scorn She rose like an autumnal Night, that That word, that kiss, shall all thoughts springs else survive, Out of the East, and follows wild and With food of saddest memory kept alive, drear Now thou art dead, as if it were a part The golden Day, which, on eternal wings, Of thee, my Adonais ! I would give Even as a ghost abandoning a bier, All that I am to be as thou now art ! Had left the Earth a corpse. Sorrow But I am chained to Time, and cannot and fear thence depart! So struck, so roused, so rapt Urania; So saddened round her like an atmosphere “O gentle child, beautiful as thou wert, Of stormy mist; so swept her on her way Why didst thou leave the trodden paths Even to the mournful place where Adonais of men lay. Too soon, and with weak hands though mighty heart Out of her secret Paradise she sped, Dare the unpastured dragon in his den? Through camps and cities rough with Defenceless as thou wert, oh where was stone, and steel, then And human hearts, which to her airy Wisdom the mirrored shield, or tread the spear? Yielding not, wounded the invisible Or hadst thou waited the full cycle, when Palms of her tender feet where'er they Thy spirit should have filled its crescent fell : sphere, And barbèd tongues, and thoughts more The monsters of life's waste had fled from sharp than they thee like deer. Rent the soft Form they never could repel, “The herded wolves, bold only to pursue; Whose sacred blood, like the young tears The obscene ravens, clamorous o'er the of May, dead; Paved with eternal flowers that unde- The vultures to the conqueror's banner true serving way. Who feed where Desolation first has fed, And whose wings rain contagion ; — how In the death chamber for a moment they fled, Death When like Apollo, from his golden bow, Shamed by the presence of that living The Pythian of the age one arrow sped Might And smiled! - The spoilers tempt no Blushed to annihilation, and the breath second blow, Revisited those lips, and life's pale light They fawn on the proud feet that spurn Flashed through those limbs, so late her them lying low. dear delight. “Leave me not wild and drear and com- “The sun comes forth, and many reptiles fortless, spawn; As silent lightning leaves the starless He sets, and each ephemeral insect then night! Is gathered into death without a dawn, Leave me not !” cried Urania : her distress And the immortal stars awake again; Roused Death: Death rose and smiled, So is it in the world of living men: and met her vain caress. A godlike mind soars forth, in its delight Making earth bare and veiling heaven, "Stay yet awhile! speak to me once and when again; It sinks, the swarms that dimmed or shared Kiss me, so long but as a kiss may live; its light And in my heartless breast and burning Leave to its kindred lamps the spirit's brain awful night.” oh, Thus ceased she: and the mountain shep- Vibrated, as the ever-beating heart herds came, Shook the weak hand that grasped it; Their garlands sere, their magic mantles of that crew rent; He came the last, neglected and apart; The Pilgrim of Eternity, whose fame A herd-abandoned deer struck by the Over his living head like Heaven is bent, hunter's dart. An early but enduring monument, Came, veiling all the lightnings of his song All stood aloof, and at his partial moan In sorrow; from her wilds Ierne sent Smiled through their tears; well knew The sweetest lyrist of her saddest wrong, that gentle band And love taught grief to fall like music Who in another's fate now wept his own; from his tongue. As in the accents of an unknown land, He sung new sorrow; sad Urania scanned Midst others of less note, came one frail The Stranger's mien, and murmured: Form, “Who art thou?" A phantom among men; companionless He answered not, but with a sudden hand As the last cloud of an expiring storm Made bare his branded and ensanguined Whose thunder is its knell; he, as I guess, brow, Had gazed on Nature's naked loveliness, Which was like Cain's or Christ's Actæon-like, and now he fled astray that it should be so ! With feeble steps o'er the world's wilderness, What softer voice is hushed over the And his own thoughts, along that rugged dead? way, Athwart what brow is that dark mantle Pursued, like raging hounds, their father thrown? and their prey. What form leans sadly o'er the white deathbed, A pardlike Spirit beautiful and swift - In mockery of monumental stone, A Love in desolation masked; a Power The heavy heart heaving without a Girt round with weakness; it can scarce moan? uplift If it be He, who, gentlest of the wise, The weight of the superincumbent hour; Taught, soothed, loved, honoured the It is a dying lamp, a falling shower, departed one; A breaking billow; even whilst we Let me not vex, with inharmonious sighs speak The silence of that heart's accepted sacriIs it not broken? On the withering fice. flower The killing sun smiles brightly: on a Our Adonais has drunk poison -oh! cheek What deaf and viperous murderer could The life can burn in blood, even while the heart may break. Life's early cup with such a draught of woe? His head was bound with pansies over- The nameless worm would now itself blown, disown: And faded violets, white, and pied, and It felt, yet could escape the magic tone blue; Whose prelude held all envy, hate, and And a light spear topped with a cypress wrong, cone, But what was howling in one breast Round whose rude shaft dark ivy tresses alone, grew Silent with expectation of the song, Yet dripping with the forest's noonday Whose master's hand is cold, whose silver dew, lyre unstrung. crown urn. now. Live thou, whose infamy is not thy fame! From the contagion of the world's slow Live! fear no heavier chastisement from stain me, He is secure, and now can never mourn Thou noteless blot on a remembered name! A heart grown cold, a head grown gray But be thyself, and know thyself to be! in vain ; And ever at thy season be thou free Nor, when the spirit's self has ceased to To spill the venom when thy fangs o'er burn, flow: With sparkless ashes load an unlamented Remorse and Self-contempt shall cling to thee; Hot Shame shall burn upon thy secret He lives, he wakes - 'tis Death is dead, brow, not he; And like a beaten hound tremble thou Mourn not for Adonais, – Thou young shalt as now. Dawn Turn all thy dew to splendour, for from Nor let us weep that our delight is fled thee Far from these carrion kites that scream The spirit thou lamentest is not gone; below; Ye caverns and ye forests, cease to moan! He wakes or sleeps with the enduring Cease ye faint flowers and fountains, and dead; thou Air Thou canst not soar where he is sitting Which like a mourning veil thy scarf hadst thrown Dust to the dust! but the pure spirit O'er the abandoned Earth, now leave it shall flow bare Back to the burning fountain whence Even to the joyous stars which smile on it came, its despair! A portion of the Eternal, which must glow Through time and change, unquenchably He is made one with Nature: there is heard Whilst thy cold embers choke the sordid His voice in all her music, from the moan hearth of shame. Of thunder to the song of night's sweet bird ; Peace, peace! he is not dead, he doth He is a presence to be felt and known not sleep – In darkness and in light, from herb and He hath awakened from the dream of life — stone, 'Tis we, who lost in stormy visions, keep Spreading itself where'er that Power With phantoms an unprofitable strife, may move And in mad trance, strike with our spirits' Which has withdrawn his being to its knife own ; Invulnerable nothings. - We decay Which wields the world with never wearied love, Like corpses in a charnel ; fear and grief Convulse us and consume us day by day, Sustains it from beneath, and kindles it above. And cold hopes swarm like worms within our living clay. He is a portion of the loveliness He has outsoared the shadow of our Which once he made more lovely: he night; doth bear Envy and calumny and hate and pain, His part, while the one Spirit's plastic And that unrest which men miscall de stress light, Sweeps through the dull dense world, Can touch him not and torture not again ; compelling there the same, All new successions to the forms they Who mourns for Adonais? Oh come wear ; forth Torturing th’ unwilling dross that checks Fond wretch! and know thyself and its flight him aright. To its own likeness, as each mass may Clasp with thy panting soul the pendubear; lous Earth: And bursting in its beauty and its might As from a centre, dart thy spirit's light From trees and beasts and men into the Beyond all worlds, until its spacious might Heaven's light. Satiate the void circumference: then shrink The splendours of the firmament of time Even to a point within our day and night; May be eclipsed, but are extinguished And keep thy heart light lest it make thee sink Like stars to their appointed height they When hope has kindled hope, and lured climb thee to the brink. And death is a low mist which cannot blot Or go to Rome, which is the sepulchre The brightness it may veil. When lofty Oh! not of him, but of our joy : 'tis thought nought Lifts a young heart above its mortal lair, That ages, empires, and religions there And love and life contend in it, for what Lie buried in the ravage they have Shall be its earthly doom, the dead live wrought; there For such as he can lend, - they borrow And move like winds of light on dark not and stormy air. Glory from those who made the world not; their prey; The inheritors of unfulfilled renown And he is gathered to the kings of thought Rose from their thrones, built beyond Who waged contention with their time's mortal thought, decay, Far in the Unapparent. Chatterton And of the past are all that cannot pass Rose pale, his solemn agony had not away. Yet faded from him ; Sidney, as he fought And as he fell and as he lived and loved Go thou to Rome at once the Paradise, Sublimely mild, a Spirit without spot, The grave, the city, and the wilderness ; Arose; and Lucan, by his death approved: And where its wrecks like shattered mounOblivion as they rose shrank like a thing tains rise, reproved. And flowering weeds, and fragrant copses dress And many more, whose names on Earth The bones of Desolation's nakedness, are dark Pass, till the Spirit of the spot shall lead But whose transmitted effluence cannot Thy footsteps to a slope of green access die Where, like an infant's smile, over the So long as fire outlives the parent spark, dead Rose, robed in dazzling immortality. A light of laughing flowers along the grass “Thou art become as one of us,” they cry, “It was for thee yon kingless sphere has And gray walls moulder round, on which long dull Time Swung blind in unascended majesty, Feeds, like slow fire upon a hoary brand; Silent alone amid an Heaven of Song. And one keen pyramid with wedge subAssume thy wingèd throne, thou Vesper of our throng!” Pavilioning the dust of him who planned is spread. lime, in song The One remains, the many change and The breath whose might I have invoked pass; Heaven's light forever shines, Earth's Descends on me; my spirit's bark is shadows fly; driven, Life, like a dome of many-coloured glass, Far from the shore, far from the trembling Stains the white radiance of Eternity, throng Until Death tramples it to fragments. Whose sails were never to the tempest - Die, given; If thou wouldst be with that which thou The massy earth and spherèd skies are dost seek! riven ! Follow where all is fled ! Rome's azure I am borne darkly, fearfully, afar; sky, Whilst burning through the inmost veil Flowers, ruins, statues, music, words, of Heaven, are weak The soul of Adonais, like a star, The glory they tranfuse with fitting truth Beacons from the abode where the Eternal to speak. are. LINES: “WHEN THE LAMP IS SHATTERED” Why linger, why turn back, why shrink, my Heart? things here depart ! A light is past from the revolving year, And man, and woman; and what still is dear Attracts to crush, repels to make thee wither. WHEN the lamp is shattered When the cloud is scattered When the lute is broken, When the lips have spoken, |