Like corpses in a charnel; fear and griet Convulse us and consume us day by day, And cold hopes swarm like worms within our living clay.

XL.

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; 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.

XLI.

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!
Cease ye faint flowers and fountains, and thou
Air,

Which like a morning veil thy scarf hadst thrown O'er the abandoned Earth, now leave it bare Even to the joyous stars which smile on its despair

XLII.

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 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felt and known In darkness and in light, from herb and stone, Spreading itself where'er that Power may move Which has withdrawn his being to its own; Which wields the world with never-wearied love, Sustains it from beneath, and kindles it above.

XLIII.

He is a portion of the loveliness

Which once he made more lovely: he doth bear

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; And bursting in its beauty and its might

From trees and beasts and men into the Heavens'

light.

XLIV.

The splendours of the firmament of time
May be eclipsed, but are extinguished not;
Like stars to their appointed height they climb
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, And move like winds of light on dark and stormy

air.

XLV.

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

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.

XLVI.

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; "It was for thee yon kingless sphere has long Swung blind in unascended majesty,

Silent alone amid a Heaven of song.

Assume thy winged throne, thou Vesper of our throng!"

XLVII.

Who mourns for Adonais? O, come forth, 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 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.

XLVIII.

Or go to Rome, which is the sepulchre, , not of him, but of our joy: 'tis nought 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 Who waged contention with their times' decay, And of the past are all that cannot pass away.

XLIX.

Go thou to Rome, at once the Paradise,

The grave, the city, and the wilderness;
And where its wrecks like shattered mountains

rise,

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 A light of laughing flowers along the grass is spread;

L.

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
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.

LI.

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 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?

LII.

The One remains, the many change and pass; Heaven's light for ever shines, Earth's shadow, fly;

Life, like a dome of many-coloured glass,