ADONAIS;

̓Αστὴρ πρὶν μὲν ἔλαμπες ἐνὶ ζώοισιν ἐῶος.
Νῦν δὲ θανὼν λάμπεις ἕσπερος ἐν φθιμένοις.

ADONAIS.

PLATO.

1. I WEEP for Adonais-he is dead!

Oh!, weep for Adonais, though our tears Thaw not the frost which binds so dear a head! And thou, sad Hour selected from all years To mourn our loss, rouse thy obscure compeers, And teach them thine own sorrow! Say: "With me Died Adonais! Till the future dares Forget the past, his fate and fame shall be An echo and a light unto eternity."

2. Where wert thou, mighty Mother, when he lay, When thy son lay, pierced by the shaft which flies In darkness? Where was lorn Urania

When Adonais died? With veiled eyes,
'Mid listening Echoes, in her paradise

She sate, while one, with soft enamoured breath,
Rekindled all the fading melodies

With which, like flowers that mock the corse beneath, He had adorned and hid the coming bulk of Death.

3. Oh! weep for Adonais-he is dead!

Wake, melancholy Mother, wake and weep!-
Yet wherefore? Quench within their burning bed
Thy fiery tears, and let thy loud heart keep,
Like his, a mute and uncomplaining sleep;
For he is gone where all things wise and fair

Descend. Oh! dream not that the amorous deep
Will yet restore him to the vital air;

Death feeds on his mute voice, and laughs at our despair. 4. Most musical of mourners, weep again! Lament anew, Urania!-He died

Who was the sire of an immortal strain,

Blind, old, and lonely, when his country's pride
The priest, the slave, and the liberticide,
Trampled and mocked with many a loathed rite
Of lust and blood. He went unterrified
Into the gulf of death; but his clear sprite

Yet reigns o'er earth, the third among the Sons of Light. 5. 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
Which leads, through toil and hate, to Fame's serene abode.
6. But now thy youngest, dearest one has perished,
The nursling of thy widowhood, who grew,
Like a pale flower by some sad maiden cherished,
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, nipped before they blew,
Died on the promise of the fruit, is waste;
The broken lily lies- the storm is overpassed.
7. 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.
8. 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. 9. 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 their lot
Round the cold hearth where, after their sweet pain,
They ne'er will gather strength or find a home again.
10. 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 loosened from his brain."
Lost angel of a ruined paradise!

She knew not 'twas her own,-as with no stain
She faded, like a cloud which had outwept its rain.
II. One from a lucid urn of starry dew

Washed his light limbs, as if embalming them;
Another clipped 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 wingèd reeds, as if to stem

A greater loss with one which was more weak, And dull the barbèd fire against his frozen check. 12. Another Splendour 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
Quenched its caress upon his icy lips;

And, as a dying meteor stains a wreath

Of moonlight vapour which the cold night clips, It flushed through his pale limbs, and passed to its eclipse. 13. And others came,-Desires and Adorations,

Winged Persuasions, and veiled Destinies,
Splendours, and Glooms, and glimmering incarnations
Of Hopes and Fears, and twilight Fantasies.

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.

14. 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,
Dimmed the aerial eyes that kindle day;

Afar the melancholy Thunder moaned,
Pale Ocean in unquiet slumber lay,

And the wild Winds flew round, sobbing in their dismay. 15. Lost Echo sits amid the voiceless mountains,

And feeds her grief with his remembered lay,
And will no more reply to winds or fountains,

Or amorous birds perched 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 she pined away

Into a shadow of all sounds :-a drear

Murmur, between their songs, is all the woodmen hear. 16. 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 faint companions of their youth,

With dew all turned to tears,-odour, to sighing ruth. 17. 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!
18. 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 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.

19. 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 dawned on chaos. In its steam 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,
20. The leprous corpse, touched by this spirit tender,
Exhales itself in flowers of gentle breath;
Like incarnations of the stars, when splendour 3
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? The intense atom glows a A moment, then is quenched in a most cold repose. J 21. 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 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.
22. 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, with tears and sighs."
And all the Dreams that watched 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 Splendour sprung.
23. 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,

Had left the Earth a corpse. Sorrow and fear

So struck, so roused, so rapt, Urania;

So saddened round her like an atmosphere
Of stormy mist; so swept her on her way,

Even to the mournful place where Adonais lay,

24. Out of her secret paradise she sped,

Through camps and cities rough with stone and steel
And human hearts, which, to her aery 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,
Paved with eternal flowers that undeserving way.