|
I WEEP for Adonais—he is dead! | |
O, 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, | 5 |
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, | 10 |
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 enamoured breath, | 15 |
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! | 20 |
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 | 25 |
Will yet restore him to the vital air; | |
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, | 30 |
Blind, old, and lonely, when his country’s pride, | |
The priest, the slave, and the liberticide, | |
Trampled and mocked with many a loathèd rite | |
Of lust and blood; he went, unterrified, | |
Into the gulf of death; but his clear Sprite | 35 |
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 | 40 |
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. | 45 |
|
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! | 50 |
Thy extreme hope, the loveliest and 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 | 55 |
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 | 60 |
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, | 65 |
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 | 70 |
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 | 75 |
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, | 80 |
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, | 85 |
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. | 90 |
|
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; | 95 |
Another in her wilful grief would break | |
Her bow and wingèd reeds, as if to stem | |
A greater loss with one which was more week; | |
And dull the barbèd fire against his frozen cheek. | |
|
Another Splendour on his mouth alit, | 100 |
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; | 105 |
And, as a dying meteor stains a wreath | |
Of moonlight vapour, which the cold night clips, | |
It flushed through his pale limbs, and passed to its eclipse. | |
|
And others came … Desires and Adorations, | |
Wingèd Persuasions and veiled Destinies, | 110 |
Splendours 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, | 115 |
Came in slow pomp;—the moving pomp might seem | |
Like pageantry of mist on an autumnal stream. | |
|
All he had loved, and moulded into thought, | |
From shape, and hue, and odour, and sweet sound, | |
Lamented Adonais. Morning sought | 120 |
Her eastern watch-tower, and her hair unbound, | |
Wet with the tears which should adorn the ground, | |
Dimmed the ae¨rial eyes that kindle day; | |
Afar the melancholy thunder moaned, | |
Pale Ocean in unquiet slumber lay, | 125 |
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, | 130 |
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. | 135 |
|
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 | 140 |
Nor to himself Narcissus, as to both | |
Thou, Adonais: wan they stand and sere | |
Amid the faint companions of their youth, | |
With dew all turned to tears; odour, to sighing ruth. | |
|
Thy spirit’s sister, the lorn nightingale, | 145 |
Mourns not her mate with such melodious pain; | |
Not so the eagle, who like thee could scale | |
Heaven, and could nourish in the sun’s domain | |
Her mighty youth with morning, doth complain, | |
Soaring and screaming round her empty nest, | 150 |
As Albion wails for thee; the curse of Cain | |
Light on his head who pierced thy innocent breast, | |
And scared the angel soul that was its earthly guest! | |
|
Ah, woe is me! Winter is come and gone, | |
But grief returns with the revolving year; | 155 |
The airs and streams renew their joyous tone: | |
The ants, the bees, the swallows reappear; | |
Fresh leaves and flowers deck the dead Seasons’ bier; | |
The amorous birds now pair in every brake, | |
And build their mossy homes in field and brere; | 160 |
And the green lizard, and the golden snake, | |
Like unimprisoned flames, out of their trance awake. | |
|
Through wood and stream and field and hill and Ocean | |
A quickening life from the Earth’s heart has burst | |
As it has ever done, with change and motion, | 165 |
From the great morning of the world when first | |
God dawned on Chaos; in its stream immersed | |
The lamps of Heaven flash with a softer light; | |
All baser things pant with life’s sacred thirst; | |
Diffuse themselves; and spend in love’s delight, | 170 |
The beauty and the joy of their renewèd might. | |
|
The leprous corpse touched by this spirit tender | |
Exhales itself in flowers of gentle breath; | |
Like incarnations of the stars, when splendour | |
Is changed to fragrance, they illumine death | 175 |
And mock the merry worm that wakes beneath; | |
Nought we know, dies. Shall that alone which knows | |
Be as a sword consumed before the sheath | |
By sightless lightning?—the intense atom glows | |
A moment, then is quenched in a most cold repose. | 180 |
|
Alas! that all we loved of him should be | |
But for our grief, as if it had not been, | |
And grief itself be mortal! Woe is me! | |
Whence are we, and why are we? of what scene | |
The actors or spectators? Great and mean | 185 |
Meet massed in death, who lends what life must borrow. | |
As long as skies are blue, and fields are green, | |
Evening must usher night, night urge the morrow, | |
Month follow month with woe, and year wake year to sorrow. | |
|
He will awake no more, oh, never more! | 190 |
‘Wake thou,’ cried Misery, ‘childless Mother, rise | |
Out of thy sleep, and slake, in thy heart’s core, | |
A wound more fierce than his, with tears and sighs.’ | |
And all the Dreams that watched Urania’s eyes, | |
And all the Echoes whom their sister’s song | 195 |
Had held in holy silence, cried: ‘Arise!’ | |
Swift as a Thought by the snake Memory stung, | |
From her ambrosial rest the fading Splendour sprung. | |
|
She rose like an autumnal Night, that springs | |
Out of the East, and follows wild and drear | 200 |
The golden Day, which, on eternal wings, | |
Even as a ghost abandoning a bier, | |
Had left the Earth a corpse. Sorrow and fear | |
So struck, so roused, so rapt Urania; | |
So saddened round her like an atmosphere | 205 |
Of stormy mist; so swept her on her way | |
Even to the mournful place where Adonais lay. | |
|
Out of her secret Paradise she sped, | |
Through camps and cities rough with stone, and steel, | |
And human hearts, which to her airy tread | 210 |
Yielding not, wounded the invisible | |
Palms of her tender feet where’er they fell: | |
And barbèd tongues, and thoughts more sharp than they | |
Rent the soft Form they never could repel, | |
Whose sacred blood, like the young tears of May, | 215 |
Paved with eternal flowers that undeserving way. | |
|
In the death-chamber for a moment Death, | |
Shamed by the presence of that living Might, | |
Blushed to annihilation, and the breath | |
Revisited those lips, and Life’s pale light | 220 |
Flashed through those limbs, so late her dear delight. | |
‘Leave me not wild and drear and comfortless, | |
As silent lightning leaves the starless night! | |
Leave me not!’ cried Urania: her distress | |
Roused Death: Death rose and smiled, and met her vain caress. | 225 |
|
‘Stay yet awhile! speak to me once again; | |
Kiss me, so long but as a kiss may live; | |
And in my heartless breast and burning brain | |
That word, that kiss, shall all thoughts else survive, | |
With food of saddest memory kept alive, | 230 |
Now thou art dead, as dead, as if it were a part | |
Of thee, my Adonais! I would give | |
All that I am to be as thou now art! | |
But I am chained to Time, and cannot thence depart! | |
|
‘O gentle child, beautiful as thou wert, | 235 |
Why didst thou leave the trodden paths of men | |
Too soon, and with weak hands though mighty heart | |
Dare the unpastured dragon in his den? | |
Defenceless as thou wert, oh where was then | |
Wisdom the mirrored shield, or scorn the spear? | 240 |
Or hadst thou waited the full cycle, when | |
Thy spirit should have filled its crescent sphere, | |
The monsters of life’s waste had fled from thee like deer. | |
|
‘The herded wolves, bold only to pursue; | |
The obscene ravens, clamorous o’er the dead; | 245 |
The vultures to the conqueror’s banner true | |
Who feed where Desolation first has fed, | |
And whose wings rain contagion;—how they fled, | |
When, like Apollo, from his golden bow, | |
The Pythian of the age one arrow sped | 250 |
And smiled!—The spoilers tempt no second blow, | |
They fawn on the proud feet that spurn them lying low. | |
|
‘The sun comes forth, and many reptiles spawn; | |
He sets, and each ephemeral insect then | |
Is gathered into death without a dawn, | 255 |
And the immortal stars awake again; | |
So is it in the world of living men: | |
A godlike mind soars forth, in its delight | |
Making earth bare and veiling heaven, and when | |
It sinks, the swarms that dimmed or shared its light | 260 |
Leave to its kindred lamps the spirit’s awful night.’ | |
|
Thus ceased she: and the mountain shepherds came, | |
Their garlands sere, their magic mantles rent; | |
The Pilgrim of Eternity, whose fame | |
Over his living head like Heaven is bent, | 265 |
An early but enduring monument, | |
Came, veiling all the lightnings of his song | |
In sorrow; from her wilds Ierne sent | |
The sweetest lyrist of her saddest wrong, | |
And Love taught Grief to fall like music from his tongue. | 270 |
|
Midst others of less note, came one frail Form, | |
A phantom among men; companionless | |
As the last cloud of an expiring storm | |
Whose thunder is its knell; he, as I guess, | |
Had gazed on Nature’s naked loveliness, | 275 |
Actæon-like, and now he fled astray | |
With feeble steps o’er the world’s wilderness, | |
And his own thoughts, along that rugged way, | |
Pursued, like raging hounds, their father and their prey. | |
|
A pardlike Spirit beautiful and swift— | 280 |
Love in desolation masked;—a Power | |
Girt round with weakness;—it can scarce uplift | |
The weight of the superincumbent hour; | |
It is a dying lamp, a falling shower, | |
A breaking billow;—even whilst we speak | 285 |
Is it not broken? On the withering flower | |
The killing sun smiles brightly: on a cheek | |
The life can burn in blood, even while the heart may break. | |
|
His head was bound with pansies overblown, | |
And faded violets, white, and pied, and blue; | 290 |
And a light spear topped with a cypress cone, | |
Round whose rude shaft dark ivy tresses grew | |
Yet dripping with the forest’s noonday dew, | |
Vibrated, as the ever-beating heart | |
Shook the weak hand that grasped it; of that crew | 295 |
He came the last, neglected and apart; | |
A herd-abandoned deer struck by the hunter’s dart. | |
|
All stood aloof, and at his partial moan | |
Smiled through their tears; well knew that gentle band | |
Who in another’s fate now wept his own; | 300 |
As in the accents of an unknown land, | |
He sung new sorrow; sad Urania scanned | |
The Stranger’s mien, and murmured: ‘Who art thou?’ | |
He answered not, but with a sudden hand | |
Made bare his branded and ensanguined brow, | 305 |
Which was like Cain’s or Christ’s—oh, that it should be so! | |
|
What softer voice is hushed over the dead? | |
Athwart what brow is that dark mantle thrown? | |
What form leans sadly o’er the white death-bed, | |
In mockery of monumental stone, | 310 |
The heavy heart heaving without a moan? | |
If it be He, who, gentlest of the wise, | |
Taught, soothed, loved, honoured the departed one; | |
Let me not vex, with inharmonious sighs | |
The silence of that heart’s accepted sacrifice. | 315 |
|
Our Adonais has drunk poison—Oh! | |
What deaf and viperous murderer could crown | |
Life’s early cup with such a draught of woe? | |
The nameless worm would now itself disown: | |
It felt, yet could escape, the magic tone | 320 |
Whose prelude held all envy, hate, and wrong, | |
But what was howling in one breast alone, | |
Silent with expectation of the song, | |
Whose master’s hand is cold, whose silver lyre unstrung. | |
|
Live thou, whose infamy is not thy fame! | 325 |
Live! fear no heavier chastisement from me, | |
Thou noteless blot on a remembered name! | |
But be thyself, and know thyself to be! | |
And ever at thy season be thou free | |
To spill the venom when thy fangs o’erflow: | 330 |
Remorse and Self-contempt shall cling to thee; | |
Hot Shame shall burn upon thy secret brow, | |
And like a beaten hound tremble thou shalt—as now. | |
|
Nor let us weep that our delight is fled | |
Far from these carrion kites that scream below; | 335 |
He wakes or sleeps with the enduring dead; | |
Thou canst not soar where he is sitting now.— | |
Dust to the dust! but the pure spirit shall flow | |
Back to the burning fountain whence it came, | |
A portion of the Eternal, which must glow | 340 |
Through time and change, unquenchably the same, | |
Whilst thy cold embers choke the sordid hearth of shame. | |
|
Peace, peace! he is not dead, he doth not sleep— | |
He hath awakened from the dream of life— | |
’Tis we, who lost in stormy visions, keep | 345 |
With phantoms an unprofitable strife, | |
And in mad trance, strike with our spirit’s knife | |
Invulnerable nothings.—We decay | |
Like corpses in a charnel; fear and grief | |
Convulse us and consume us day by day, | 350 |
And cold hopes swarm like worms within our living clay. | |
|
He has outsoared the shadow of our night; | |
Envy and calumny and hate and pain, | |
And that unrest which men miscall delight, | |
Can touch him not and torture not again; | 355 |
From the contagion of the world’s slow stain | |
He is secure, and now can never mourn | |
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. | 360 |
|
He lives, he wakes—’tis Death is dead, not he; | |
Mourn not for Adonais.—Thou young Dawn, | |
Turn all thy dew to splendour, for from thee | |
The spirit thou lamentest is not gone; | |
Ye caverns and ye forests, cease to moan! | 365 |
Cease, ye faint flowers and fountains, and thou Air | |
Which like a mourning veil thy scarf hadst thrown | |
O’er the abandoned Earth, now leave it bare | |
Even to the joyous stars which smile on its despair! | |
|
He is made one with Nature: there is heard | 370 |
His voice in all her music, from the moan | |
Of thunder, to the song of night’s sweet bird; | |
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 | 375 |
Which has withdrawn his being to its own; | |
Which wields the world with never wearied love, | |
Sustains it from beneath, and kindles it above. | |
|
He is a portion of the loveliness | |
Which once he made more lovely: he doth bear | 380 |
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 th’ unwilling dross that checks its flight | |
To its own likeness, as each mass may bear; | 385 |
And bursting in its beauty and its might | |
From trees and beasts and men into the Heaven’s light. | |
|
The splendours of the firmament of time | |
May be eclipsed, but are extinguished not; | |
Like stars to their appointed height they climb | 390 |
And death is a low mist which cannot blot | |
The brightness it may veil. When lofty thought | |
Lifts a young heart above its mortal lair, | |
And love and life contend in it, for what | |
Shall be its earthly doom, the dead live there | 395 |
And move like winds of light on dark and stormy air. | |
|
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 | 400 |
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. | 405 |
|
And many more, whose names on Earth are dark, | |
But whose transmitted effluence cannot die | |
So long as fire outlives the parent spark, | |
Rose, robed in dazzling immortality. | |
‘Thou art become as one of us,’ they cry, | 410 |
‘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!’ | |
|
Who mourns for Adonais? Oh, come forth, | 415 |
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 | |
Satiate the void circumference: then shrink | 420 |
Even to a point within our day and night; | |
And keep thy heart light lest it make thee sink | |
When hope has kindled hope, and lured thee to the brink. | |
|
Or go to Rome, which is the sepulchre | |
Oh, not of him, but of our joy: ’tis nought | 425 |
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 | 430 |
Who waged contention with their time’s decay, | |
And of the past are all that cannot pass away. | |
|
Go thou to Rome,—at once the Paradise, | |
The grave, the city, and the wilderness; | |
And where its wrecks like shattered mountains rise, | 435 |
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 | 440 |
A light of laughing flowers along the grass is spread. | |
|
And gray walls moulder round, on which dull Time | |
Feeds, like slow fire upon a hoary brand; | |
And one keen pyramid with wedge sublime, | |
Pavilioning the dust of him who planned | 445 |
This refuge for his memory, doth stand | |
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. | 450 |
|
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 | 455 |
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? | |
|
The One remains, the many change and pass; | 460 |
Heaven’s light forever 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! | 465 |
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. | |
|
Why linger, why turn back, why shrink, my Heart? | |
Thy hopes are gone before: from all things here | 470 |
They have departed: thou shouldst now depart! | |
A light is passed from the revolving year, | |
And man, and woman; and what still is dear | |
Attracts to crush, repels to make thee wither. | |
The soft sky smiles,—the low wind whispers near; | 475 |
’Tis Adonais calls! oh, hasten thither, | |
No more let Life divide what Death can join together. | |
|
That Light whose smile kindles the Universe, | |
That Beauty in which all things work and move, | |
That Benediction which the eclipsing Curse | 480 |
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, | 485 |
Consuming the last clouds of cold mortality. | |
|
The breath whose might I have invoked in song | |
Descends on me; my spirit’s bark is driven, | |
Far from the shore, far from the trembling throng | |
Whose sails were never to the tempest given; | 490 |
The massy earth and spherèd skies are riven! | |
I am borne darkly, fearfully, afar; | |
Whilst, burning through the inmost veil of Heaven, | |
The soul of Adonais, like a star, | |
Beacons from the abode where the Eternal are. | 495 |
|