His part, while the one Spirit's plastic | Oblivion as they rose shrank like a thing 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 Heaven's 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 thee sink Rose from their thrones, built beyond When hope has kindled hope, and lured 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: 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; And where its wrecks like shattered What Adonais is, why fear we to become? 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; LII The One remains, the many change and pass; 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! Follow where all is fled !-Rome's azure sky, Flowers, ruins, statues, music, words, are weak And one keen pyramid with wedge The glory they transfuse with fitting 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. 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 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 Far from the shore, far from the CANCELLED PASSAGES OF ADONAIS PASSAGES OF THE PREFACE .. the expression of my indignation and sympathy. I will allow myself a first and last word on the subject of calumny as it relates to me. As an author I have dared and invited censure. If I understand myself, I have written neither for profit nor for fame. I have employed my poetical compositions and publications simply as the instruments of that sympathy between myself and others which the ardent and unbounded love I cherished for my kind incited me to acquire. I expected all sorts of stupidity and insolent contempt from those These compositions (excepting the tragedy of the "Cenci," which was written rather to try my powers than to unburthen my full heart) are insufficiently commendation than perhaps they deserve, even from their bitterest enemies, but they have not attained any corresponding popularity. As a man, I shrink from notice and regard; the ebb and flow of the world vexes me; I desire to be left in peace. Persecution, contumely, and calumny, have been heaped upon me in profuse measure; and domestic conspiracy and legal oppression have violated in my person the most sacred rights of nature and humanity. The bigot will say it was the recompense of my errors; the man of the world will call it the result of my imprudence; but never upon one head... Reviewers, with some rare exceptions, are a most stupid and malignant race. As a bankrupt thief turns thieftaker in despair, so an unsuccessful author turns The massy earth and sphered skies critic. But a young spirit panting for Whose sails were never to the tempest given; 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. fame, doubtful of its powers, and certain only of its aspirations, is ill qualified to assign its true value to the sneer of this world. He knows not that such stuff as this is of the abortive and monstrous births which time consumes as fast as it produces. He sees the truth and falsehood, the merits and demerits, of his case inextricably entangled. . . No personal offence should have drawn from me this public comment upon such stuff... The offence of this poor victim seems to have consisted solely in his intimacy with Leigh Hunt, Mr. Hazlitt, and some other enemies of despotism and superstition. My friend Hunt has a very hard skull to crack, and will take a deal of killing. I do not know much of Mr. Hazlitt, but... I knew personally but little of Keats; but on the news of his situation I wrote to him, suggesting the propriety of trying the Italian climate, and inviting him to join me. Unfortunately he did not allow me... PASSAGES OF THE POEM Whose soft smiles to his dark and night-like eyes Were as the clear and ever-living brooks Are to the obscure fountains whence they rise, Showing how pure they are: a Paradise Of happy truth upon his forehead low Lay, making wisdom lovely, in the guise Of earth-awakening morn upon the brow And ever as he went he swept a lyre Of star-deserted heaven, while ocean Of unaccustomed shape, and strings gleams below. THE poem of Hellas, written at the suggestion of the events of the moment, is a mere improvise, and derives its interest (should it be found to possess any) solely from the intense sympathy which the Author feels with the cause he would celebrate. The subject, in its present state, is insusceptible of being treated otherwise than lyrically, and if I have called this poem a drama from the circumstance of its being composed in dialogue, the licence is not greater than that which has been assumed by other poets who have called their productions epics, only because they have been divided into twelve or twenty-four books. The Perse of Æschylus afforded me the first model of my conception, although the decision of the glorious contest now waging in Greece being yet suspended forbids a catastrophe parallel to the return of Xerxes and the desolation of the Persians. I have, therefore, contented myself with exhibiting a series of lyric pictures, and with having wrought upon the curtain of futurity, which falls upon the unfinished scene, such figures of indistinct and visionary delineation as suggest the final triumph of the Greek cause as a portion of the cause of civilisation and social improvement. The drama (if drama it must be called) is, however, so inartificial that I doubt whether, if recited on the Thespian waggon to an Athenian village at the Dionysiaca, it would have obtained the prize of the goat. I shall bear with equanimity any punishment, greater than the loss of such a reward which the Aristarchi of the hour may think fit to inflict. The only goat-song which I have yet attempted has, I confess, in spite of the unfavourable nature of the subject, received a greater and a more valuable portion of applause than I expected or than it deserved. Common fame is the only authority which I can allege for the details which form the basis of the poem, and I must trespass upon the forgiveness of my readers for the display of newspaper erudition to which I have been reduced. Undoubtedly. until the conclusion of the war, it will be impossible to obtain an account of it suffciently authentic for historical materials; but poets have their privilege, and it is unquestionable that actions of the most exalted courage have been performed by the Greeks-that they have gained more than one naval victory, and that their defeat in Wallachia was signalised by circumstances of heroism more glorious even than victory. The apathy of the rulers of the civilised world to the astonishing circumstance of the descendants of that nation to which they owe their civilisation, rising as it were from the ashes of their ruin, is something perfectly inexplicable to a mere spectator of the shows of this mortal scene. We are all Greeks. Our laws, our literature, our religion, our arts have their root in Greece. But for Greece-Rome, the instructor, the conqueror, or the metropolis of our ancestors, would have spread no illumination with her arms, and we might still have been savages and idolaters; or, what is worse, might have arrived at such a stagnant and miserable state of social institution as China and Japan possess. The human form and the human mind |