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PEACE! peace! he is not dead, he doth not sleep,— | |
| He hath awakened from the dream of life; | |
| ’T is we who, lost in stormy visions, keep | |
| With phantoms an unprofitable strife, | |
| And in mad trance strike with our spirit’s knife | 5 |
| 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. | |
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| He has outsoared the shadow of our night; | 10 |
| 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 | 15 |
| 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. | |
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| He lives, he wakes,—’t is Death is dead, not he; | |
| Mourn not for Adonais. Thou young dawn, | 20 |
| 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 | 25 |
| O’er the abandoned earth, now leave it bare | |
| Even to the joyous stars which smile on its despair! | |
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| 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; | 30 |
| 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| Which has withdrawn his being to its own; | |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, | 35 |
| Sustains it from beneath, and kindles it above. | |
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