From trees and beasts and men into the Heaven's light. XLIV. The splendours of the firmament of time May be eclipsed, but are extinguished not; Like stars to their appointed height they climb And death is a low mist which cannot blot 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 But whose transmitted effluence cannot die "It was for thee yon kingless sphere has long "Swung blind in unascended majesty, "Silent alone amid an Heaven of Song. "Assume thy wingèd throne, thou Vesper of our throng!" XLVII. Who mourns for Adonais? oh come forth Fond wretch! and know thyself and him aright. Clasp with thy panting soul the pendulous Earth; As from a centre, dart thy spirit's light Beyond all worlds, until its spacious might Satiate the void circumference: then shrink Even to a point within our day and night; And keep thy heart light lest it make thee sink When hope has kindled hope, and lured thee to the brink. XLVIII. Or go to Rome, which is the sepulchre, And he is gathered to the kings of thought decay, And of the past are all that cannot pass away. XLIX. Go thou to Rome,-at once the Paradise, And where its wrecks like shattered moun tains rise, And flowering weeds and fragrant copses dress The bones of Desolation's nakedness Pass, till the Spirit of the spot shall lead Thy footsteps to a slope of green access Where, like an infant's smile, over the dead, A light of laughing flowers along the grass is spread. And grey Time L. walls moulder round, on which dull Feeds, like slow fire upon a hoary brand; A field is spread, on which a newer band Have pitched in Heaven's smile their camp of death Welcoming him we lose with scarce extinguished breath. LI. Here pause these graves are all too young as yet To have outgrown the sorrow which consigned Its charge to each; and if the seal is set, Here, on one fountain of a mourning mind, Break it not thou! too surely shalt thou find Thine own well full, if thou returnest home, Of tears and gall. From the world's bitter wind Seek shelter in the shadow of the tomb. What Adonais is, why fear we to become?. LII. The One remains, the many change and pass; Heaven's light forever shines, Earth's shadows fly; Life, like a dome of many-coloured glass, 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 shouldst now depart! A light is past from the revolving year, 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. CANCELLED PASSAGES OF ADONAIS. to me. PASSAGES OF THE PREFACE. The expression of my indignation and sympathy. I will allow myself a first and last word on the subject of calumny as it relates As an author I have dared and invited censure. If I understand myself, I have written neither for profit nor for fame. I have employed my poetical compositions and publications simply as the instruments of that sym |