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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

Rose from their thrones, built beyond 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 ;-
Oblivion as they rose shrank like a thing reproved.

XLVI.

And many more, whose names on earth are dark,

But whose transmitted effluence cannot die

So long as fire outlives the parent spark,

Rose, robed in dazzling immortality.

'Thou art become as one of us,' they cry;

'It was for thee yon kingless sphere has long Swung blind in unascending majesty,

Silent alone amid an heaven of song.

Assume thy wingèd throne, thou Vesper of our throng!

LII.

The One remains, the many change and pass;

Heaven's light for ever 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

The glory they transfuse with fitting truth to speak.

LIII.

Why linger, why turn back, why shrink, my heart?
Thy hopes are gone before: from all things here
They have departed; thou should'st now depart.
A light is past from the revolving year,

And man and woman; and what still is dear
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 universe,
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 invoked in song
Descends on me; my spirit's bark is driven
Far from the shore, far from the trembling throng
Whose sails were never to the tempest given.
The massy earth and spherèd skies 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.

THE CLOUD.

I

I.

BRING fresh showers for the thirsting flowers
From the seas and the streams;

I bear light shade for the leaves when laid

In their noonday dreams.

From my wings are shaken the dews that waken
The sweet buds every one,

When rocked to rest on their Mother's breast,
As she dances about in the sun.

I wield the flail of the lashing hail,

And whiten the green plains under; And then again I dissolve it in rain, And laugh as I pass in thunder.

II.

I sift the snow on the mountains below,
And their great pines groan aghast;
And all the night 'tis my pillow white,

While I sleep in the arms of the Blast.
Sublime on the towers of my skiey bowers
Lightning my pilot sits;

In a cavern under is fettered the Thunder,
It struggles and howls at fits.

Over earth and ocean with gentle motion
This pilot is guiding me,

Lured by the love of the Genii that move
In the depths of the purple sea;

Over the rills and the crags and the hills,
Over the lakes and the plains,

Wherever he dream under mountain or stream
The Spirit he loves remains ;

And I all the while bask in heaven's blue smile,
Whilst he is dissolving in rains.

III.

The sanguine Sunrise, with his meteor eyes,
And his burning plumes outspread,
Leaps on the back of my sailing rack,

When the morning star shines dead.

As on the jag of a mountain-crag

Which an earthquake rocks and swings

An eagle alit one moment may sit

In the light of its golden wings.

And, when Sunset may breathe, from the lit sea beneath,

Its ardours of rest and of love,

And the crimson pall of eve may fall

From the depth of heaven above,

With wings folded I rest on mine airy nest,

As still as a brooding dove.

IV.

That orbed maiden with white fire laden,
Whom mortals call the Moon,

Glides glimmering o'er my fleece-like floor
By the midnight breezes strewn ;

And wherever the beat of her unseen feet,
Which only the angels hear,

May have broken the woof of my tent's thin roof,
The Stars peep behind her and peer.

And I laugh to see them whirl and flee

Like a swarm of golden bees,

When I widen the rent in my wind-built tent,-
Till the calm rivers, lakes, and seas,

Like strips of the sky fallen through me on high,
Are each paved with the moon and these.

V.

I bind the Sun's throne with a burning zone,
And the Moon's with a girdle of pearl;

The volcanoes are dim, and the Stars reel and swim,
When the Whirlwinds my banner unfurl.

From cape to cape, with a bridge-like shape,

Over a torrent sea,

Sunbeam-proof, I hang like a roof;

The mountains its columns be.

The triumphal arch through which I march,
With hurricane, fire, and snow,

When the Powers of the air are chained to my chair,
In the million-coloured bow;

The sphere-fire above its soft colours wove,

While the moist Earth was laughing below.

VI.

I am the daughter of Earth and Water,

And the nursling of the Sky:

I pass through the pores of the ocean and shores;

I change, but I cannot die.

For after the rain, when with never a stain

The pavilion of heaven is bare,

And the winds and sunbeams with their convex gleams Build up the blue dome of air,

I silently laugh at my own cenotaph

And out of the caverns of rain,

Like a child from the womb, like a ghost from the tomb, I rise, and unbuild it again.

O

ODE TO THE WEST WIND.

WILD West Wind, thou breath of Autumn's being,

Thou, from whose unseen presence the leaves dead

Are driven, like ghosts from an enchanter fleeing,
Yellow, and black, and pale, and hectic red,
Pestilence-stricken multitudes! O thou,
Who chariotest to their dark wintry bed

The winged seeds, where they lie cold and low,
Each like a corpse within its grave, until
Thine azure sister of the Spring shall blow

Her clarion o'er the dreaming earth, and fill

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