Margaret Fuller’s Reading Worlds

WorkPercy Bysshe Shelley

“Adonais: An Elegy on the Death of John Keats”

Adonais: An Elegy on the Death of John Keats (1821), stanza 52 Inferred

Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822) · 1821

InferredFuller quotes, "'life's many-colored dome of painted glass.'" Percy Bysshe Shelley's Adonais, stanza 52 (lines 462–463) reads: "Life, like a dome of many-coloured glass, / Stains the white radiance of Eternity." While Fuller's version paraphrases from memory—"painted glass" replaces "many-coloured glass," and the phrasing is restructured—the distinct Shelleyan image of a glass dome as a metaphor for life's beautiful yet distorting nature is clearly being cited.

TranslatedQuotedReadMentioned

Documented 1834

Books • Journals

Selected engagements, in chronological order.

Totals count documented engagements, once at the earliest witness. How we count →

Reprints, Memoirs passages, and repeat notes within a single manuscript are shown but never counted twice. Evidence for this work is selective, not exhaustive. Methodology →

When Fuller engaged with this work

I. Childhood
II. Adolescence
III. Self-Directed1record
IV. Transcendentalist
V. New York
VI. Europe
✦. Memoirs (1852)
1810
1820
1832
1836
1844
1846
1850
1834—

Journal 1833–1834

p63
quoted · read
“and why was it reflected so falsely through / "life’s many coloured dome of painted / glass" upon their youthful, anxious / gaze.”

Fuller, Margaret. "Journal 1833–1834." Houghton Library, Harvard University; bMS Am 1086 (4); Box 5 (83).

Inferred Quoted phrase ‘life’s many coloured dome of painted glass’ is from Shelley’s Adonais (1821), stanza LII, line 462: ‘Life, like a dome of many-colour’d glass, / Stains the white radiance of Eternity’. The author is not named here, but the title is identified through the distinctive phrase.

The author is not named here, but the title is identified through the distinctive phrase.

Undated

Pieces with no legible date. They are part of the record but cannot be placed on the lifeline.

n.d.—

Life Without and Life Within; or, Reviews, Narratives, Essays, and Poems

“Sunday Meditations on Various Texts”
quoted · read
“life's many-colored dome of painted glass”

Fuller, Margaret. Life Without and Life Within; or, Reviews, Narratives, Essays, and Poems. Edited by Arthur B. Fuller. Boston: Brown, Taggard and Chase, 1860. · p281

Inferred Fuller quotes, "'life's many-colored dome of painted glass.'" Percy Bysshe Shelley's Adonais, stanza 52 (lines 462–463) reads: "Life, like a dome of many-coloured glass, / Stains the white radiance of Eternity." While Fuller's version paraphrases from memory—"painted glass" replaces "many-coloured glass," and the phrasing is restructured—the distinct Shelleyan image of a glass dome as a metaphor for life's beautiful yet distorting nature is clearly being cited.