Wet with the tears which should adorn the ground, And the wild winds flew round, sobbing in their dismay. Lost Echo sits amid the voiceless mountains, Since she can mimic not his lips, more dear Into a shadow of all sounds:-a drear Murmur, between their songs, is all the woodmen hear. Grief made the young Spring wild, and she threw down Or they dead leaves; since her delight is flown To Phoebus was not Hyacinth so dear Nor to himself Narcissus, as to both Thou, Adonais: wan they stand and sere Amid the faint companions of their youth, With dew all turned to tears; odour, to sighing ruth. Thy spirit's sister, the lorn nightingale, Ah, woe is me! Winter is come and gone, Fresh leaves and flowers deck the dead Seasons' bier; 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. Through wood and stream and field and hill and Ocean The leprous corpse touched by this spirit tender By sightless lightning?-the intense atom glows Alas! that all we loved of him should be Whence are we, and why are we? of what scene 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 And all the Dreams that watched Urania's eyes, She rose like an autumnal Night, that springs Had left the Earth a corpse. Sorrow and fear Out of her secret Paradise she sped, Through camps and cities rough with stone, and steel, And human hearts, which to her airy 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, In the death-chamber for a moment Death, 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 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 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, Thy spirit should have filled its crescent sphere, 'The herded wolves, bold only to pursue; The obscene ravens, clamorous o'er the dead; And smiled!-The spoilers tempt no second blow, They fawn on the proud feet that spurn them lying low. '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; 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 It sinks, the swarms that dimmed or shared its light Leave to its kindred lamps the spirit's awful night.' Thus ceased she: and the mountain shepherds came, An early but enduring monument, 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, A phantom among men; companionless As the last cloud of an expiring storm With feeble steps o'er the world's wilderness, A pardlike Spirit beautiful and swift- it can scarce uplift The weight of the superincumbent hour; The life can burn in blood, even while the heart may break. His head was bound with pansies overblown, Shook the weak hand that grasped it; of that crew A herd-abandoned deer struck by the hunter's dart. 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, |