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That lady did, in this lone fane,
The rites of a religion sweet,

Whose god was in her heart and brain:
The seasons' loveliest flowers were strewn
On the marble floor beneath her feet,
And she brought crowns of sea-buds white,
Whose odor is so sweet and faint,
And weeds, like branching chrysolite,
Woven in devices fine and quaint,

And tears from her brown eyes did stain
The altar: need but look upon
That dying statue, fair and wan,
If tears should cease, to weep again:
And rare Arabian odors came,

Through the myrtle copses steaming thence
From the hissing frankincense,

Whose smoke, wool-white as ocean foam,
Hung in dense flocks beneath the dome,
That ivory dome, whose azure night
With golden stars, like heaven, was bright
O'er the split cedars' pointed flame:
And the lady's harp would kindle there
The melody of an old air,
Softer than sleep; the villagers
Mixt their religion up with hers,
And as they listen'd round, shed tears.

One eve he led me to this fane:
Daylight on its last purple cloud
Was lingering gray, and soon her strain
The nightingale began; now loud,
Climbing in circles the windless sky,
Now dying music; suddenly
"Tis scatter'd in a thousand notes,
And now to the hush'd ear it floats
Like field-smells known in infancy,
Then failing, soothes the air again.
We sate within that temple lone,
Pavilion'd round with Parian stone:
His mother's harp stood near, and oft
I had awaken'd music soft
Amid its wires: the nightingale

Was pausing in her heaven-taught tale:
"Now drain the cup," said Lionel,
"Which the poet-bird has crown'd so well
With the wine of her bright and liquid song!
Heardst thou not sweet words among
That heaven-resounding minstrelsy!
Heardst thou not, that those who die

Awake in a world of ecstasy?

That love, when limbs are interwoven,

And sleep, when the night of life is cloven,

And thought, to the world's dim boundaries cling

ing,

And music, when one beloved is singing,
Is death? Let us drain right joyously
The cup
which the sweet bird fills for me."
He paused, and to my lips he bent
His own: like spirit his words went
Through all my limbs with the speed of fire;
And his keen eyes, glittering through mine,
Fill'd me with the flame divine,
Which in their orbs was burning far,
Like the light of an unmeasured star,
In the sky of midnight dark and deep:
Yes, 't was his soul that did inspire
Sounds, which my skill could ne'er awaken.

And first, I felt my fingers sweep
The harp, and a long quivering cry
Burst from my lips in symphony:
The dusk and solid air was shaken,
As swift and swifter the notes came

From my touch, that wander'd like quick flame,
And from my bosom, laboring

With some unutterable thing:

The awful sound of my own voice made
My faint lips tremble, in some mood

Of wordless thought Lionel stood
So pale, that even beside his cheek
The snowy column from its shade
Caught whiteness: yet his countenance
Raised upward, burn'd with radiance
Of spirit-piercing joy, whose light,
Like the moon struggling through the night
Of whirlwind-rifted clouds, did break
With beams that might not be confined.
I paused, but soon his gestures kindled
New power, as by the moving wind
The waves are lifted, and my song

To low soft notes now changed and dwindled,
And from the twinkling wires among.
My languid fingers drew and flung
Circles of life-dissolving sound,
Yet faint in aery rings they bound
My Lionel, who, as every strain
Grew fainter but more sweet, his mien
Sunk with the sound relaxedly;
And slowly now he turn'd to me,
As slowly faded from his face
That awful joy: with looks serene
He was soon drawn to my embrace,
And my wild song then died away
In murmurs: words, I dare not say
We mix'd, and on his lips mine fed
Till they methought felt still and cold:
"What is it with thee, love?" I said;
No word, no look, no motion! yes,
There was a change, but spare to guess,
Nor let that moment's hope be told.
I look'd, and knew that he was dead,
And fell, as the eagle on the plain
Falls when life deserts her brain,
And the mortal lightning is veil'd again.

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And the azure sky and the stormless sea
Made me believe that I had died,

And waked in a world, which was to me
Drear hell, though heaven to all beside.
Then a dead sleep fell on my mind,
Whilst animal life many long years
Had rescued from a chasin of tears;
And when I woke, I wept to find
That the same lady, bright and wise,
With silver locks and quick brown eyes,
The mother of my Lionel,

Nor less

Had tended me in my distress,
And died some months before.
Wonder, but far more peace and joy
Brought in that hour my lovely boy;
For through that trance my soul had well
The impress of thy being kept;
And if I waked, or if I slept,

No doubt, though memory faithless be,
Thy image ever dwelt on me;
And thus. O Lionel! like thee

Is our sweet child. "Tis sure most strange
I knew not of so great a change,
As that which gave him birth, who now
Is all the solace of my woe.

That Lionel great wealth had left
By will to me, and that of all
The ready lies of law bereft,
My child and me might well befall.
But let me think not of the scorn,
Which from the meanest I have borne,
When, for my child's beloved sake,
I mix'd with slaves, to vindicate
The very laws themselves do make:
Let me not say scorn is my fate.
Lest I be proud, suffering the same
With those who live in deathless fame.

As in an English home, dim memory
Disturb'd poor Rosalind: she stood as one
Whose mind is where his body cannot be,
Till Helen led her where her child yet slept,
And said, "Observe, that brow was Lionel's,
Those lips were his, and so he ever kept
One arm in sleep, pillowing his head with it.
You cannot see his eyes, they are two wells
Of liquid love: let us not wake him yet."
But Rosalind could bear no more, and wept
A shower of burning tears, which fell upon
His face, and so his opening lashes shone
With tears unlike his own, as he did leap
In sudden wonder from his innocent sleep.

So Rosalind and Helen lived together
Thenceforth, changed in all else, yet friends again,
Such as they were, when o'er the mountain heather
They wander'd in their youth, through sun and rain
And after many years, for human things
Change even like the ocean and the wind,
Her daughter was restored to Rosalind,
And in their circle thence some visitings
Of joy 'mid their new calm would intervene:
A lovely child she was, of looks serene,
And motions which o'er things indifferent shed
The grace and gentleness from whence they came.
And Helen's boy grew with her, and they fed
From the same flowers of thought, until each mind
Like springs which mingle in one flood became,
And in their union soon their parents saw
The shadow of the peace denied to them.
And Rosalind,-for when the living stem
Is canker'd in its heart, the tree must fall,-
Died ere her time; and with deep grief and awe
The pale survivors follow'd her remains
Beyond the region of dissolving rains,
Up the cold mountain she was wont to call
Her tomb; and on Chiavenna's precipice

She ceased." Lo, where red morning through the They raised a pyramid of lasting ice,

woods

Is burning o'er the dew!" said Rosalind.

And with these words they rose, and towards the flood
Of the blue lake, beneath the leaves now wind
With equal steps and fingers intertwined:
Thence to a lonely dwelling, where the shore
Is shadowed with rocks, and cypresses
Cleave with their dark-green cones the silent skies,
And with their shadows the clear depths below,
And where a little terrace, from its bowers
Of blooming myrtle and faint lemon-flowers,
Scatters its sense-dissolving fragrance o'er
The liquid marble of the windless lake;
And where the aged forest's limbs look hoar,

:

Under the leaves which their green garments make,
They come 'tis Helen's home, and clean and white,
Like one which tyrants spare on our own land
In some such solitude, its casements bright

Whose polish'd sides, ere day had yet begun,
Caught the first glow of the unrisen sun,
The last, when it had sunk; and through the night
The charioteers of Arctos wheeled round
Its glittering point, as seen from Helen's home,
Whose sad inhabitants each year would come,
With willing steps climbing that rugged height,
And hang long locks of hair, and garlands bound
With amaranth flowers, which, in the clime's despite
Fill'd the frore air with unaccustom'd light:
Such flowers, as in the wintry memory bloom
Of one friend left, adorn'd that frozen tomb.

Helen, whose spirit was of softer mould,
Whose sufferings too were less, death slowlier lea
Into the peace of his dominion cold:
She died among her kindred, being old.

Shone through their vine-leaves in the morning sun, And know, that if love die not in the dead
And even within 't was scarce like Italy.

As in the living, none of mortal kind

And when she saw how all things there were plann'd, Are blest, as now Helen and Rosalind.

406

Avonais;

AN ELEGY ON THE DEATH OF JOHN KEATS.

Αστηρ πρὶν μὲν ἔλαμπες ἐνὶ ζωοῖσιν έος
Νῦν δὲ θανὼν λάμπεις ἔσπερος ἐν φθιμένοις.

PLATO.

PREFACE.

and panegyric," Paris," and "Woman," and a "Syri an Tale," and a long list of the illustrious obscure? Are these the men, who in their venal good-nature, presumed to draw a parallel between the Rev. Mr. Milman and Lord Byron? What gnat did they strain at here, after having swallowed all those camels? Against what woman taken in adultery, dares the foremost of these literary prostitutes to cast his oppro brious stone? Miserable man! you, one of the MOSCHUS, Epitaph. Bion. meanest, have wantonly defaced one of the noblest specimens of the workmanship of God. Nor shall it be your excuse, that, murderer as you are, you have spoken daggers, but used none.

Φάρμακον ἦλθε, Βίων, ποτὶ σόν στόμα, φάρμακον εἶδες.
Πῶς τευ τοῖς χείλεσσι ποτέδραμε, κοὐκ ἐγλυκάνθη;
Τίς δὲ βροτός τοσσοῦτον ἀνάμερος, ἢ κεράσαι τοι,
*Η δοῦναι λαλέοντι τὸ θάρμακον; ἔκφυγεν φδάν.

It is my intention to subjoin to the London edition of this poem, a criticism upon the claims of its lamented object to be classed among the writers of the highest genius who have adorned our age. My known repugnance to the narrow principles of taste on which several of his earlier compositions were modelled, prove, at least, that I am an impartial judge. I consider the fragment of Hyperion as second to nothing that was ever produced by a writer of the same years,

John Keats died at Rome, of a consumption, in his twenty-fourth year, on the of 1821; and was buried in the romantic and lonely cemetery of the Protestants in that city, under the pyramid which is the tomb of Cestius, and the massy walls and towers, now mouldering and desolate, which formed the circuit of ancient Rome. The cemetery is an open space among the ruins, covered in winter with violets and daisies. It might make one in love with death, to think that one should be buried in so sweet a place.

The circumstances of the closing scene of poor Keats's life were not made known to me until the Elegy was ready for the press. I am given to understand that the wound which his sensitive spirit had received from the criticism of Endymion, was exasperated by the bitter sense of unrequited benefits; the poor fellow seems to have been hooted from the stage of life, no less by those on whom he had wasted the promise of his genius, than those on whom he had lavished his fortune and his care. He was accompanied to Rome, and attended in his last illness, by Mr. Severn, a young artist of the highest promise, who, I have been informed, “almost risked his own life, and sacrificed every prospect to unwearied attendance upon his dying friend." Had I known these circumstances before the completion of my poem, I should have been tempted to add my feeble tribute of applause to the more solid recompense which the virtuous man finds in the recollection of his own motives. Mr. Severn can dispense with a reward from The genius of the lamented person to whose mem-"such stuff as dreams are made of." His conduct is ory I have dedicated these unworthy verses, was not a golden augury of the success of his future career .. less delicate and fragile than it was beautiful; and may the unextinguished Spirit of his illustrious friend where canker-worms abound, what wonder, if its animate the creations of his pencil, and plead against young flower was blighted in the bud? The savage Oblivion for his name! criticism on his Endymion, which appeared in the Quarterly Review, produced the most violent effect on his susceptible mind; the agitation thus originated ended in the rupture of a blood-vessel in the lungs; a rapid consumption ensued, and the succeeding acknowledgments from more candid critics, of the true greatness of his powers, were ineffectual to heal] the wound thus wantonly inflicted.

It may be well said that these wretched men know not what they do. They scatter their insults and their slanders without heed as to whether the poisoned shaft lights on a heart made callous by many blows, or one, like Keats's, composed of more penetrable stuff. One of their associates is, to my knowledge, a most base and unprincipled calumniator.

46

As to

Endymion," was it a poem, whatever might be its defects, to be treated contemptuously by those who

ADONAIS.

I.

I WEEP for ADONAIS-he is dead!
O, 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

had celebrated with various degrees of complacency | An echo and a light unto eternity!

II.

Where wert thou, mighty Mother, when he lay,
When thy Son lay, pierced by the shaft which flies
In darkness? where was lorn Urania
When Adonais died? With veiled eyes,
'Mid list'ning Echoes, in her Paradise

She sate, while one, with soft enamor'd breath,
Rekindled all the fading melodies,

With which, like flowers that mock the corse beneath,

He had adorn'd and hid the coming bulk of death.

III.

O, weep for Adonais-he is dead!

Wake, melancholy Mother, wake and weep!
Yet wherefore? Quench within their burning bed
Thy fiery tears, and let thy loud heart keep,
Like his, a mute and uncomplaining sleep;
For he is gone, where all things wise and fair
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!
Lament anew, Urania !-He died,
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 mock'd with many a lothed rite
Of lust and blood; he went, unterrified,
Into the gulf of death; but his clear sprite

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.

O, weep for Adonais!-The quick Dreams,
The passion-winged Ministers of thought,
Who were his flocks, whom near the living streams
Of his young spirit he fed, and whom he taught
The love which was its music, wander not,-
Wander no more, from kindling brain to brain,
But droop there, whence they sprung; and mourn
their lot

Round the cold heart, where, after their sweet

pain,

They ne'er will gather strength, or find a home again.

X.

And one with trembling hand clasps his cold head.
And fans him with her moonlight wings, and cries,
Our love, our hope, our sorrow, is not dead;
See, on the silken fringe of his faint eyes,
Like dew upon a sleeping flower, there lies
A tear some dream has loosen'd from his brain."
Lost Angel of a ruin'd Paradise,

She knew not 't was her own; as with no stain

Yet reigns o'er earth; the third among the sons of She faded, like a cloud which had outwept its rain.

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 perish'd; 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 perish'd, The nursling of thy widowhood, who grew, Like a pale flower by some sad maiden cherish'd, And fed with true-love tears, instead of dew; Most musical of mourners, weep anew! Thy extreme hope, the loveliest and the last, The bloom, whose petals nipt before they blew Died on the promise of the fruit, is waste; The broken lily lies-the storm is overpast.

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, A grave among the eternal.-Come away! Haste, while the vault of blue Italian day Is yet his fitting charnel-roof! while still He lies, as if in dewy sleep he lay ; Awake him not surely he takes his fill Of deep and liquid rest, forgetful of all ill.

XI.

One from a lucid urn of starry dew

Wash'd his light limbs, as if embalming them; Another clipt her profuse locks, and threw The wreath upon him, like an anadem, Which frozen tears instead of pearls begem; Another in her wilful grief would break Her bow and winged reeds, as if to stem A greater loss with one which was more weak; And dull the barbed fire against his frozen cheek. XII.

Another Splendor on his mouth alit,

That mouth, whence it was wont to draw the breath

Which gave it strength to pierce the guarded wit, And pass into the panting heart beneath With lightning and with music: the damp death Quench'd its caress upon his icy lips; And, as a dying meteor stains a wreath Of moonlight vapor, which the cold night clips, It flash'd through his pale limbs, and pass'd to its

eclipse.

XIII.

And others came,-Desires and Adorations,
Winged Persuasions and veil'd Destinies,
Splendors, and Glooms, and glimering Incarnations
Of hopes and fears, and twilight Phantasies;
And Sorrow, with her family of Sighs,
And Pleasure, blind with tears, led by the gleam
Of her own dying smile instead of eyes,
Came in slow pomp ;-the moving pomp might

seem

Like pageantry of mist on an autumnal stream.

XIV.

All he had loved, and moulded into thought,
From shape, and hue, and odor, and sweet sound,
Lamented Adonais. Morning sought

Her eastern watch-tower, and her hair unbound,
Wet with the tears which should adorn the ground,
Dimm'd the aërial eyes that kindle day;
Afar the melancholy thunder moan'd,

Pale Ocean in unquiet slumber lay,

XX.

The leprous corpse, touch'd by this spirit tender,
Exhales itself in flowers of gentle breath;
Like incarnations of the stars, when splendor
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 ?-the intense atom glows

And the wild winds flew round, sobbing in their dismay. A moment, then is quench'd in a most cold repose.

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