As mountain-springs under the morning sun. Those spheres instinct with it become the same, In one another's substance finding food, Light flames too pure and light and unimbued And one annihilation! Woe is me! The winged words on which my soul would pierce Into the height of Love's rare universe Are chains of lead around its flight of fire I pant, I sink, I tremble, I expire! ADONAIS; AN ELEGY ON THE DEATH OF JOHN KEATS. I. I weep for Adonais-he is dead! Oh 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, 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.' II. Where wert thou, mighty Mother, when he lay, When Adonais died? With veilèd eyes, Mid listening Echoes, in her paradise She sate, while one, with soft enamoured breath, Rekindled all the fading melodies With which, like flowers that mock the corse beneath, He had adorned and hid the coming bulk of Death. III. Oh weep for Adonais-he is dead! Wake, melancholy Mother, wake and weep!- Descend. Oh dream not that the amorous deep Will yet restore him to the vital air; Death feeds on his mute voice, and laughs at our despair. IV. Most musical of mourners, weep again! Who was the sire of an immortal strain, 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 Yet reigns o'er earth, the third among the Sons of Light. V. 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 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. VI. But now thy youngest, dearest one has perished, The bloom whose petals, nipped before they blew, VII. To that high Capital where kingly Death Keeps his pale court in beauty and decay He came; and bought, with price of purest breath, VIII. He will awake no more, oh never more! Within the twilight chamber spreads apace 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 So fair a prey, till darkness and the law Of change shall o'er his sleep the mortal curtain draw. IX. Oh weep for Adonais !-The quick Dreams, The passion-wingèd ministers of thought, Who were his flocks, whom near the living streams But droop there whence they sprung; and mourn their lot X. And one with trembling hands clasps his cold head, See, on the silken fringe of his faint eyes, She knew not 'twas her own,-as with no stain XI. One from a lucid urn of starry dew Washed his light limbs, as if embalming them; 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. XII. Another Splendour on his mouth alit, That mouth whence it was wont to draw the breath 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. And others came. XIII. Desires and Adorations; Winged Persuasions, and veiled Destinies; Splendours, and Glooms, and glimmering incarnations And Pleasure, blind with tears, led by the gleam XIV. 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 aërial 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. XV. Lost Echo sits amid the voiceless mountains, Or amorous birds perched on the young green spray, Into a shadow of all sounds :-a drear Murmur, between their songs, is all the woodmen hear. |