| |
| 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 |
| |
