LI. Here pause. These graves are all too young as yet Here on one fountain of a mourning mind, 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 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? 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. TO NIGHT. (1821.) I. 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 II. Wrap thy form in a mantle grey, Blind with thine hair the eyes of Day; III. When I arose and saw the dawn, When light rode high, and the dew was gone, And noon lay heavy on flower and tree, IV. Thy brother Death came, and cried, Thy sweet child Sleep, the filmy-eyed, 'Shall I nestle near thy side? V. Death will come when thou art dead, Sleep will come when thou art fled. (1821.) ΤΟ Music, when soft voices die, Odours, when sweet violets sicken, Rose-leaves, when the rose is dead, And so thy thoughts, when thou art gone, (1821.) A LAMENT. O World! O life! O time! On whose last steps I climb, Trembling at that where I had stood before,- Out of the day and night A joy has taken flight; Fresh Spring, and Summer, and Winter hoar, Move my faint heart with grief,-but with delight No more-oh never more! (1821.) ΤΟ One word is too often profaned One feeling too falsely disdained One hope is too like despair I can give not what men call love: The worship the heart lifts above, And the Heavens reject not: The devotion to something afar (1821.) LAST CHORUS OF 'HELLAS.' The world's great age begins anew, The earth doth like a snake renew Her winter weeds outworn: Heaven smiles, and faiths and empires gleam Like wrecks of a dissolving dream. A brighter Hellas rears its mountains A new Peneus rolls his fountains Against the morning star; Where fairer Tempes bloom, there sleep A loftier Argo cleaves the main, And loves, and weeps, and dies; Oh write no more the tale of Troy, Another Athens shall arise, And to remoter time Bequeath, like sunset to the skies, The splendour of its prime; And leave, if nought so bright may live, |