Yet, if we could scorn Hate and pride and fear, If we were things born Not to shed a tear, I know not how thy joy we ever should come near. Better than all measures Of delightful sound, That in books are found, Thy skill to poet were, thou scorner of the ground! Teach me half the gladness That thy brain must know, The world should listen then as I am listening now. I weep AN ELEGY ON THE DEATH OF JOHN KEATS. I. for Adonais-he is dead. Oh, weep for Adonais, though our tears Thaw not the frost which binds so dear a head; 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 IV. Most musical of mourners, weep again! 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. VI. But now thy youngest, dearest one, has perished- XXXIX. Peace, peace! he is not dead, he doth not sleep- And in mad trance strike with our spirit's knife 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. XLII. He is made one with Nature: there is heard In darkness and in light, from herb and stone, 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; From trees and beasts and men into the Heaven's light. 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 XLVI. And many more, whose names on earth are dark, 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 wingèd throne, thou Vesper of our throng!” LV. The breath whose might I have invoked in song I am borne darkly, fearfully afar; Whilst burning through the inmost veil of Heaven The soul of Adonais, like a star, Beacons from the abode where the Eternal are. -Adonais. |