Thou noteless blot on a remembered name! But be 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 41 He lives, he wakes-'tis Death is dead, thee; not he; In darkness and in light, from herb and 46 And many more, whose names on earth are stone, Spreading itself where'er that Power may move Which has withdrawn his being to its own; Which wields the world with never-wearied love, Sustains it from beneath, and kindles it above. 43 He is a portion of the loveliness Which once he made more lovely: he doth bear His part, while the one Spirit's plastic1 stress Sweeps through the dull dense world, compelling there, All new successions to the forms they wear,2 Torturing the unwilling dross that checks its flight To its own likeness, as each mass they bear; And bursting in its beauty and its might From trees and beasts and men into the Heaven's light. 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 world's, 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. Or go to Rome, which is the sepulchre, For such as he can lend,-they borrow not 49 Go thou to Rome,-at once the Paradise, The grave, the city, and the wilderness; And where its wrecks like shattered mountains rise, And flowering weeds and fragrant copses The bones of Desolation's nakedness, dead A light of laughing flowers along the grass is spread; 1 See Shelley's Epipsychidion, 209-12 (p. 722). a The Protestant cemetery at Rome. |