The Spirit he loves remains; The pavilion of heaven is bare, 179 And I all the while bask in heaven's blue smile. And the winds and sunbeams with their convex Whilst he is dissolving in rains. The sanguine sunrise, with his meteor eyes, And his burning plumes outspread, Leaps on the back of my sailing rack, When the morning star shines dead, As on the jag of a mountain crag, Which an earthquake rocks and swings, An eagle alit one moment may sit In the light of its golden wings. 30 May have broken the woof of my tent's thin roof, The stars peep behind her and peer; And I laugh to see them whirl and flee, Like a swarm of golden bees, When I widen the rent in my wind-built tent, Till the calm rivers, lakes, and seas, Like strips of the sky fallen through me on high, Are each paved with the moon and these. I bind the sun's throne with a burning zone, And the moon's with a girdle of pearl; 60 The volcanoes are dim, and the stars reel and swim, When the whirlwinds my banner unfurl. From cape to cape, with a bridge-like shape, Over a torrent sea, Sunbeam-proof, I hang like a roof, The mountains its columns be. The triumphal arch through which I march With hurricane, fire, and snow, gleams Build up the blue dome of air, I silently laugh at my own cenotaph,1 And out of the caverns of rain, 80 Like a child from the womb, like a ghost from the tomb, I arise and unbuild it again. Keen as are the arrows Of that silver sphere, Whose intense lamp narrows In the white dawn clear, Until we hardly see, we feel that it is there. All the earth and air When the powers of the air are chained to my The moon rains out her beams, and heaven is chair, overflowed. What thou art we know not; What is most like thee? From rainbow clouds there flow not Drops so bright to see, 20 30 As from thy presence showers a rain of melody. Like a poet hidden In the light of thought, 1 An empty tomb. * "John Keats died at Rome of a consumption, in his twenty-fourth [twenty-sixth] year. the [22d] day of [February], 1821; and was buried in the romantic and lonely cemetery of the Protestants in that city, under the pyr amid which is the tomb of Cestius and the massy walls and towers, now mouldering and desolate, which formed the circuit of ancient Rome. The cemetery is an open space among the ruins, covered in winter with violets and daisies. It might make one in love with death to think that one should be buried in so sweet a place."-From Shelley's Preface. "Adonais" is of course a poetical name for Keats. The elegy was the outcome of Shelley's noble indignation over a death which he somewhat mistakenly supposed was immediately due to the savage criticism of Keats's reviewers-"Wretched men," as he characterized them, who "know not what they do." murderers who had "spoken daggers but used none. See Eng. Lit., p. 258. The especially beautiful concluding stanzas, which are given here, are almost purely personal; Shelley is communing with himself, and thinking of his own troubled life. And where its wrecks like shattered mountains | And man, and woman; and what still is dear rise, And flowering weeds, and fragrant copses dress A light of laughing flowers along the grass is spread. 50 Attracts to crush, repels to make thee wither. The soft sky smiles,-the low wind whispers near; 'Tis Adonais calls! oh, hasten thither, No more let Life divide what Death can join together. 54 That Light whose smile kindles the Universe. And gray walls moulder round, on which dull That Benediction which the eclipsing Curse Time Feeds, like slow fire upon a hoary brand; Welcoming him we lose with scarce extinguished breath. 51 Of birth can quench not, that sustaining Love 55 The breath whose might I have invoked in song Whose sails were never to the tempest given; Here pause: these graves are all too young as The massy earth and spherèd skies are riven! yet To have outgrown the sorrow which consigned Seek shelter in the shadow of the tomb. What Adonais is, why fear we to become? 52 The One remains, the many change and pass; Heaven's light forever shines, Earth's shadows fly; Life, like a dome of many-coloured glass, seek! Follow where all is fled!-Rome's azure sky. Flowers, ruins, statues, music, words, are weak. The glory they transfuse with fitting truth to speak. 53 Why linger, why turn back, why shrink, my Heart? Thy hopes are gone before: from all things here They have departed: thou shouldst now depart! A light is past from the revolving year, 2 creeds and monarchies (to which, as such, Shelley was devotedly hostile) Shelley's drama of the modern Greeks' struggle for independence concludes with this Chorus, prophesying the return of that Golden Age when Saturn was fabled to have reigned over a universe of peace and love. Of the fulfillment of this prophecy Shelley had at times an ardent hope, which reaches perhaps its highest expression in this Chorus (with which compare Byron's Isles of Greece), and at other times a profound despair, which can easily be read in some of the lyrics that are given on subsequent pages. Another Athens shall arise, And to remoter time Bequeath, like sunset to the skies, The splendour of its prime; And leave, if nought so bright may live, All earth can take or Heaven can give. Saturn and Love their long repose Shall burst, more bright and good Than all who fell,3 than One who rose,+ Than many unsubdued:5 Not gold, not blood, their altar dowers, Oh, cease! must hate and death return? The world is weary of the past, ΤΟ Music, when soft voices die, Rose leaves, when the rose is dead, ΤΟ One word is too often profaned For me to profane it, One feeling too falsely disdained 3 Pagan gods. 4 Christ. 30 36 A LAMENT O world! O life! O time! On whose last steps I climb, Trembling at that where I had stood before; When will return the glory of your prime? No more-oh, never more! Out of the day and night A joy has taken flight; Fresh spring, and summer, and winter hoar. Move my faint heart with grief, but with delight No more-oh, never more! WHEN THE LAMP IS SHATTERED When the lamp is shattered, The light in the dust lies dead- 42 The rainbow's glory is shed. 5 Objects The more or less historic Trojan War, and the woes of the Theban house of Laius and his son Edipus, belong of course to a time succeeding the Golden Age of fable. As music and splendour No song when the spirit is mute:— When hearts have once mingled, To endure what it once possessed. The frailty of all things here, Why choose you the frailest For your cradle, your home, and your bier? 8 16 24 Full of sweet dreams, and health, and quiet breathing. 10 Therefore, on every morrow,1 are we wreathing rills 40 The very music of the name has gone THE EVE OF ST. AGNES 1 60 |