Imágenes de páginas
PDF
EPUB

Came, veiling all the lightnings of his song In sorrow; from her wilds Ierne sent

The sweetest lyrist of her saddest wrong,1 And love taught grief to fall like music from his tongue.

XXXI.

Midst others of less note, came one frail
Form,2

A phantom among men, companionless
As the last cloud of an expiring storm
Whose thunder is its knell; he, as I guess,
Had gazed on Nature's naked loveliness,
Actæon-like, and now he fled astray

With feeble steps o'er the world's wilderness,
And his own thoughts, along that rugged

way,

Pursued, like raging hounds, their father and

their prey.

XXXII.

A pardlike Spirit beautiful and swift

A Love in desolation masked ;

-a Power

Girt round with weakness;-it can scarce

uplift

The weight of the superincumbent hour;
It is a dying lamp, a falling shower,

A breaking billow ;- even whilst we speak Is it not broken? On the withering flower The killing sun smiles brightly; on a cheek The life can burn in blood, even while the heart may break.

XXXIII.

His head was bound with pansies overblown, And faded violets, white, and pied, and blue; 2 Shelley.-ED.

1 Moore.-ED.

And a light spear topped with a cypress cone, Round whose rude shaft dark ivy tresses grew Yet dripping with the forest's noonday dew, Vibrated, as the ever-beating heart

Shook the weak hand that grasped it; of that crew

He came the last, neglected and apart; A herd-abandoned deer struck by the hunter's dart.

XXXIV.

All stood aloof, and at his partial moan Smiled through their tears; well knew that gentle band

Who in another's fate now wept his own;
As, in the accents of an unknown land,
He sung new sorrow; sad Urania scanned
The Stranger's mien, and murmured: "who
art thou?"

He answered not, but with a sudden hand
Made bare his branded and ensanguined

brow,

Which was like Cain's or Christ's-Oh! that it should be so!

XXXV.

What softer voice is hushed over the dead? Athwart what brow is that dark mantle thrown?

What form leans sadly o'er the white deathbed,

In mockery of monumental stone,

The heavy heart heaving without a moan? If it be He,' who, gentlest of the wise, Taught, soothed, loved, honoured the departed one,

1 1 Leigh Hunt.-ED.

Let me not vex with inharmonious sighs The silence of that heart's accepted sacrifice.

XXXVI.

Our Adonais has drunk poison-oh!

What deaf and viperous murderer could

crown

Life's early cup with such a draught of woe? The nameless worm would now itself disown: It felt, yet could escape the magic tone Whose prelude held all envy, hate, and

wrong,

But what was howling in one breast alone, Silent with expectation of the song,

Whose master's hand is cold, whose silver lyre unstrung.

XXXVII.

Live thou, whose infamy is not thy fame!
Live! fear no heavier chastisement from me,
Thou noteless blot on a remembered name!
But be thyself, and know thyself to be!
And ever at thy season be thou free
To spill the venom when thy fangs o'erflow:
Remorse and Self-contempt shall cling to
thee;

Hot Shame shall burn upon thy secret brow, And like a beaten hound tremble thou shaltas now.

XXXVIII.

Nor let us weep that our delight is fled Far from these carrion kites that scream below;

He wakes or sleeps with the enduring dead; Thou canst not soar where he is sitting now.— Dust to the dust! but the pure spirit shall flow

Back to the burning fountain whence it came, A portion of the Eternal, which must glow Through time and change, unquenchably the

same,

Whilst thy cold embers choke the sordid hearth of shame.

XXXIX.

Peace, peace! he is not dead, he doth not sleep

He hath awakened from the dream of life"Tis we who, lost in stormy visions, keep With phantoms an unprofitable strife,

And in mad trance strike with our spirit's knife

Invulnerable nothings.-We decay

Like corpses in a charnel; fear and grief 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 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 th' unwilling dross that checks its flight

To its own likeness, as each mass may bear ; And bursting in its beauty and its might

« AnteriorContinuar »