ended.