And happier they their happiness who The shadow of white Death, and at the knew, Whose tapers yet burn through that night of time In which suns perish'd; others more sublime, Struck by the envious wrath of man or God, Have sunk, extinct in their refulgent prime; So fair a prey, till darkness and the law And some yet live, treading the thorny Of change, shall o'er his sleep the mortal road, Which leads, through toil and hate, to Fame's serene abode. curtain draw. Oh, weep for Adonais !—the quick Dreams, The passion-winged ministers of Thought, But now, thy youngest, dearest one, has Who were his flocks, whom near the living perish'd, The nursling of thy widowhood, who grew Like a pale flower by some sad maiden cherish'd, And fed with true love tears instead of dew; Most 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. To 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 Is 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. He will awake no more, oh, never more! Within the twilight chamber spreads apace 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 Round the cold heart, where, after their sweet pain, They ne'er will gather strength, nor find a home again. And one with trembling hand clasps his cold head, And fans him with her moonlight wings, and cries, "Our love, our hope, our sorrow, is not dead; See, on the silken fringe of his faint eyes, Like dew upon a sleeping flower, there lies A tear some Dream has loosen'd from his brain." Lost angel of a ruin'd paradise! She knew not 'twas her own; as with no stain She faded, like a cloud which had outwept its rain. One from a lucid urn of starry dew Wash'd his light limbs, as if embalm ing them; Another clipt her profuse locks, and threw The wreath upon him, like an anadem, Which frozen tears instead of pearls Dimm'd the aërial eyes that kindle day; Wet with the tears which should adorn And scared the angel soul that was its the ground, earthly guest! Ah, woe is me! Winter is come and gone, But 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, And build their mossy homes in field and brere: And the green lizard, and the golden snake, Like unimprison'd flames, out of their trance awake. Through wood, and stream, and field, and hill and ocean, And grief itself be mortal! Woe is me! Whence are we, and why are we? of what scene The actors or spectators? Great and mean Meet mass'd 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. He will awake no more, oh, never more! "Wake thou!" cried Misery, "childless mother, rise A quickening life from the Earth's heart Out of thy sleep, and slake, in thy heart's has burst, As it has ever done, with change and motion, From the great morning of the world when first God dawn'd on Chaos; in its stream immersed, The lamps of Heaven flash with a softer light; All baser things pant with life's sacred thirst; Diffuse themselves; and spend in love's delight, The beauty and the joy of their renewed She rose like an autumnal Night, that might. The leprous corpse, touch'd by this spirit tender, Exhales itself in flowers of gentle breath; Like incarnations of the stars, when splendor Is changed to fragrance, they illumine death, And mock the merry worm that wakes beneath; Naught we know dies. Shall that alone which knows Be as a sword consumed before the sheath By sightless lightning? th' intense atom glows A moment, then is quench'd in a most cold repose. Alas! that all we loved of him should be, But for our grief, as if it had not been, springs Out of the East, and follows wild and drear The golden Day, which, on eternal wings, and fear So struck, so roused, so rapt, Urania, So sadden'd round her like an atmo sphere Of stormy mist; so swept her on her way, Even to the mournful place where Adonais lay. Out of her secret paradise she sped, Through camps and cities rough with stone, and steel, And human hearts, which to her aëry tread Yielding not, wounded the invisible Palms of her tender feet where'er they fell: And barbed tongues, and thoughts more sharp than they, "The herded wolves, bold only to pur sue; The obscene ravens, clamorous o'er the dead; Rent the soft Form they never could repel, The vultures, to the conqueror's banner Whose sacred blood, like the young tears of May, Paved with eternal flowers that unde serving way. In the death-chamber for a moment Death, Shamed by the presence of that living Might, Blush'd to annihilation, and the breath Revisited those lips, and life's pale light Flash'd 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 Roused Death: Death rose and smiled, and met her vain caress. true, "The sun comes forth, and many reptiles spawn; He sets, and each ephemeral insect then Is gather'd into death without a dawn, And the immortal stars awake again; So it is in the world of living men: A godlike mind soars forth, in its delight Making earth bare and veiling heaven, and when "Stay yet a while! speak to me once again; Kiss me, so long but as a kiss may live; It sinks, the swarms that dimm'd or shared And in my heartless breast and burning brain That word, that kiss, shall all thoughts else survive, With 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 chain'd to Time, and cannot thence depart! "O 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 Wisdom the mirror'd shield, or scorn the 'Midst others of less note came one frai. spear? Or hadst thou waited the full cycle, when Thy spirit should have fill'd its crescent sphere, The monsters of life's waste had fled from thee like deer. Form, A phantom among men; companionless As the last cloud of an expiring storm, Whose thunder is its knell: he as I guess, Had gazed on Nature's naked loveliness, Actæon-like, and now he fled astray With feeble steps o'er the world's wilderness, What softer voice is hushed over the dead? Athwart what brow is that dark mantle thrown? And his own thoughts, along that rugged What form leans sadly o'er the white way, Pursued, like raging hounds, their father and their prey. A pard-like Spirit beautiful and swift- The weight of the superincumbent hour; flower The killing sun smiles brightly: on a cheek The life can burn in blood, even while the heart may break. His head was bound with pansies overblown, And faded violets, white, and pied, and blue: deathbed, In mockery of monumental stone, The heavy heart heaving without a If it be he, who, gentlest of the wise, parted one; Let me not vex, with inharmonious sighs, The silence of that heart's accepted sacrifice. 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: It felt, yet could escape the magic tone Whose prelude held all envy, hate, and wrong, But what was howling in one breast alone, And a light spear topp'd with a cypress Silent with the expectation of the song, cone, Round whose rude shaft dark ivy-tresses grew, Whose master's hand is cold, whose silver lyre unstrung. Yet dripping with the forest's noonday Live thou, whose infamy is not thy fame! dew, Vibrated, as the ever-beating heart Live! fear no heavier chastisement from me, Shook the weak hand that grasp'd it; of Thou noteless blot on a remember'd Made bare his branded and ensanguined He wakes or sleeps with the enduring |