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. 9. Oh weep for Adonais!-The quick Dreams,

The passion-winged 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. 10. And one with trembling hand 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.
II. One from a lucid urn of starry dew

Washed his light limbs, as if embalming them;
Another clipped her profuse locks, and threw
The wreath upon him, like an anadem
Which frozen tears instead of pearls begem;
Another in her wilful 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.
12. Another Splendour 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 vapour which the cold night clips, It flushed through his pale limbs, and passed to its eclipse. 13. And others came,-Desires and Adorations,

Winged Persuasions, and veiled Destinies,
Splendours, and Glooms, and glimmering incarnations
Of Hopes and Fears, and twilight Fantasies.
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.

14. All he had loved, and moulded into thought
From shape and hue and odour 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. 15. 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. 16. 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

Thou, Adonais; wan they stand and sere
Amid the faint companions of their youth,

With dew all turned to tears,-odour, to sighing ruth. 17. Thy spirit's sister, the lorn nightingale,

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,

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!
18. Ah woe is me! Winter is come and gone,

But grief returns with the revolving year.

The airs and streams renew their joyous tone;
The ants, the bees, the swallows, re-appear;

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;
And the green lizard and the golden snake,

Like unimprisoned flames, out of their trance awake.

19. 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,
From the great morning of the world when first

God dawned on chaos. In its steam 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
The beauty and the joy of their renewèd might.
20. 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,
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. 21. 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

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. 22. He will awake no more, oh never more!

"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

Had held in holy silence, cried "Arise!

Swift as a thought by the snake memory stung,
From her ambrosial rest the fading Splendour sprung.
23. She rose like an autumnal Night that springs
Out of the east, and follows wild and drear
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
Of stormy mist; so swept her on her way,

Even to the mournful place where Adonais lay,

24. Out of her secret paradise she sped,

Through camps and cities rough with stone and steel
And human hearts, which, to her aery tread

Yielding not, wounded the invisible

Palms of her tender feet where'er they fell.

And barbed tongues, and thoughts more sharp than they,
Rent the soft form they never could repel,

Whose sacred blood, like the Young tears of May,
Paved with eternal flowers that undeserving way.

!

25. 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

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.
26. "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,
Now thou art 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. 27. "O gentle child, beautiful as thou wert,

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?—
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.
28. "The herded wolves bold only to pursue,

29.

The obscene ravens clamorous o'er the dead,

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,

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,
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
Leave to its kindred lamps the spirit's awful night.'
30. 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,

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.
31. '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
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.
32. A pard-like Spirit beautiful and swift-

À 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
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.
33. His head was bound with pansies overblown,

And faded violets, white and pied and blue;
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.
He came the last, neglected and apart;

Of that crew

A herd-abandoned deer struck by the hunter's dart.

24. 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.

As in the accents of an unknown land
He sang 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,

Which was like Cain's or Christ's-Oh! that it should be so!

35. 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,

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.