Her mighty youth with morning, doth complain, Light on his head who pierced thy innocent breast, Ah woe is me! Winter is come and gone, Fresh leaves and flowers deck the dead Season's bier; Like unimprisoned flames, out of their trance awake. Through wood and stream, and field and hill and ocean, The leprous corpse touched by this spirit tender By sightless lightning ?—th' intense atom glows A moment, then is quenched in a most cold repose. Alas! that all we loved of him should be, But for our grief, as if it had not been, 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. He will awake no more, oh, never more! "Wake thou," cried Misery, "childless Mother, rise A wound more fierce than his with tears and sighs,' Had held in holy silence, cried: "Arise!" She rose like an autumnal Night, that springs Had left the Earth a corpse. Sorrow and fear So saddened round her like an atmosphere Of stormy mist; so swept her on her way Even to the mournful place where Adonais lay. Out of her secret Paradise she sped, Through camps and cities rough with stone, and steel, 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, 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 night! Leave me not!" cried Urania: her distress Roused Death: Death rose and smiled, and met her vain caress. "Stay yet a while! 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! "O gentle child, beautiful as thou wert, Why didst thou leave the trodden paths of men Too soon, and with weak hands though mighty heart Defenceless as thou wert, ah where was then 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. "The herded wolves, bold only to pursue; And smiled!-The spoilers tempt no second blow, "The sun comes forth, and many reptiles spawn; A godlike mind soars forth, in its delight Making earth bare and veiling heaven, and when Thus ceased she and the mountain shepherds came, The Pilgrim of Eternity, whose fame The sweetest lyrist of her saddest wrong, And love taught grief to fall like music from his tongue. 'Midst others of less note, came one frail Form, guess, A phantom among men; companionless A pardlike Spirit beautiful and swift A Love in desolation masked ;-a Power Girt round with weakness;-it can scarce uplift 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. His head was bound with pansies over-blown, Shook the weak hand that grasped it; of that crew A herd-abandon'd deer, struck by the hunter's dart. All stood aloof, and at this partial moan Smiled through their tears; well knew that gentle band As in the accents of an unknown land, The Stranger's mein, and murmured: "Who art thou?" Made bare his branded and ensanguined brow, Which was like Cain's or Christ's.-Oh! that it should be so! What softer voice is hushed over the dead? Athwart what brow is that dark mantle thrown? What form leans sadly o'er the white death.bed, 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; The silence of that heart's accepted sacrifice. Our Adonais has drunk poison-oh! What deaf and viperous murderer could crown It felt, yet could escape the magic tone Whose prelude held all envy, hate, and wrong, Whose master's hand is cold, whose silver lyre unstrung. Live thou, whose infamy is not thy fame! Live! fear no heavier chastisement from me, 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 shalt-as now. Nor let us weep that our delight is fled Far from these carrion kites that scream below; Thou canst not soar where he is sitting now.— Peace, peace! he is not dead, he doth not sleep- 'Tis we, who, lost in stormy visions, keep And in mad trance, strike with our spirit's knife 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. He has outsoared the shadow of our night; Envy and calumny and hate and pain, He lives, he wakes-'tis Death is dead, not he; He is made one with Nature: there is heard In darkness and in light, from herb and stone, He is the portion of the loveliness Which once he made more lovely; he doth bear Sweeps through the dull dense world, compelling there, |