From the contagion of the world's slow stain
He is secure; and now can never mourn

A heart grown cold, a head grown grey, 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 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!

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Which has withdrawn his being to its own,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 the 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 heaven's light.

XLIV.

The splendo irs 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 an heaven of song.

Assume thy wingèd throne, thou Vesper of our throng!

XLVII.

Who mourns for Adonais? Oh 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,

Oh 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 time's 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 grey 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 resuge 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 scare-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 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! 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.

LIII.

Why linger, why turn back, why shrink, my heart?
Thy hopes are gone before: from all things here
They have departed; thou shouldst now depart.
A light is past 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: 'Tis Adonais calls! Oh hasten thither!

No more let life divide what death can join together.

LIV.

That light whose smile kindles the universe,

That beauty in which all things work and move, That benediction which the eclipsing curse

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, Consuming the last clouds of cold mortality.

LV.

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.
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.

(1821.)

TO NIGHT.

I.

Swiftly walk over the western wave,
Spirit of Night!

Out of the misty eastern cave

Where, all the long and lone daylight,

Thou wovest dreams of joy and fear

Which make thee terrible and dear,
Swift be thy flight!

II.

Wrap thy form in a mantle grey,
Star-inwrought;

Blind with thine hair the eyes of Day;
Kiss her until she be wearied out.
Then wander o'er city and sea and land,
Touching all with thine opiate wand-
Come, long-sought!