Peace, peace! he is not dead, he doth not sleep He hath awakened 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 He has outsoared 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 gray 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 Which like a mourning veil thy scarf hadst thrown 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 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. 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 Swung blind in unascended majesty, Silent alone amid an Heaven of Song. Assume thy winged throne, thou Vesper of our throng!" A light of laughing flowers along the grass is spread. And gray walls moulder round, on which dull Time Feeds, like slow fire upon a hoary brand; And one keen pyramid with wedge sublime, Pavilioning the dust of him who planned This refuge for his memory, doth stand Like flame transformed to marble; and beneath, 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. 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 [home, Thine own well full, if thou returnest 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? The One remains, the many change and 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, 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. 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 Yet were life a charnel where Lent not life its soul of light, WORLDS ON WORLDS ARE ROLLING EVER WORLDS on worlds are rolling ever Like the bubbles on a river Who, through birth's orient portal And death's dark chasm hurrying to and fro, Clothe their unceasing flight Gathered around their chariots as they go; New shapes they still may weave, New gods, new laws receive, Bright or dim are they as the robes they last On Death's bare ribs had cast. A power from the unknown God, The thorns of death and shame. Which the orient planet animates with light; Hell, Sin, and Slavery came, Like bloodhounds mild and tame, Nor preyed, until their Lord had taken flight; The moon of Mahomet While blazoned as on heaven's immortal noon The cross leads generations on. Swift as the radiant shapes of_sleep From one whose dreams are Paradise Fly, when the fond wretch wakes to weep, And day peers forth with her blank eyes; So fleet, so faint, so fair, The Powers of earth and air Fled from the folding star of Bethlehem Apollo, Pan, and Love, Our hills and seas and streams Their waters turned to blood, their dew to tears, Wailed for the golden years. From Hellas. 1821. 1822. SONGS FROM HELLAS DARKNESS has dawned in the East On the noon of time: The death-birds descend to their feast, From the hungry clime. Let Freedom and Peace flee far To a sunnier strand, And follow Love's folding star The young moon has fed The weak day is dead, But the night is not born; And, like loveliness panting with wild desire [light, While it trembles with fear and deHesperus flies from awakening night, And pants in its beauty and speed with light Fast flashing, soft, and bright. Thou beacon of love! thou lamp of the free! Guide us far, far away, To climes where now veiled by the ardor of day Through the walls of our prison; And Greece, which was dead, is arisen! 1821. 1822. THE WORLD'S GREAT AGE BEGINS THE world's great age begins anew, The earth doth like a snake renew Her winter weeds outworn: Heaven smiles, and faiths and empires gleam, Like wrecks of a dissolving dream. A brighter Hellas rears its mountains A new Peneus rolls his fountains Where fairer Tempes bloom, there sleep A loftier Argo cleaves the main, And loves, and weeps, and dies. Oh, write no more the tale of Troy, If earth Death's scroll must be! Nor mix with Laian rage the joy Which dawns upon the free: Although a subtler Sphinx renew Riddles of death Thebes never knew. Another Athens shall arise, And to remoter time Bequeath, like sunset to the skies, And leave, if nought so bright may live, Saturn and Love their long repose Shall burst, more bright and good Than all who fell, than One who rose, Than many unsubdued: 1 1 Saturn and Love were among the deities of a real or imaginary state of innocence and happiness. All those who fell, or the Gods of Greece, Asia, and Egypt; the One who rose, or Jesus Christ, at whose appearance the idols of the Pagan World were amerced of their worship; and the many unsubdued, or the monstrous ob jects of the idolatry of China, India, the Antarctie islands, and the native tribes of America. certainly have reigned over the understandings of men in conjunction or in succession, during periods in which all we know of evil has been in a state of portentous, and, until the revival of learning and the arts, perpetually increasing activity. (From Shelley's Note.) |