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.

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

now.

XXXVIII

Nor let us weep that our delight is fled

as

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 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, compelling there

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

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 wingèd 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 the brink.