From the contagion of the world's slow stain A heart grown cold, a head grown grey, in vain- XLI. He lives, he wakes-'tis Death is dead, not he; Ye caverns and ye forests, cease to moan! XLII. He is made one with Nature. There is heard In darkness and in light, from herb and stone,- 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 splendo irs of the firmament of time 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, 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 XLVIII. Or go to Rome, which is the sepulchre, Oh not of him, but of our joy. 'Tis nought Lie buried in the ravage they have wrought; XLIX. Go thou to Rome, -at once the paradise, The grave, the city, and the wilderness; And where its wrecks like shattered mountains rise, 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 And grey walls moulder round, on which dull Time LI. Here pause. These graves are all too young as yet Here on one fountain of a mourning mind, LII. The One remains, the many change and pass; Heaven's light for ever shines, earth's shadows fly; Life, like a dome of many-coloured glass, Stains, the white radiance of eternity, Until Death tramples it to fragments.-Die, If thou wouldst be with that which thou dost 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? And man and woman; and what still is dear The soft sky smiles, the low wind whispers 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 Whilst, burning through the inmost veil of heaven, The soul of Adonais, like a star, Beacons from the abode where the Eternal are. Swiftly walk over the western wave, Out of the misty eastern cave Where, all the long and lone daylight, Thou wovest dreams of joy and fear Which make thee terrible and dear, II. Wrap thy form in a mantle grey, Blind with thine hair the eyes of Day; Kiss her until she be wearied out. |