Or go XLVIII to Rome, which is the sepulchre, Oh, not of him, but of our joy; 'tis nought That ages, empires, and religions, there Lie buried in the ravage they have wrought; For such as he can lend, they borrow not Glory from those who made the world their prey; And he is gathered to the kings of thought Who waged contention with their time's decay, And of the past are all that cannot pass away. XLIX Go thou to Rome, at once the Paradise, The grave, the city, and the wilderness; And where its wrecks like shattered mountains rise, And flowering weeds and fragrant copses dress The bones of Desolation's nakedness, Pass, till the Spirit of the spot shall lead Thy footsteps to a slope of green access, Where, like an infant's smile, over the dead A light of laughing flowers along the grass is spread; L And gray walls moulder round, on which dull Time Feeds, like slow fire upon a hoary brand; Like flame transformed to marble; and beneath, A field is spread, on which a newer band Have pitched in Heaven's smile their camp of death, Welcoming him we lose with scarce extinguished breath. LI Here pause: these graves are all too young as yet To have outgrown the sorrow which consigned Its charge to each; and if the seal is set, Here, on one fountain of a mourning mind, Break it not thou! too surely shalt thou find Thine own well full, if thou returnest home, Of tears and gall. From the world's bitter wind Seek shelter in the shadow of the tomb. What Adonais is, why fear we to become? LII The One remains, the many change and pass; Heaven's light forever shines, Earth's shadows fly; Life, like a dome of many-colored glass, - Until Death tramples it to fragments. — Die, seek! Follow where all is fled! - Rome's azure sky, Flowers, ruins, statues, music, words, are weak The glory they transfuse with fitting truth to speak. LIII Why linger, why turn back, why shrink, my Heart? Thy hopes are gone before; from all things here They have departed; thou shouldst now depart! near; 'Tis Adonais calls! oh, hasten thither, No more let Life divide what Death can join together. LIV That Light whose smile kindles the Universe, That Beauty in which all things work and move, That Benediction which the eclipsing Curse Of birth can quench not, that sustaining Love Which through the web of being blindly wove By man and beast and earth and air and sea, Burns bright or dim, as each are mirrors of The fire for which all thirst, now beams on me, Consuming the last clouds of cold mortality. LV The breath whose might I have invoked in song Whose sails were never to the tempest given; Whilst, burning through the inmost veil of Heaven, The soul of Adonais, like a star, Beacons from the abode where the Eternal are. |