Obrazy na stronie
PDF
ePub

Revisited those lips, and life's pale light

Flash'd 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 chain'd 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
Dare the unpastured dragon in his den?

Defenceless as thou wert, oh! where was then
Wisdom the mirror'd shield, or scorn the spear?
Or hadst thou waited the full cycle, when

Thy spirit should have fill'd its crescent sphere,
he monsters of life's haste had filed from thee like deer.
The herded wolves, bold only to pursue;
The obscene ravens, clamorous o'er the dead;
The vultures, to the conqueror's banner true,
Who feed where Desolation first has fed,
And whose wings rain contagion ;-how they fled,
When, like Apollo, from his golden bow,

The Pythian of the age one arrow sped

And smiled!-The spoilers tempt no second blow, They fawn on the proud feet that spurn them as they go. "The sun comes forth, and many reptiles spawn:

He sets, and each ephemeral insect then

Is gather'd into death without a dawn,
And the immortal stars awake again;
So it is 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 dimm'd or shared its light
Leave to its kindred lamps the spirit's awful night."

Thus ceased she: and the mountain shepherds came
Their garlands sere, their magic mantles rent;
The Pilgrim of Eternity, whose fame
Over his living head like Heaven is bent,
An early bat enduring monument,

Came, veiling all the lightnings of his song
In sorrow; for her wilds Ierne sent

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,
Whose thunder is its knell: he as I guess,
Had gazed on Nature's naked loveliness,
Acteon-like, and now he fled astray

With feeble steps o'er the world's wilderness,
And his own thoughts, along that rugged way,
Pursued, like raging hounds. their father and their prey

A pard-like Spirit beautiful and swift

A Love in desolation masked;-a Power

Girt round with weakness;-it can scarce uplift
The weight of the superincumbent hour;

It is a dying lamp, a falling shower,

A breaking billow;-even while 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,
And faded violets, white, and pied, and blue;
And a light spear topped with a cypress cone,
Round whose rude shaft dark ivy-tresses grew,
Yet dripping with the forest's noonday dew,
Vibrated, as the ever-beating heart

Shook the weak hand that grasp'd it; of that craw

He came the last, neglected and apart;

A herd-abandon'd deer, struck by the hunter's dart.

All stood aloof, and at his partial moan

Smiled through the tears; well knew that gentle band
Who in another's fate now wept his own;
As in the accents of an unknown land

He sang new sorrow; sad Urania scann'd

The Stranger's mein, and murmur'd: "Who art thou ?" He answer'd not, but with a sudden hand

Made bare his branded and ensanguined brow, Which was like Cain's or Christ's.-Oh! that is 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, honor'd the departed one;
Let me not vex, with inharmonious sighs,

The silence of that heart's accepted sacrifice.

Our Adonais has drunk poison-oh!

What deaf and viperous murderer could crown
Life's early cup with such a draught of woe?
The nameless worm would now itself disown:
It felt, yet could escape the magic tone
Whose prelude held all envy, hate, and wrong,
But what was howling in one breast alone,
Silent with expectation of the song,

Whose master's hand is cold, whose silver lyre's unstrung.

Live thou, whose infamy is not thy fame!
Live! fear no heavier chastisement from me,
Thou noteless blot on a remember'd name!
But to 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;
He wakes or sleeps with the enduring dead;
Thou canst not soar where he is sitting now.-
Dust to the dust! but the pure spirit shall flow
Back to the burning fountain whence he came,
A portion of the Eternal, which must glow
Through time and change, unquenchably the same,
Whilst thy cold embers choke the sordid hearth of shame,
Peace, peace! he is not dead, he doth not sleep--
He hath awaken'd from the dream of life-
'Tis we, who, lost in stormy visions, keep
With phantoms an unprofitable strife,

And in mad trance strike with our spirit's knife
Invulnerable nothings We decay

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 outsoar'd the shadow of our night;
Envy and calumny, and hate and pain,
And that unrest which men miscall delight,
Can touch him not and torture not again;
From the contagion of the world's slow stain
He is secure, and now can never mourn
A heart grown cold, a head grown grey in vain;
Nor, when the spirit's self has ceased to burn,
With sparkless ashes load an unlamented urn.
He lives, he wakes-'tis Death is dead, not he;
Mourn not for Adonais.-Thou young Dawn,
Turn all thy dew to splendor, for from thee
The spirit thou lamentest is not gone ;
Ye caverns and ye forests, cease to moan!
Cease ye faint flowers and fountains, and thou Air,
Which like a mourning veil thy scarf hadst thrown
O'er the abandon'd Earth, now leave it bare
Even to the joyous stars which smile on its despair.
He is made one with Nature: there is heard
His voice in all her music, from the moan
Of thunder to the song of night's sweet bird.

He is a presence to be felt and known

In darkness and in light, from herb and stone, Spreading itself where'er that Power may move Which has withdrawn his being to its own; Which wields the world with never-wearied love, Sustains it from beneath, and kindles it above.

He is a portion of the loveliness

Which once he made more lovely: he doth bear
His part, while the one Spirit's plastic stress
Sweeps through the dull dense world, compelling there
All new successions to the forms they wear;
Torturing th' unwilling dross that checks its flight
To its own likeness, as each mass may bear;

And bursting in its beauty and its might

From trees and beasts and men into the Heaven's light.
The splendors of the firmament of time

May be eclipsed, but are extinguish'd 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.

The inheritors of unfulfill'd 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.

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

« PoprzedniaDalej »