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

Made 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, In mockery of monumental stone, The heavy heart heaving without a moan? If it be He, who, gentlest of the wise, Taught, soothed, loved, honored the departed one,

Let me not vex with inharmonious sighs The silence of that heart's accepted sacrifice.

a

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; It 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
Live 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
To 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
Far 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,
A 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 '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

in a charnel ; fear and grief Convulse 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,
Can 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 gray in vain ;

Nor, when the spirit's self has ceased to burn, With 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 splendor, for from thee
The spirit thou lamentest is not gone;
Ye 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 de

spair!

XLII

He 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,
Spreading 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
Which once he made more lovely ; he doth

bear His part, while the one Spirit's plastic stress Sweeps through the dull dense world, compel

ling there All new successions to the forms they wear, Torturing the unwilling dross that checks its

Alight
To 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 splendors of the firmament of time May be eclipsed, but are extinguished not ; Like stars to their appointed height they climb, And death is a low mist which cannot blot The brightness it may veil.

.

When lofty thought Lifts a young heart above its mortal lair, And love and life contend in it for what

Shall be its earthly doom, the dead live there And move like winds of light on dark and stormy air.

XLV The inheritors of unfulfilled renown Rose from their thrones, built beyond mortal

thought,

Far in the Unapparent. Chatterton
Rose pale, - his solemn agony had not
Yet faded from him ; Sidney, as he fought
And as he fell and as he lived and loved
Sublimely mild, a Spirit without spot,

Arose ; and Lucan, by his death approved ; Oblivion as they rose shrank like a thing reproved.

XLVI And many more, whose names on earth are

dark But whose transmitted effluence cannot die So long as fire outlives the parent spark, Rose, robed in dazzling immortality. - Thou art become as one of us,” they cry ; “ It was for thee yon kingless sphere has long Swung blind in unascended majesty,

Silent alone amid an Heaven of song. Assume thy winged throne, thou Vesper of our

throng!”

XLVII

Who mourns for Adonais ? Oh, come forth, Fond wretch! and know thyself and him aright. Clasp with thy panting soul the pendulous

Earth; As from a centre, dart thy spirit's light Beyond all worlds, until its spacious might Satiate the void circumference; then shrink Even to a point within our day and night; And keep thy heart light lest it make thee

sink When hope has kindled hope, and lured thee to