The score of this overture, completed in 1899, bears the following inscription: "In memoriam Frank Fay Marshall, obiit July 26, 1897." Its emotional kinship with the great threnody of Shelley is indicated in the title and in the character of the music. It might fittingly bear as motto these incomparable lines from Shelley's poem, which voice in words the precise emotion which has seemed to shape the utterances of the musician:
"Oh, weep for Adonais—he is dead!Wake, melancholy Mother, wake and weep!Yet wherefore? Quench within thy burning bedThy fiery tears, and let thy loud heart keep,Like his, a mute and uncomplaining sleep;For he is gone, where all things wise and fairDescend:—oh, dream not that the amorous DeepWill yet restore him to the vital air;Death feeds on his mute voice and laughs at our despair.
"He will awake no more, oh, never more!Within the twilight chamber spreads apaceThe shadow of white Death, and at the doorInvisible Corruption waits to traceHis extreme way to her dim dwelling-place;The eternal Hunger sits, but pity and aweSoothe her pale rage, nor dares she to defaceSo fair a prey, till darkness and the lawOf change shall o'er his sleep the mortal curtain draw."