As in the accents of an unknown land He sang new sorrow; sad Urania scanned The Stranger's mien, and murmured : "Who art thou?" He answered not, but with a sudden hand Made bare his branded and ensanguined brow, Which was like Cain's or Christ's. should be so! Oh! that it XXXV. 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, honoured the departed Let me not vex, with inharmonious sighs, The silence of that heart's accepted sacrifice. XXXVI. Our Adonais has drunk poison-oh! [one; What deaf and viperous murderer could crown Whose master's hand is cold, whose silver lyre unstrung. XXXVII. Live thou, whose infamy is not thy fame! 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. XXXVIII. Nor let us weep that our delight is fled Whilst thy cold embers choke the sordid hearth of shame. XXXIX. Peace, peace! he is not dead, he doth not sleep- 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. XL. 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. XLI. He lives, he wakes-'tis Death is dead, not he; Which like a morning veil thy scarf hadst thrown O'er the abandoned Earth, now leave it bare Even to the joyous stars which smile on its despair ' XLII. 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felt and known In darkness and in light, from herb and stone, Spreading itself where'er that Power may move Which has withdrawn his being to its own; Which wields the world with never-wearied love, Sustains it from beneath, and kindles it above. XLIII. 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 Heavens' light. XLIV. The splendours of the firmament of time Shall be its earthly doom, the dead live there, And move like winds of light on dark and stormy air. XLV. The inheritors of unfulfilled 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. XLVI. And many more, whose names on earth are dark, "It was for thee yon kingless sphere has long Swung blind in unascended majesty, Silent alone amid a Heaven of song. Assume thy winged throne, thou Vesper of our throng!" XLVII. Who mourns for Adonais? O, come forth, 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 |