The priest, the slave, and the liberticide,
Of lust and blood: he went, unterrified

Trampled and mock'd with many a ioathed rite
Into the gulph of death; but his clear sprite

Yet reigns o'er earth; the third among the sons of light. 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 perished; 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, [abode Which leads, through toil and hate, to Fame's serene But now thy youngest, dearest one has perish'd, The nurseling 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.

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.

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.

Oh, 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
there lot

Round the cold heart, where, after their sweet pain, They ne'er will gather strength, nor find a home again,

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 'twas her own; as with no stain
She faded, like a cloud which had outwept its rain.
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.

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 vapour, which the cold night clips, It flush'd through his pale limbs, and pass'd to its eclips

And others came,-Desires and Adorations,
Winged Persuasions and veil'd Destinies,
Splendors, and Glooms, and glimmering 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.

All he had loved, and moulded into thought,
From shape, and hue, and odour, 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,

And the wild winds flew around, sobbing in their dismay
Lost Echo sits amid the voiceless mountains,
And feeds her grief with his remember'd lay,
And will no more reply to winds or fountains,
Or amorous birds perch'd on the young green spray
Or herdsman's horn, or bell at closing day:
Since she can mimic not his lips, more dear
Than those for whose disdain they pined away
Into a shadow of all sounds:-a drear

Murmur, between their songs, is all the woodman hear.
Grief made the young Spring wild, and she threw

down

Her kindling buds, as if she Autumn were,

Or they dead leaves: since her delight is flown, For whom should she have waked the sullen year? To Phoebus was not Hyacinth so dear,

Nor to himself Narcissus, as to both

Thou Adonais: wan they stand and sere
Amid the drooping comrades of their youth,

With dew all turn'd to tears: odour, to sighing ruth.

Thy spirit's sister, the lorn nightingale

Mourns not her mate with such melodious pain;

Not so the eagle, who like thee could scale
Heaven, and could nourish in the sun's domain
Her mighty youth with morning, doth complain,
Soaring and screaming round her empty nest,
As Albion wails for thee: the curse of Cain

Light on his head who pierced thy innocent breast
And scared the angel soul that was its earthly guest!

Ah, woe is me! Winter is come and gone,
But grief returns with the revolving year;
The airs and streams renew their joyous tone;
The ants, the bees, the swallows, re-appear;

Fresh leaves and flowers deck the dead Season's 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 unimprison'd flames, out of their trance awake.

Through wood, and stream, and field, and hill, and
Ocean,

A quickening life from the Earth's heart has burst,
As it has ever done, with change and motion,
From the great morning of the world, when first
God dawn'd on Chaos: in its stream immersed,
The lamps of Heaven flash with a softer light;
All baser things pant with life's sacred thirst;
Diffuse themselves; and spend in love's delight
The beauty and the joy of their renewed might.

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;

Nought we know dies. Shall that alone which knows
Be as a sword consumed before the sheath

By sightless lightning?-th' intense atom glows
A moment, then is quench'd in a most cold repose.

Alas! that all we loved of him should be
But for our grief, as if it had not been,
And grief itself be mortal! Woe is me!

Whence are we, and why are we? of what scene-
The actors or spectators? Great and mean

Meet mass'd 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 Out of thy sleep, and slake, in thy heart's core, A wound more fierce than his tears and sighs." And all the Dreams that watch'd Urania's eyes, And all the Echoes whom their sister's song Had held in holy silence, cried: " Arise!" Swift as a Thought by the snake Memory stung, From her ambrosial rest the fading Splendor sprung.

She rose like an autumnal Night, that springs
Out of the East, and follows wild and drear
The golden Day, which, on eternal wings,
Even as a ghost abandoning a bier,

Has left the Earth a corpse. Sorrow and fear
So struck, so roused, so rapt, Urania:
So sadden'd 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, And human hearts, which to her aery thread

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,
Paved with eternal flowers that undeserving way

In the death-chamber for a moment Death,
Shamed by the presence of that living Might,
Blush'd to annihilation, and the breath