Young and fair

As the descended Spirit of that sphere,

She hid me, as the Moon may hide the night

From its own darkness, until all was bright

Between the Heaven and Earth of my calm mind,

290And, as a cloud charioted by the wind,

She led me to a cave in that wild place,

And sate beside me, with her downward face

Illumining my slumbers, like the Moon

Waxing and waning o’er Endymion.

295And I was laid asleep, spirit and limb,

And all my being became bright or dim

As the Moon’s image in a summer sea,

According as she smiled or frowned on me;

And there I lay, within a chaste cold bed:

300Alas, I then was nor alive nor dead:—

For at her silver voice came Death and Life,

Unmindful each of their accustomed strife,

Masked like twin babes, a sister and a brother,

The wandering hopes of one abandoned mother,

305And through the cavern without wings they flew,

And cried, ‘Away, he is not of our crew.’

I wept, and though it be a dream, I weep.

   What storms then shook the ocean of my sleep,

Blotting that Moon, whose pale and waning lips

310Then shrank as in the sickness of eclipse;—

And how my soul was as a lampless sea,

And who was then its Tempest; and when She,

The Planet of that hour, was quenched, what frost

Crept o’er those waters, ’till from coast to coast

315The moving billows of my being fell

Into a death of ice, immoveable;—

And then—what earthquakes made it gape and split,

The white Moon smiling all the while on it,

These words conceal:— If not, each word would be

320The key of staunchless tears. Weep not for me!

   At length, into the obscure Forest came

The Vision I had sought through grief and shame.

Athwart that wintry wilderness of thorns

Flashed from her motion splendour like the Morn’s,

325And from her presence life was radiated

Through the grey earth and branches bare and dead;

So that her way was paved, and roofed above

With flowers as soft as thoughts of budding love;

And music from her respiration spread

330Like light,—all other sounds were penetrated

By the small, still, sweet spirit of that sound,

So that the savage winds hung mute around;

And odours warm and fresh fell from her hair

Dissolving the dull cold in the frore air:

335Soft as an Incarnation of the Sun,

When light is changed to love, this glorious One

Floated into the cavern where I lay,

And called my Spirit, and the dreaming clay

Was lifted by the thing that dreamed below

340As smoke by fire, and in her beauty’s glow

I stood, and felt the dawn of my long night

Was penetrating me with living light:

I knew it was the Vision veiled from me

So many years—that it was Emily.

345   Twin Spheres of light who rule this passive Earth,

This world of love, this me; and into birth

Awaken all its fruits and flowers, and dart

Magnetic might into its central heart;

And lift its billows and its mists, and guide

350By everlasting laws, each wind and tide

To its fit cloud, and its appointed cave;

And lull its storms, each in the craggy grave

Which was its cradle, luring to faint bowers

The armies of the rainbow-winged showers;

355And, as those married lights, which from the towers

Of Heaven look forth and fold the wandering globe

In liquid sleep and splendour, as a robe;

And all their many-mingled influence blend,

If equal, yet unlike, to one sweet end;—

360So ye, bright regents, with alternate sway

Govern my sphere of being, night and day!

Thou, not disdaining even a borrowed might;

Thou, not eclipsing a remoter light;

And, through the shadow of the seasons three,

365From Spring to Autumn’s sere maturity,

Light it into the Winter of the tomb,

Where it may ripen to a brighter bloom.

Thou too, O Comet beautiful and fierce,

Who drew the heart of this frail Universe

370Towards thine own; till, wreckt in that convulsion,

Alternating attraction and repulsion,

Thine went astray and that was rent in twain;

Oh, float into our azure heaven again!

Be there love’s folding-star at thy return;

375The living Sun will feed thee from its urn

Of golden fire; the Moon will veil her horn

In thy last smiles; adoring Even and Morn

Will worship thee with incense of calm breath

And lights and shadows; as the star of Death

380And Birth is worshipped by those sisters wild

Called Hope and Fear—upon the heart are piled

Their offerings,—of this sacrifice divine

A World shall be the altar.

                                    Lady mine,

Scorn not these flowers of thought, the fading birth

385Which from its heart of hearts that plant puts forth

Whose fruit, made perfect by thy sunny eyes,

Will be as of the trees of Paradise.

   The day is come, and thou wilt fly with me.

To whatsoe’er of dull mortality

390Is mine, remain a vestal sister still;

To the intense, the deep, the imperishable,

Not mine but me, henceforth be thou united

Even as a bride, delighting and delighted.

The hour is come:—the destined Star has risen

395Which shall descend upon a vacant prison.

The walls are high, the gates are strong, thick set

The sentinels—but true love never yet

Was thus constrained: it overleaps all fence:

Like lightning, with invisible violence

400Piercing its continents; like Heaven’s free breath,

Which he who grasps can hold not; liker Death,

Who rides upon a thought, and makes his way

Through temple, tower, and palace, and the array

Of arms: more strength has Love than he or they;

405For it can burst his charnel, and make free

The limbs in chains, the heart in agony,

The soul in dust and chaos.

                                    Emily,

A ship is floating in the harbour now,

A wind is hovering o’er the mountain’s brow;

410There is a path on the sea’s azure floor,

No keel has ever ploughed that path before;

The halcyons brood around the foamless isles;

The treacherous Ocean has forsworn its wiles;

The merry mariners are bold and free:

415Say, my heart’s sister, wilt thou sail with me?

Our bark is as an albatross, whose nest

Is a far Eden of the purple East;

And we between her wings will sit, while Night

And Day, and Storm, and Calm, pursue their flight,

420Our ministers, along the boundless Sea,

Treading each other’s heels, unheededly.

It is an isle under Ionian skies,

Beautiful as a wreck of Paradise,

And, for the harbours are not safe and good,

425This land would have remained a solitude

But for some pastoral people native there,

Who from the Elysian, clear, and golden air

Draw the last spirit of the age of gold,

Simple and spirited; innocent and bold.

430The blue Aegean girds this chosen home,

With ever-changing sound and light and foam,

Kissing the sifted sands, and caverns hoar;

And all the winds wandering along the shore

Undulate with the undulating tide:

435There are thick woods where sylvan forms abide;

And many a fountain, rivulet, and pond,

As clear as elemental diamond,

Or serene morning air; and far beyond,

The mossy tracks made by the goats and deer

440(Which the rough shepherd treads but once a year),

Pierce into glades, caverns, and bowers, and halls

Built round with ivy, which the waterfalls

Illumining, with sound that never fails

Accompany the noon-day nightingales;

445And all the place is peopled with sweet airs;

The light clear element which the isle wears

Is heavy with the scent of lemon-flowers,

Which floats like mist laden with unseen showers,

And falls upon the eye-lids like faint sleep;

450And from the moss violets and jonquils peep,

And dart their arrowy odour through the brain

’Till you might faint with that delicious pain.

And every motion, odour, beam, and tone,

With that deep music is in unison:

455Which is a soul within the soul—they seem

Like echoes of an antenatal dream.—

It is an isle ’twixt Heaven, Air, Earth, and Sea,

Cradled, and hung in clear tranquillity;

Bright as that wandering Eden Lucifer,

460Washed by the soft blue Oceans of young air.

It is a favoured place. Famine or Blight,

Pestilence, War and Earthquake, never light

Upon its mountain-peaks; blind vultures, they

Sail onward far upon their fatal way:

465The winged storms, chaunting their thunder-psalm

To other lands, leave azure chasms of calm

Over this isle, or weep themselves in dew,

From which its fields and woods ever renew

Their green and golden immortality.

470And from the sea there rise, and from the sky

There fall, clear exhalations, soft and bright,

Veil after veil, each hiding some delight,

Which Sun or Moon or zephyr draw aside,

Till the isle’s beauty, like a naked bride

475Glowing at once with love and loveliness,

Blushes and trembles at its own excess:

Yet, like a buried lamp, a Soul no less

Burns in the heart of this delicious isle,

An atom of th’ Eternal, whose own smile

480Unfolds itself, and may be felt not seen

O’er the grey rocks, blue waves, and forests green,

Filling their bare and void interstices.—

But the chief marvel of the wilderness

Is a lone dwelling, built by whom or how

485None of the rustic island-people know:

’Tis not a tower of strength, though with its height

It overtops the woods; but, for delight,

Some wise and tender Ocean-King, ere crime

Had been invented, in the world’s young prime,

490Reared it, a wonder of that simple time,

An envy of the isles, a pleasure-house

Made sacred to his sister and his spouse.

It scarce seems now a wreck of human art,

But, as it were Titanic; in the heart

495Of Earth having assumed its form, then grown

Out of the mountains, from the living stone,

Lifting itself in caverns light and high:

For all the antique and learned imagery

Has been erased, and in the place of it

500The ivy and the wild-vine interknit

The volumes of their many twining stems;

Parasite flowers illume with dewy gems

The lampless halls, and when they fade, the sky

Peeps through their winter-woof of tracery

505With Moon-light patches, or star atoms keen,

Or fragments of the day’s intense serene;—

Working mosaic on their Parian floors.

And, day and night, aloof, from the high towers

And terraces, the Earth and Ocean seem

510To sleep in one another’s arms, and dream

Of waves, flowers, clouds, woods, rocks, and all that we

Read in their smiles, and call reality.

   This isle and house are mine, and I have vowed

Thee to be lady of the solitude.—

515And I have fitted up some chambers there

Looking towards the golden Eastern air,

And level with the living winds, which flow

Like waves above the living waves below.—

I have sent books and music there, and all

520Those instruments with which high spirits call

The future from its cradle, and the past

Out of its grave, and make the present last

In thoughts and joys which sleep, but cannot die,

Folded within their own eternity.

525Our simple life wants little, and true taste

Hires not the pale drudge Luxury, to waste

The scene it would adorn, and therefore still,

Nature, with all her children, haunts the hill.

The ring-dove, in the embowering ivy, yet

530Keeps up her love-lament, and the owls flit

Round the evening tower, and the young stars glance

Between the quick bats in their twilight dance;

The spotted deer bask in the fresh moon-light

Before our gate, and the slow, silent night

535Is measured by the pants of their calm sleep.

Be this our home in life, and when years heap

Their withered hours, like leaves, on our decay,

Let us become the over-hanging day,

The living soul of this Elysian isle,

540Conscious, inseparable, one. Meanwhile

We two will rise, and sit, and walk together,

Under the roof of blue Ionian weather,

And wander in the meadows, or ascend

The mossy mountains, where the blue heavens bend

545With lightest winds, to touch their paramour;

Or linger, where the pebble-paven shore,

Under the quick, faint kisses of the sea

Trembles and sparkles as with ecstacy,—

Possessing and possest by all that is

550Within that calm circumference of bliss,

And by each other, till to love and live

Be one:—or, at the noontide hour, arrive

Where some old cavern hoar seems yet to keep

The moonlight of the expired night asleep,

555Through which the awakened day can never peep;

A veil for our seclusion, close as Night’s,

Where secure sleep may kill thine innocent lights;

Sleep, the fresh dew of languid love, the rain

Whose drops quench kisses till they burn again.

560And we will talk, until thought’s melody

Become too sweet for utterance, and it die

In words, to live again in looks, which dart

With thrilling tone into the voiceless heart,

Harmonizing silence without a sound.

565Our breath shall intermix, our bosoms bound,

And our veins beat together; and our lips

With other eloquence than words, eclipse

The soul that burns between them, and the wells

Which boil under our being’s inmost cells,

570The fountains of our deepest life, shall be

Confused in passion’s golden purity,

As mountain-springs under the morning Sun.

We shall become the same, we shall be one

Spirit within two frames, oh! wherefore two?

575One passion in twin-hearts, which grows and grew,

’Till, like two meteors of expanding flame,

Those spheres instinct with it become the same,

Touch, mingle, are transfigured; ever still

Burning, yet ever inconsumable:

580In one another’s substance finding food,

Like flames too pure and light and unimbued

To nourish their bright lives with baser prey,

Which point to Heaven and cannot pass away:

One hope within two wills, one will beneath

585Two overshadowing minds, one life, one death,

One Heaven, one Hell, one immortality,

And one annihilation. Woe is me!

The winged words on which my soul would pierce

Into the height of love’s rare Universe,

590Are chains of lead around its flight of fire.—

I pant, I sink, I tremble, I expire!

——————

   Weak Verses, go, kneel at your Sovereign’s feet,

And say:—‘We are the masters of thy slave;

What wouldest thou with us and ours and thine?’

595Then call your sisters from Oblivion’s cave,

All singing loud: ‘Love’s very pain is sweet,

But its reward is in the world divine

Which, if not here, it builds beyond the grave.’

So shall ye live when I am there. Then haste

600Over the hearts of men, until ye meet

Marina, Vanna, Primus, and the rest,

And bid them love each other and be blest:

And leave the troop which errs, and which reproves,

And come and be my guest,—for I am Love’s.

ADONAIS

An Elegy on the Death of John Keats, Author of Endymion, Hyperion Etc.

Ἀστὴρ πρὶν μὲν ἔλαμπεϛ ἐνὶ ζωοῖσιν Ἑῷοϛ·

   νῦν δὲ θανὼν λάμπειϛ Ἕσπεροϛ ἐν φθιμενοιϛ.

       PLATO

PREFACE

Φάρμακον ἦλθε, Βίων, ποτὶ σὸν στόμα, φάρμακον εἰδεϛ.

Πῶϛ τευ τοῖϛ χείλεσσι ποτέδραμε, κοὐκ ἐγλυκάνθη;

Τίϛ δὲ βροτὸϛ τοσσοῦτον ἀνάμεροϛ, ἢ κεράσαι τοι,

Ἒ δοῦναι λαλέοντι τὸ φάρμακον; ἔκφυγεν ᾠδάν.

  MOSCHUS, EPITAPH. BION.

It is my intention to subjoin to the London edition of this poem, a criticism upon the claims of its lamented object to be classed among the writers of the highest genius who have adorned our age. My known repugnance to the narrow principles of taste on which several of his earlier compositions were modelled, prove, at least that I am an impartial judge. I consider the fragment of Hyperion, as second to nothing that was ever produced by a writer of the same years.

John Keats died at Rome of a consumption, in his twenty-fourth year, on the — of — 1821; and was buried in the romantic and lonely cemetery of the protestants in that city, under the pyramid which is the tomb of Cestius, and the massy walls and towers, now mouldering and desolate, which formed the circuit of ancient Rome. The cemetery is an open space among the ruins, covered in winter with violets and daisies. It might make one in love with death, to think that one should be buried in so sweet a place.

The genius of the lamented person to whose memory I have dedicated these unworthy verses, was not less delicate and fragile than it was beautiful; and where cankerworms abound, what wonder, if its young flower was blighted in the bud? The savage criticism on his Endymion, which appeared in the Quarterly Review, produced the most violent effect on his susceptible mind; the agitation thus originated ended in the rupture of a blood-vessel in the lungs; a rapid consumption ensued, and the succeeding acknowledgements from more candid critics, of the true greatness of his powers, were ineffectual to heal the wound thus wantonly inflicted.

It may be well said, that these wretched men know not what they do. They scatter their insults and their slanders without heed as to whether the poisoned shaft lights on a heart made callous by many blows, or one, like Keats’s composed of more penetrable stuff. One of their associates, is, to my knowledge, a most base and unprincipled calumniator. As to Endymion; was it a poem, whatever might be its defects, to be treated contemptuously by those who had celebrated with various degrees of complacency and panegyric, Paris, and Woman, and a Syrian Tale, and Mrs. Lefanu, and Mr. Barrett, and Mr. Howard Payne, and a long list of the illustrious obscure? Are these the men, who in their venal good nature, presumed to draw a parallel between the Rev. Mr. Milman and Lord Byron? What gnat did they strain at here, after having swallowed all those camels? Against what woman taken in adultery, dares the foremost of these literary prostitutes to cast his opprobrious stone? Miserable man! you, one of the meanest, have wantonly defaced one of the noblest specimens of the workmanship of God. Nor shall it be your excuse, that, murderer as you are, you have spoken daggers, but used none.

The circumstances of the closing scene of poor Keats’s life were not made known to me until the Elegy was ready for the press. I am given to understand that the wound which his sensitive spirit had received from the criticism of Endymion, was exasperated by the bitter sense of unrequited benefits; the poor fellow seems to have been hooted from the stage of life, no less by those on whom he had wasted the promise of his genius, than those on whom he had lavished his fortune and his care. He was accompanied to Rome, and attended in his last illness by Mr. Severn, a young artist of the highest promise, who, I have been informed ‘almost risked his own life, and sacrificed every prospect to unwearied attendance upon his dying friend’. Had I known these circumstances before the completion of my poem, I should have been tempted to add my feeble tribute of applause to the more solid recompense which the virtuous man finds in the recollection of his own motives. Mr. Severn can dispense with a reward from ‘such stuff as dreams are made of’. His conduct is a golden augury of the success of his future career—may the unextinguished Spirit of his illustrious friend animate the creations of his pencil, and plead against Oblivion for his name!

Adonais

I

I weep for Adonais—he is dead!

O, weep for Adonais! though our tears

Thaw not the frost which binds so dear a head!

And thou, sad Hour, selected from all years

5To mourn our loss, rouse thy obscure compeers,

And teach them thine own sorrow, say: with me

Died Adonais; till the Future dares

Forget the Past, his fate and fame shall be

An echo and a light unto eternity!

II

10Where wert thou mighty Mother, when he lay,

When thy Son lay, pierced by the shaft which flies

In darkness? where was lorn Urania

When Adonais died? With veiled eyes,

’Mid listening Echoes, in her Paradise

15She sate, while one, with soft enamoured breath,

Rekindled all the fading melodies,

With which, like flowers that mock the corse beneath,

He had adorned and hid the coming bulk of death.

III

O, weep for Adonais—he is dead!

20Wake, melancholy Mother, wake and weep!

Yet wherefore? Quench within their burning bed

Thy fiery tears, and let thy loud heart keep

Like his, a mute and uncomplaining sleep;

For he is gone, where all things wise and fair

25Descend;—oh, dream not that the amorous Deep

Will yet restore him to the vital air;

Death feeds on his mute voice, and laughs at our despair.

IV

Most musical of mourners, weep again!

Lament anew, Urania!—He died,

30Who was the Sire of an immortal strain,

Blind, old, and lonely, when his country’s pride,

The priest, the slave, and the liberticide,

Trampled and mocked with many a loathed rite

Of lust and blood; he went, unterrified,

35Into the gulf of death; but his clear Sprite

Yet reigns o’er earth; the third among the sons of light.

V

Most musical of mourners, weep anew!

Not all to that bright station dared to climb;

And happier they their happiness who knew,

40Whose tapers yet burn through that night of time

In which suns perished; others more sublime,

Struck by the envious wrath of man or God,

Have sunk, extinct in their refulgent prime;

And some yet live, treading the thorny road,

45Which leads, through toil and hate, to Fame’s serene abode.

VI

But now, thy youngest, dearest one, has perished,

The nursling of thy widowhood, who grew,

Like a pale flower by some sad maiden cherished,

And fed with true love tears, instead of dew;

50Most musical of mourners, weep anew!

Thy extreme hope, the loveliest and the last,

The bloom, whose petals nipt before they blew

Died on the promise of the fruit, is waste;

The broken lily lies—the storm is overpast.

VII

55To that high Capital, where kingly Death

Keeps his pale court in beauty and decay,

He came; and bought, with price of purest breath,

A grave among the eternal.—Come away!

Haste, while the vault of blue Italian day

60Is yet his fitting charnel-roof! while still

He lies, as if in dewy sleep he lay;

Awake him not! surely he takes his fill

Of deep and liquid rest, forgetful of all ill.

VIII

He will awake no more, oh, never more!—

65Within the twilight chamber spreads apace

The shadow of white Death, and at the door

Invisible Corruption waits to trace

His extreme way to her dim dwelling-place;

The eternal Hunger sits, but pity and awe

70Soothe her pale rage, nor dares she to deface

So fair a prey, till darkness, and the law

Of change, shall o’er his sleep the mortal curtain draw.

IX

O, weep for Adonais!—The quick Dreams,

The passion-winged Ministers of thought,

75Who were his flocks, whom near the living streams

Of his young spirit he fed, and whom he taught

The love which was its music, wander not,—

Wander no more, from kindling brain to brain,

But droop there, whence they sprung; and mourn their lot

80Round the cold heart, where, after their sweet pain,

They ne’er will gather strength, or find a home again.

X

And one with trembling hands clasps his cold head,

And fans him with her moonlight wings, and cries;

‘Our love, our hope, our sorrow, is not dead;

85See, on the silken fringe of his faint eyes,

Like dew upon a sleeping flower, there lies

A tear some Dream has loosened from his brain.’

Lost Angel of a ruined Paradise!

She knew not ’twas her own; as with no stain

90She faded, like a cloud which had outwept its rain.

XI

One from a lucid urn of starry dew

Washed his light limbs as if embalming them;

Another clipt her profuse locks, and threw

The wreath upon him, like an anadem,

95Which frozen tears instead of pearls begem;

Another in her wilful grief would break

Her bow and winged reeds, as if to stem

A greater loss with one which was more weak;

And dull the barbed fire against his frozen cheek.

XII

100Another Splendour on his mouth alit,

That mouth, whence it was wont to draw the breath

Which gave it strength to pierce the guarded wit,

And pass into the panting heart beneath

With lightning and with music: the damp death

105Quenched its caress upon his icy lips;

And, as a dying meteor stains a wreath

Of moonlight vapour, which the cold night clips,

It flushed through his pale limbs, and past to its eclipse.

XIII

And others came … Desires and Adorations,

110Winged Persuasions and veiled Destinies,

Splendours, and Glooms, and glimmering Incarnations

Of hopes and fears, and twilight Phantasies;

And Sorrow, with her family of Sighs,

And Pleasure, blind with tears, led by the gleam

115Of her own dying smile instead of eyes,

Came in slow pomp;—the moving pomp might seem

Like pageantry of mist on an autumnal stream.

XIV

All he had loved, and moulded into thought,

From shape, and hue, and odour, and sweet sound,

120Lamented Adonais. Morning sought

Her eastern watchtower, and her hair unbound,

Wet with the tears which should adorn the ground,

Dimmed the aerial eyes that kindle day;

Afar the melancholy thunder moaned,

125Pale Ocean in unquiet slumber lay,

And the wild winds flew round, sobbing in their dismay.

XV

Lost Echo sits amid the voiceless mountains,

And feeds her grief with his remembered lay,

And will no more reply to winds or fountains,

130Or amorous birds perched on the young green spray,

Or herdsman’s horn, or bell at closing day;

Since she can mimic not his lips, more dear

Than those for whose disdain she pined away

Into a shadow of all sounds:—a drear

135Murmur, between their songs, is all the woodmen hear.

XVI

Grief made the young Spring wild, and she threw down

Her kindling buds, as if she Autumn were,

Or they dead leaves; since her delight is flown,

For whom should she have waked the sullen year?

140To Phoebus was not Hyacinth so dear

Nor to himself Narcissus, as to both

Thou Adonais: wan they stand and sere

Amid the faint companions of their youth,

With dew all turned to tears; odour, to sighing ruth.

XVII

145Thy spirit’s sister, the lorn nightingale

Mourns not her mate with such melodious pain;

Not so the eagle, who like thee could scale

Heaven, and could nourish in the sun’s domain

Her mighty youth with morning, doth complain,

150Soaring and screaming round her empty nest,

As Albion wails for thee: the curse of Cain

Light on his head who pierced thy innocent breast,

And scared the angel soul that was its earthly guest!

XVIII

Ah woe is me! Winter is come and gone,

155But grief returns with the revolving year;

The airs and streams renew their joyous tone;

The ants, the bees, the swallows reappear;

Fresh leaves and flowers deck the dead Seasons’ bier;

The amorous birds now pair in every brake,

160And build their mossy homes in field and brere;

And the green lizard, and the golden snake,

Like unimprisoned flames, out of their trance awake.

XIX

Through wood and stream and field and hill and Ocean

A quickening life from the Earth’s heart has burst

165As it has ever done, with change and motion,

From the great morning of the world when first

God dawned on Chaos; in its steam immersed

The lamps of Heaven flash with a softer light;

All baser things pant with life’s sacred thirst;

170Diffuse themselves; and spend in love’s delight,

The beauty and the joy of their renewed might.

XX

The leprous corpse touched by this spirit tender

Exhales itself in flowers of gentle breath;

Like incarnations of the stars, when splendour

175Is changed to fragrance, they illumine death

And mock the merry worm that wakes beneath;

Nought we know, dies. Shall that alone which knows

Be as a sword consumed before the sheath

By sightless lightning?—th’ intense atom glows

180A moment, then is quenched in a most cold repose.

XXI

Alas! that all we loved of him should be,

But for our grief, as if it had not been,

And grief itself be mortal! Woe is me!

Whence are we, and why are we? of what scene

185The actors or spectators? Great and mean

Meet massed in death, who lends what life must borrow.

As long as skies are blue, and fields are green,

Evening must usher night, night urge the morrow,

Month follow month with woe, and year wake year to sorrow.

XXII

190He will awake no more, oh, never more!

‘Wake thou,’ cried Misery, ‘childless Mother, rise

Out of thy sleep, and slake, in thy heart’s core,

A wound more fierce than his with tears and sighs.’

And all the Dreams that watched Urania’s eyes,

195And all the Echoes whom their sister’s song

Had held in holy silence, cried: ‘Arise!’

Swift as a Thought by the snake Memory stung,

From her ambrosial rest the fading Splendour sprung.

XXIII

She rose like an autumnal Night, that springs

200Out of the East, and follows wild and drear

The golden Day, which, on eternal wings,

Even as a ghost abandoning a bier,

Had left the Earth a corpse. Sorrow and fear

So struck, so roused, so rapt Urania;

205So saddened round her like an atmosphere

Of stormy mist; so swept her on her way

Even to the mournful place where Adonais lay.

XXIV

Out of her secret Paradise she sped,

Through camps and cities rough with stone, and steel,

210And human hearts, which to her aery tread

Yielding not, wounded the invisible

Palms of her tender feet where’er they fell:

And barbed tongues, and thoughts more sharp than they

Rent the soft Form they never could repel,

215Whose sacred blood, like the young tears of May,

Paved with eternal flowers that undeserving way.

XXV

In the death chamber for a moment Death,

Shamed by the presence of that living Might,

Blushed to annihilation, and the breath

220Revisited those lips, and life’s pale light

Flashed through those limbs, so late her dear delight.

‘Leave me not wild and drear and comfortless,

As silent lightning leaves the starless night!

Leave me not!’ cried Urania: her distress

225Roused Death: Death rose and smiled, and met her vain caress.

XXVI

‘Stay yet awhile! speak to me once again;

Kiss me, so long but as a kiss may live;

And in my heartless breast and burning brain

That word, that kiss shall all thoughts else survive,

230With food of saddest memory kept alive,

Now thou art dead, as if it were a part

Of thee, my Adonais! I would give

All that I am to be as thou now art!

But I am chained to Time, and cannot thence depart!

XXVII

235‘Oh gentle child, beautiful as thou wert,

Why didst thou leave the trodden paths of men

Too soon, and with weak hands though mighty heart

Dare the unpastured dragon in his den?

Defenceless as thou wert, oh where was then

240Wisdom the mirrored shield, or scorn the spear?

Or hadst thou waited the full cycle, when

Thy spirit should have filled its crescent sphere,

The monsters of life’s waste had fled from thee like deer.

XXVIII

‘The herded wolves, bold only to pursue;

245The obscene ravens, clamorous o’er the dead;

The vultures to the conqueror’s banner true

Who feed where Desolation first has fed,

And whose wings rain contagion;—how they fled,

When like Apollo, from his golden bow,

250The Pythian of the age one arrow sped

And smiled!—The spoilers tempt no second blow,

They fawn on the proud feet that spurn them lying low.

XXIX

‘The sun comes forth, and many reptiles spawn;

He sets, and each ephemeral insect then

255Is gathered into death without a dawn,

And the immortal stars awake again;

So is it in the world of living men:

A godlike mind soars forth, in its delight

Making earth bare and veiling heaven, and when

260It sinks, the swarms that dimmed or shared its light

Leave to its kindred lamps the spirit’s awful night.’

XXX

Thus ceased she: and the mountain shepherds came,

Their garlands sere, their magic mantles rent;

The Pilgrim of Eternity, whose fame

265Over his living head like Heaven is bent,

An early but enduring monument,

Came, veiling all the lightnings of his song

In sorrow; from her wilds Ierne sent

The sweetest lyrist of her saddest wrong,

270And love taught grief to fall like music from his tongue.

XXXI

Midst others of less note, came one frail Form,

A phantom among men; companionless

As the last cloud of an expiring storm

Whose thunder is its knell; he, as I guess,

275Had gazed on Nature’s naked loveliness,

Actaeon-like, and now he fled astray

With feeble steps o’er the world’s wilderness,

And his own thoughts, along that rugged way,

Pursued, like raging hounds, their father and their prey.

XXXII

280A pardlike Spirit beautiful and swift—

A Love in desolation masked;—a Power

Girt round with weakness;—it can scarce uplift

The weight of the superincumbent hour;

It is a dying lamp, a falling shower,

285A breaking billow;—even whilst we speak

Is it not broken? On the withering flower

The killing sun smiles brightly: on a cheek

The life can burn in blood, even while the heart may break.

XXXIII

His head was bound with pansies overblown,

290And faded violets, white, and pied, and blue;

And a light spear topped with a cypress cone,

Round whose rude shaft dark ivy tresses grew

Yet dripping with the forest’s noonday dew,

Vibrated, as the ever-beating heart

295Shook the weak hand that grasped it; of that crew

He came the last, neglected and apart;

A herd-abandoned deer struck by the hunter’s dart.

XXXIV

All stood aloof, and at his partial moan

Smiled through their tears; well knew that gentle band

300Who in another’s fate now wept his own,

As in the accents of an unknown land

He sung new sorrow; sad Urania scanned

The Stranger’s mien, and murmured: ‘who art thou?’

He answered not, but with a sudden hand

305Made bare his branded and ensanguined brow,

Which was like Cain’s or Christ’s—Oh! that it should be so!

XXXV

What softer voice is hushed over the dead?

Athwart what brow is that dark mantle thrown?

What form leans sadly o’er the white death-bed,

310In mockery of monumental stone,

The heavy heart heaving without a moan?

If it be He, who, gentlest of the wise,

Taught, soothed, loved, honoured the departed one;

Let me not vex, with inharmonious sighs

315The silence of that heart’s accepted sacrifice.

XXXVI

Our Adonais has drunk poison—oh!

What deaf and viperous murderer could crown

Life’s early cup with such a draught of woe?

The nameless worm would now itself disown:

320It felt, yet could escape the magic tone

Whose prelude held all envy, hate, and wrong,

But what was howling in one breast alone,

Silent with expectation of the song,

Whose master’s hand is cold, whose silver lyre unstrung.

XXXVII

325Live thou, whose infamy is not thy fame!

Live! fear no heavier chastisement from me,

Thou noteless blot on a remembered name!

But be thyself, and know thyself to be!

And ever at thy season be thou free

330To spill the venom when thy fangs o’erflow:

Remorse and Self-contempt shall cling to thee;

Hot Shame shall burn upon thy secret brow,

And like a beaten hound tremble thou shalt—as now.

XXXVIII

Nor let us weep that our delight is fled

335Far from these carrion kites that scream below;

He wakes or sleeps with the enduring dead;

Thou canst not soar where he is sitting now.—

Dust to the dust! but the pure spirit shall flow

Back to the burning fountain whence it came,

340A portion of the Eternal, which must glow

Through time and change, unquenchably the same,

Whilst thy cold embers choke the sordid hearth of shame.

XXXIX

Peace, peace! he is not dead, he doth not sleep—

He hath awakened from the dream of life—

345’Tis we, who lost in stormy visions, keep

With phantoms an unprofitable strife,

And in mad trance, strike with our spirit’s knife

Invulnerable nothings.—We decay

Like corpses in a charnel; fear and grief

350Convulse us and consume us day by day,

And cold hopes swarm like worms within our living clay.

XL

He has outsoared the shadow of our night;

Envy and calumny and hate and pain,

And that unrest which men miscall delight,

355Can touch him not and torture not again;

From the contagion of the world’s slow stain

He is secure, and now can never mourn

A heart grown cold, a head grown grey in vain;

Nor, when the spirit’s self has ceased to burn,

360With sparkless ashes load an unlamented urn.

XLI

He lives, he wakes—’tis Death is dead, not he;

Mourn not for Adonais.—Thou young Dawn

Turn all thy dew to splendour, for from thee

The spirit thou lamentest is not gone;

365Ye caverns and ye forests, cease to moan!

Cease ye faint flowers and fountains, and thou Air

Which like a mourning veil thy scarf hadst thrown

O’er the abandoned Earth, now leave it bare

Even to the joyous stars which smile on its despair!

XLII

370He is made one with Nature: there is heard

His voice in all her music, from the moan

Of thunder, to the song of night’s sweet bird;

He is a presence to be felt and known

In darkness and in light, from herb and stone,

375Spreading itself where’er that Power may move

Which has withdrawn his being to its own;

Which wields the world with never wearied love,

Sustains it from beneath, and kindles it above.

XLIII

He is a portion of the loveliness

380Which once he made more lovely: he doth bear

His part, while the one Spirit’s plastic stress

Sweeps through the dull dense world, compelling there,

All new successions to the forms they wear;

Torturing th’ unwilling dross that checks its flight

385To its own likeness, as each mass may bear;

And bursting in its beauty and its might

From trees and beasts and men into the Heaven’s light.

XLIV

The splendours of the firmament of time

May be eclipsed, but are extinguished not;

390Like stars to their appointed height they climb

And death is a low mist which cannot blot

The brightness it may veil.