🌹 Stanza 195 - Literary Analysis

Shakespeare's Venus and Adonis

📖 Original Stanza

By this, the boy that by her side lay kill'd
Was melted like a vapour from her sight,
And in his blood that on the ground lay spill'd,
A purple flower sprung up, chequer'd with white;   
Resembling well his pale cheeks, and the blood
Which in round drops upon their whiteness stood.

🔍 Line-by-Line Analysis

Line 1: "By this, the boy that by her side lay kill'd"

• "By this": By this time, at this moment. This indicates the transition from curse to transformation.
• "the boy that by her side lay kill'd": Adonis who lay dead beside her. The formal, distant "boy" contrasts with earlier intimate language.
• Meaning: "By this time, the boy who lay killed beside her"

Line 2: "Was melted like a vapour from her sight,"

• "Was melted like a vapour": Dissolved like mist or steam. His body disappeared as if evaporating into air.
• "from her sight": From her vision, away from her view. He vanished completely from her perception.
• Meaning: "Dissolved like mist from her sight,"

Line 3: "And in his blood that on the ground lay spill'd,"

• "And in his blood": And within his spilled blood, in the place where his blood fell.
• "that on the ground lay spill'd": That had been poured out on the earth. His blood had pooled on the ground.
• Meaning: "And in his blood that had spilled on the ground,"

Line 4: "A purple flower sprung up, chequer'd with white;"

• "A purple flower sprung up": A violet-colored flower grew immediately. The transformation is instantaneous and magical.
• "chequer'd with white": Patterned with white, marked with white spots or streaks. The flower has mixed coloring.
• Meaning: "A purple flower grew up, patterned with white;"

Line 5: "Resembling well his pale cheeks, and the blood"

• "Resembling well his pale cheeks": Looking very much like his bloodless face. The white parts mirror his pallor.
• "and the blood": And also like the blood. The purple parts mirror his spilled blood.
• Meaning: "Closely resembling his pale cheeks, and the blood"

Line 6: "Which in round drops upon their whiteness stood."

• "Which in round drops": That had formed in circular droplets. The blood formed perfect spheres.
• "upon their whiteness stood": On his pale skin appeared. The blood drops contrasted against his white cheeks.
• Meaning: "That stood in round drops upon his white skin."

🎭 Literary Devices

🎯 Overall Meaning & Significance in the Context of the Poem

This stanza presents the magical transformation of Adonis into the anemone flower, following classical metamorphosis tradition while creating a living memorial to beauty destroyed by death.

The Ovidian Transformation: Following the tradition of Ovid's Metamorphoses, Adonis undergoes magical transformation from human to natural form, preserving his essence in a new state of being.

The Vapor Metaphor: Adonis "melted like a vapour," suggesting his essential being was always ethereal and beautiful rather than solidly physical. His disappearance is gentle, not violent.

Blood as Creative Force: Rather than being merely evidence of death, Adonis's spilled blood becomes the source of new life. Death becomes generative rather than purely destructive.

Perfect Visual Correspondence: The flower's purple and white exactly mirror Adonis's appearance in death—the white of his pale cheeks and the purple of his blood—making the transformation visually logical.

Preservation Through Change: While Adonis's human form is lost, his essential visual beauty is preserved in the flower, suggesting that true beauty transcends mortality through transformation.

The Instantaneous Sacred: The flower "sprung up" immediately, showing that the transformation is miraculous rather than natural, requiring divine intervention.

Circular Perfection: The "round drops" of blood suggest geometric perfection, implying that even in death, Adonis's beauty maintained ideal proportions.

Living Memorial: The flower becomes a permanent memorial to Adonis that, unlike human memory, will renew itself seasonally and maintain his beauty in living form.

Nature's Response to Beauty: The transformation suggests that nature itself could not bear to lose Adonis's beauty entirely and found a way to preserve it in floral form.

The Democratization of Beauty: By becoming a flower, Adonis's beauty becomes accessible to everyone rather than being the exclusive possession of Venus or available only to the privileged few.

Death as Transformation, Not Termination: The metamorphosis reframes death as change rather than ending, suggesting that exceptional beauty finds ways to persist beyond mortality.

This stanza provides the mythological explanation for the anemone flower while transforming the narrative from tragedy to wonder, showing how divine love can preserve beauty through natural transformation.