Bernardo

Beatrice

Smiling and slow, walk through a world of tears
To death as to life's sleep, 'twere just the grave
Were some strange joy for us. Come, obscure Death,
And wind me in thine all-embracing arms!

Like a fond mother hide me in thy bosom,

And rock me to the sleep from which none wake.
Live ye, who live, subject to one another

As we were once who now

Bernardo rushes in

Oh, horrible,

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That tears, that looks, that hope poured forth in prayer,
Even till the heart is vacant and despairs,

Should all be vain! The ministers of death

Are waiting round the doors. I thought I saw
Blood on the face of one. What if 'twere fancy?
Soon the heart's blood of all I love on earth
Will sprinkle him, and he will wipe it off
As if 'twere only rain. O life! O world!
Cover me! let me be no more! To see
That perfect mirror of pure innocence
Wherein I gazed, and grew happy and good,
Shivered to dust! To see thee, Beatrice,
Who made all lovely thou didst look upon-
Thee, light of life, dead, dark! while I say "sister"
To hear I have no sister; and thou, mother,

Whose love was as a bond to all our loves,

Dead! the sweet bond broken!

Enter Camillo and Guards

They come! Let me

Kiss those warm lips before their crimson leaves
Are blighted-white-cold. Say farewell before
Death chokes that gentle voice! Oh, let me hear
You speak.

Farewell, my tender brother. Think
Of our sad fate with gentleness, as now;

And let mild, pitying thoughts lighten for thee

Thy sorrow's load. Err not in harsh despair,
But tears and patience. One thing more, my child:
For thine own sake be constant to the love

Thou bearest us; and to the faith that I,

Though wrapt in a strange cloud of crime and shame,

Lived ever holy and unstained. And though

Bernardo

Ill tongues shall wound me, and our common name
Be as a mark stamped on thine innocent brow
For men to point at as they pass, do thou
Forbear, and never think a thought unkind
Of those who perhaps love thee in their graves.
So mayest thou die as I do; fear and pain
Being subdued. Farewell! Farewell! Farewell!

I cannot say, farewell!

Camillo
O Lady Beatrice!
Beatrice-Give yourself no unnecessary pain,

My dear Lord Cardinal. Here, mother, tie
My girdle for me, and bind up this hair
In any simple knot; ay, that does well.
And yours I see is coming down. How often
Have we done this for one another; now
We shall not do it any more. My lord,
We are quite ready. Well, 'tis very well.

ADONAIS

I

WEEP for Adonais - he is dead!

Oh, weep for Adonais! though our tears

Thaw not the frost which binds so dear a head!
And thou, sad hour, selected from all years

To mourn our loss, rouse thy obscure compeers,
And teach them thine own sorrow! Say: "With_me
Died Adonais; till the future dares

Forget the past, his fate and fame shall be

An echo and a light unto eternity!"

Where wert thou, mighty mother, when he lay,

When thy son lay, pierced by the shaft which flies

In darkness? where was lorn Urania

When Adonais died? With veilèd eyes,

'Mid listening echoes, in her paradise.

She sate, while one, with soft enamored breath,
Rekindled all the fading melodies

With which, like flowers that mock the corse beneath,
He had adorned and hid the coming bulk of death.

Oh, weep for Adonais - he is dead!

Wake, melancholy mother, wake and weep!

Yet wherefore? Quench within their burning bed
Thy fiery tears, and let thy loud heart keep,
Like his, a mute and uncomplaining sleep;
For he is gone where all things wise and fair
Descend; -oh, dream not that the amorous deep

Will yet restore him to the vital air:

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Death feeds on his mute voice, and laughs at our despair.

Most musical of mourners, weep again!

Lament anew, Urania!- He died

Who was the sire of an immortal strain,

Blind, old, and lonely, when his country's pride,

The priest, the slave, and the liberticide,

Trampled and mocked with many a loathed rite

Of lust and blood; he went, unterrified,

Into the gulf of death: but his clear sprite

Yet reigns o'er earth; the third among the sons of light.

Most musical of mourners, weep anew!

Not all to that bright station dared to climb; And happier they their happiness who knew,

Whose tapers yet burn through that night of time In which suns perished; others more sublime, Struck by the envious wrath of man or God,

Have sunk, extinct in their refulgent prime;

And some yet live, treading the thorny road

Which leads, through toil and hate, to Fame's serene abode.

But now thy youngest, dearest one has perished,
The nursling of thy widowhood, who grew,
Like a pale flower by some sad maiden cherished,
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 The shadow of white Death, and at the door Invisible Corruption waits to trace

His extreme way to her dim dwelling-place; The eternal Hunger sits, but pity and awe

Soothe her pale rage, nor dares she to deface So fair a prey, till darkness and the law

Of change shall o'er his sleep the mortal curtain draw.

Oh, weep for Adonais! The quick dreams,

The passion-wingèd ministers of thought,

Who were his flocks, whom near the living 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, or find a home again.

And one with trembling hands 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 loosened from his brain." Lost angel of a ruined 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

Washed his light limbs as if embalming them; Another clipt her profuse locks, and threw

The wreath upon him, like an anadem,
Which frozen tears instead of pearls begem;
Another in her willful grief would break

Her bow and wingèd reeds, as if to stem
A greater loss with one which was more weak,
And dull the barbèd fire against his frozen cheek.

Another splendor on his mouth alit,

That mouth, whence it was wont to draw the breath

Which gave it strength to pierce the guarded wit,
And pass into the panting heart beneath
With lightning and with music: the damp death
Quenched its caress upon his icy lips;

And as a dying meteor stains a wreath

Of moonlight vapor, which the cold night clips, It flushed through his pale limbs, and past to its eclipse.

And others came: Desires and Adorations,

Winged Persuasions and veiled Destinies, Splendors, and Glooms, and glimmering incarnations Of Hopes and Fears, and twilight Phantasies; And Sorrow, with her family of sighs;

And Pleasure, blind with tears, led by the gleam

Of her own dying smile instead of eyes,-
Came in slow pomp; the moving pomp might seem
Like pageantry of mist on an autumnal stream.

All he had loved, and molded into thought,

From shape and hue and odor and sweet sound, Lamented Adonais. Morning sought

Her eastern watch-tower; and her hair unbound, Wet with the tears which should adorn the ground, Dimmed the aerial eyes that kindle day:

Afar the melancholy thunder moaned,

Pale Ocean in unquiet slumber lay,

And the wild winds flew round, sobbing in their dismay.

Lost Echo sits amid the voiceless mountains,
And feeds her grief with his remembered lay,
And will no more reply to winds or fountains,

Or amorous birds perched on the young green spray,
Or herdsman's horn, or bell at closing day;

Since she can mimic not his lips, more dear

Than those for whose disdain she pined away

Into a shadow of all sounds: a drear

Murmur, between their songs, is all the woodmen hear.

Grief made the young Spring wild, and she threw down Her kindling buds, as if she Autumn were,

Or they dead leaves: since her delight is flown,

For whom should she have waked the sullen year?

To Phoebus was not Hyacinth so dear,

Nor to himself Narcissus, as to both