XVI.

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 i

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.

XVII.

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!

XVIII.

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.

XIX.

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 frst

God dawned 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 renewèd might.

XX.

The leprous corpse, touched by this spirit tender,
Exhales itself in flowers of gentle breath;
Like incarnations of the stars, when splendour

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 moment, then is quenched in a most cold repose.

XXI.

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

XXII.

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,

XXIII.

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.

XXIV.

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.

XXV.

In the death-chamber for a moment Death,

Shamed by the presence of that living Might,

Blushed to annihilation, and the breath

Revisited those lips, and life's pale light

Flashed 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 cares!

XXVI.

'Stay yet awhile! 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 chained to Time, and cannot thence depart.

XXVII.

'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 mirrored shield, or Scorn the spear?Or, hadst thou waited the full cycle when Thy spirit should have filled its crescent sphere, The monsters of life's waste had fled from thee like deer.

XXVIII.

'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 lying low.

XXIX.

'The sun comes forth, and many reptiles spawn;
He sets, and each ephemeral insect then

Is gathered into death without a dawn,
And the immortal stars awake again.
So is it 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 dimmed or shared its light Leave to its kindred lamps the spirit's awful night.' Dd

VOL. IV.

XXX.

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 but enduring monument,

Came, veiling all the lightnings of his song

In sorrow. From her wilds Ierne sent

The sweetest lyrist of her saddest wrong,

And love taught grief to fall like music from his tongue.

XXXI.

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
Actæon-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.

XXXII.

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 whilst 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.

XXXIII.

His head was bound with pansies overblown,
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

1 The poets referred to (stanzas xxx-xxxv) are Byron, Moore, Shelley bimself, and Leigh Hunt.