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The airs and streams renew their joyous tone; The ants, the bees, the swallows reappear; Fresh leaves and flowers deck the dead Seasons' bier r;

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.

XIX.

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 stream 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.

XX.

The leprous corpse touched by this spirit tender

Exhales itself in flowers of gentle breath; Like incarnations of the stars, when splen

dour

Is changed to fragrance, they illumine death And mock the merry worm that wakes beneath;

Naught we know, dies. Shall that alone

which knows

Be as a sword consumed before the sheath By sightless lightning?-th' intense atom glows

A moment, then is quenched in a most cold

repose.

XXI.

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.

XXII.

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.

XXIII.

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.

XXIV.

Out of her secret Paradise she sped,

Through camps and cities rough with stone, and steel,

And human hearts, which to her aëry 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.

XXV.

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

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night!

Leave me not!" cried Urania: her distress Roused Death: Death rose and smiled, and

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met her vain caress.

XXVI.

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!

XXVII.

"Oh gentle child, beautiful as thou wert, "Why didst thou leave the trodden paths of

men

"Too soon, and with weak hands thougl. 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.

XXVIII.

"The herded wolves, bold only to pursue;

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"The obscene ravens, clamorous o'er the dead;

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"The vultures to the conqueror's banner true, Who feed where Desolation first has fed, "And whose wings rain contagion ;-how they fled,

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"When like Apollo, from his golden bow, The Pythian of the age1 one arrow sped "And smiled!-The spoilers tempt no second blow;

They fawn on the proud feet that spurn them lying low.

XXIX.

"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;

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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

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'It sinks, the swarms that dimmed or shared

its light

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

XXX.

Thus ceased she: and the mountain shep

herds 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,

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