“Adonais,” too, had a special impact on me. The poem tells the story of a man whose friend dies or is killed. One of the best things in the poem is the sense that with the passing of years the poet’s feelings alter and he begins to see things differently. He tells how he feels, how his attitude toward his friend changes as time goes on. This was an experience I began to have near the end of high school as my friends drifted into the service, or got married, or tried to become part of the very system that had humiliated us all the way through school. As time passed, I began to see the futility
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