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Thou messenger of sympathies

That wax and wane in lovers' eyes, Thou that to human thought art nourishment, Like darkness to a dying flame! Depart not as thy shadow came : Depart not, lest the grave should be, Like life and fear, a dark reality.

From 'The Revolt of Islam.'

She saw me not-she heard me not-alone

Upon the mountain's dizzy brink she stood;

She spake not, breathed not, moved not-there was thrown

Over her look the shadow of a mood

Which only clothes the heart in solitude,

A thought of voiceless death.-She stood alone.

Above, the heavens were spread ;-below, the flood
Was murmuring in its caves ;-the wind had blown
Her hair apart, through which her eyes and forehead shone.
A cloud was hanging o'er the western mountains;
Before its blue and moveless depth were flying
Grey mists poured forth from the unresting fountains
Of darkness in the north :--the day was dying :-
Sudden, the sun shone forth; its beams were lying
Like boiling gold on ocean, strange to see,

And on the shattered vapours which, defying
The power of light in vain, tossed restlessly
In the red heaven, like wrecks in a tempestuous sea.
It was a stream of living beams, whose bank

On either side by the cloud's cleft was made;
And, where its chasms that flood of glory drank,
Its waves gushed forth like fire, and, as if swayed
By some mute tempest, rolled on her. The shade

Of her bright image floated on the river

Of liquid light, which then did end and fadeHer radiant shape upon its verge did shiver; Aloft, her flowing hair like strings of flame did quiver.

I stood beside her, but she saw me notShe looked upon the sea, and skies, and earth. Rapture and love and admiration wrought A passion deeper far than tears or mirth, Or speech or gesture, or whate'er has birth From common joy; which with the speechless feeling That led her there united, and shot forth From her far eyes a light of deep revealing, All but her dearest self from my regard concealing.

From 'Prometheus Unbound.'
The Earth.

Ha ha! the caverns of my hollow mountains,
My cloven fire-crags, sound-exulting fountains,
Laugh with a vast and inextinguishable laughter!
The oceans and the deserts and the abysses,
And the deep air's unmeasured wildernesses,
Answer from all their clouds and billows, echoing after.

They cry aloud as I do :- Sceptred Curse, Who all our green and azure universe Threatenedst to muffle round with black destruction, sending

A solid cloud to rain hot thunder-stones,

And splinter and knead down my children's bones,

All I bring forth to one void mass battering and blending

'Until each crag-like tower and storied column, Palace and obelisk and temple solemn,

My imperial mountains crowned with cloud and snow and fire,

My sea-like forests, every blade and blossom
Which finds a grave or cradle in my bosom,

Were stamped by thy strong hate into a lifeless mire

'How art thou sunk, withdrawn, covered, drunk up By thirsty nothing, as the brackish cup Drained by a desert-troop, a little drop for all! And from beneath, around, within, above, Filling thy void annihilation, Love

Bursts in like light on caves cloven by the thunder-ball!'

The Moon.

The snow upon my lifeless mountains
Is loosened into living fountains,

My solid oceans flow and sing and shine :
A spirit from my heart bursts forth,
It clothes with unexpected birth

My cold bare bosom: Oh! it must be thine
On mine, on mine!

Gazing on thee, I feel, I know,

Green stalks burst forth, and bright flowers grow, And living shapes upon my bosom move : Music is in the sea and air,

Winged clouds soar here and there,

Dark with the rain new buds are dreaming of: 'Tis Love, all Love!

The Earth.

It interpenetrates my granite mass;
Through tangled roots and trodden clay doth pass
Into the utmost leaves and delicatest flowers;

Upon the winds, among the clouds, 'tis spread;
It wakes a life in the forgotten dead,--
They breathe a spirit up from their obscurest bowers;
And, like a storm bursting its cloudy prison
With thunder and with whirlwind, has arisen
Out of the lampless caves of unimagined being :—
With earthquake shock and swiftness making shiver
Thought's stagnant chaos, unremoved for ever :-
Till hate, and fear, and pain, light-vanquished shadows,
fleeing,

Leave Man, who was a many-sided mirror Which could distort to many a shape of error This true fair world of things, a sea reflecting love; Which over all his kind-as the sun's heaven Gliding o'er ocean, smooth, serene, and even— Darting from starry depths radiance and life, doth move :Leave Man, even as a leprous child is left Who follows a sick beast to some warm cleft

Of rocks through which the might of healing springs is poured,

Then when it wanders home with rosy smile,
Unconscious, and its mother fears awhile

It is a spirit, then, weeps on her child restored.

Man,-oh! not men! a chain of linkèd thought,
Of love and might to be divided not,
Compelling the elements with adamantine stress;
As the Sun rules, even with a tyrant's gaze,
The unquiet republic of the maze

Of Planets, struggling fierce towards heaven's free wilderness.

Man, one harmonious soul of many a soul,
Whose nature is its own divine control,
Where all things flow to all, as rivers to the sea;
Familiar acts are beautiful through love;
Labour and pain and grief, in life's green grove,
Sport like tame beasts,-none knew how gentle they
could be!

His will, with all mean passions, bad delights,
And selfish cares, its trembling satellites,

A spirit ill to guide, but mighty to obey,-
Is as a tempest-wingèd ship, whose helm
Love rules, through waves which dare not overwhelm,
Forcing life's wildest shores to own its sovereign sway.

All things confess his strength. Through the cold mass
Of marble and of colour his dreams pass,-

Bright threads whence mothers weave the robes their children wear;

Language is a perpetual Orphic song

Which rules with dædal harmony a throng

Of thoughts and forms which else senseless and shapeless

were.

The lightning is his slave; heaven's utmost deep Gives up her stars, and like a flock of sheep They pass before his eye, are numbered, and roll on. The tempest is his steed; he strides the air, And the abyss shouts from her depth laid bare, 'Heaven, hast thou secrets? Man unveils me; I have none.'

From 'Peter Bell the Third.'

He was a mighty poet and

A subtle-souled psychologist;
All things he seemed to understand
Of old or new, of sea or land-
But his own mind, which was a mist.

This was a man who might have turned
Hell into Heaven-and so in gladness
A Heaven unto himself have earned :
But he in shadows undiscerned

Trusted, and damned himself to madness.

He spoke of poetry, and how

Divine it was-' a light-a love

A spirit which like wind doth blow

As it listeth, to and fro;

A dew rained down from God above;

'A power which comes and goes like dream,
And which none can ever trace-
Heaven's light on earth-Truth's brightest beam.'
And when he ceased there lay the gleam
Of those words upon his face.

Ode to the West Wind.

I.

O wild West Wind, thou breath of Autumn's being, Thou from whose unseen presence the leaves dead Are driven like ghosts from an enchanter fleeing,

Yellow, and black, and pale, and hectic red, Pestilence-stricken multitudes! O thou

Who chariotest to their dark wintry bed

The winged seeds, where they lie cold and low,
Each like a corpse within its grave, until
Thine azure sister of the Spring shall blow

Her clarion o'er the dreaming earth, and fill (Driving sweet buds like flocks to feed in air) With living hues and odours plain and hill; Wild spirit which art moving everywhere; Destroyer and preserver; hear, oh hear!

2.

Thou on whose stream, 'mid the steep sky's commotion, Loose clouds like earth's decaying leaves are shed, Shook from the tangled boughs of heaven and ocean,

Angels of rain and lightning! there are spread On the blue surface of thine airy surge,

Like the bright hair uplifted from the head

Of some fierce Mænad, even from the dim verge
Of the horizon to the zenith's height,
The locks of the approaching storm. Thou dirge
Of the dying year, to which this closing night
Will be the dome of a vast sepulchre,

Vaulted with all thy congregated might

Of vapours, from whose solid atmosphere

Black rain, and fire, and hail, will burst: Oh hear !

3.

Thou who didst waken from his summer dreams
The blue Mediterranean, where he lay,
Lulled by the coil of his crystalline streams,

Beside a pumice isle in Baia's bay,
And saw in sleep old palaces and towers
Quivering within the wave's intenser day,
All overgrown with azure moss, and flowers
So sweet the sense faints picturing them! Thou
For whose path the Atlantic's level powers

Cleave themselves into chasms, while far below The sea-blooms and the oozy woods which wear The sapless foliage of the ocean know

Thy voice, and suddenly grow grey with fear,
And tremble and despoil themselves: Oh hear !

4.

If I were a dead leaf thou mightest bear;
If I were a swift cloud to fly with thee;
A wave to pant beneath thy power, and share
The impulse of thy strength, only less free
Than thou, O uncontrollable! if even
I were as in my boyhood, and could be

The comrade of thy wanderings over heaven,
As then, when to outstrip thy skiey speed
Scarce seemed a vision,-I would ne'er have striven

As thus with thee in prayer in my sore need.

Oh! lift me as a wave, a leaf, a cloud!

I fall upon the thorns of life! I bleed !

A heavy weight of hours has chained and bowed One too like thee-tameless, and swift, and proud.

5.

Make me thy lyre, even as the forest is :
What if my leaves are falling like its own?
The tumult of thy mighty harmonies

Will take from both a deep autumnal tone, Sweet though in sadness. Be thou, Spirit fierce, My spirit! Be thou me, impetuous one!

1

H

Lifts a young heart above its mortal lair,

Drive my dead thoughts over the universe,
Like withered leaves, to quicken a new birth;
And, by the incantation of this verse,

Scatter, as from an unextinguished hearth Ashes and sparks, my words among mankind; Be through my lips to unawakened earth

The trumpet of a prophecy! O Wind,
If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?

From 'Adonais.'

Peace, peace! he is not dead, he doth not sleep!
He hath awakened from the dream of life.
'Tis we who, lost in stormy visions, keep

With phantoms an unprofitable strife,

And in mad trance strike with our spirit's knife
Invulnerable nothings. We decay

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.

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 grey, in vain-
Nor, when the spirit's self has ceased to burn,
With sparkless ashes load an unlamented urn.

He lives, he wakes-'tis Death is dead, not he; Mourn not for Adonais.-Thou young Dawn, Turn all thy dew to splendour, for from thee The spirit thou lamentest is not gone! Ye caverns and ye forests, cease to moan! Cease, ye faint flowers and fountains! and, thou Air, Which like a mourning veil thy scarf hadst thrown O'er the abandoned Earth, now leave it bare Even to the joyous stars which smile on its despair! 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.

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 the 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 heaven's light.

The splendours of the firmament of time

May be eclipsed, but are extinguished not;
Like stars to their appointed height they climb,
And death is a low mist which cannot blot
The brightness it may veil. When lofty thought

And love and life contend in it for what
Shall be its earthly doom, the dead live there,
And move like winds of light on dark and stormy air.

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.

And many more, whose names on earth are dark,
But whose transmitted effluence cannot die
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!'
Who mourns for Adonais? Oh! 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
Beyond all worlds, 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,

Oh not of him, but of our joy. 'Tis nought
That ages, empires, and religions, there

Lie buried in the ravage they have wrought;
For such as he can lend-they borrow not
Glory from those who made the world their prey;
And he is gathered to the kings of thought
Who waged contention with their time's decay,
And of the past are all that cannot pass away.
Go thou to Rome,-at once the paradise,

The grave, the city, and the wilderness;

And where its wrecks like shattered mountains rise,
And flowing weeds and fragrant copses dress
The bones of Desolation's nakedness,
Pass, till the Spirit of the spot shall lead

Thy footsteps to a slope of green access,
Where, like an infant's smile, over the dead
A light of laughing flowers along the grass is spread.
And grey walls moulder round, on which dull Time
Feeds, like slow fire upon a hoary brand;
And one keen pyramid with wedge sublime,
Pavilioning the dust of him who planned
This refuge for his memory, doth stand
Like flame transformed to marble; and beneath
A field is spread, on which a newer band
Have pitched in heaven's smile their camp of death,
Welcoming him we lose with scarce extinguished breath.
Here pause. These graves are all too young as yet
To have outgrown the sorrow which consigned
Its charge to each; and, if the seal is set
Here on one fountain of a mourning mind,
Break it not thou! too surely shalt thou find

Thine own well full, if thou returnest home,
Of tears and gall. From the world's bitter wind
Seek shelter in the shadow of the tomb.

What Adonais is why fear we to become?

The One remains, the many change and pass;
Heaven's light for ever shines, earth's shadows fly;
Life, like a dome of many-coloured glass,
Stains the white radiance of eternity,

Until Death tramples it to fragments.-Die,

If thou wouldst be with that which thou dost 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.

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,
And man and woman; and what still is dear
Attracts to crush, repels to make thee wither.

The soft sky smiles, the low wind whispers near : 'Tis Adonais calls! O, hasten thither.

No more let life divide what death can join together.

That light whose smile kindles the universe,

That beauty in which all things work and move, That benediction which the eclipsing curse

Of birth can quench not, that sustaining Love Which, through the web of being blindly wove By man and beast and earth and air and sea,

Burns bright or dim, as each are mirrors of The fire for which all thirst, now beams on me, Consuming the last clouds of cold mortality.

The breath whose might I have evoked in song
Descends on me; my spirit's bark is driven
Far from the shore, far from the trembling throng
Whose sails were never to the tempest given.
The massy earth and sphered skies are riven !

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.

From 'Hellas.'

Chorus.

In the great morning of the world,
The Spirit of God with might unfurled
The flag of Freedom over chaos,

And all its banded anarchs fled,
Like vultures frighted from Imaus

Before an earthquake's tread.--
So from Time's tempestuous dawn
Freedom's splendour burst and shone :
Thermopyla and Marathon

Caught, like mountains beacon-lighted,
The springing fire. The winged glory
On Philippi half alighted,

Like an eagle on a promontory.
Its unwearied wings could fan
The quenchless ashes of Milan.
From age to age, from man to man,
It lived; and lit from land to land
Florence, Albion, Switzerland.
Then night fell; and, as from night,
Reassuming fiery flight,

From the West swift Freedom came,

Against the course of heaven and doom, A second sun arrayed in flame,

To burn, to kindle, to illume.
From far Atlantis its young beams
Chased the shadows and the dreams.
France, with all her sanguine steams,
Hid, but quenched it not; again
Through clouds its shafts of glory rain
From utmost Germany to Spain.
As an eagle fed with morning
Scorns the embattled tempest's warning
When she seeks her aerie hanging

In the mountain-cedar's hair,
And her brood expect the clanging

Of her wings through the wild air,
Sick with famine; Freedom so
To what of Greece remaineth now
Returns. Her hoary ruins glow
Like orient mountains lost in day;
Beneath the safety of her wings
Her renovated nurslings play,

And in the naked lightenings
Of truth they purge their dazzled eyes.
Let Freedom leave, where'er she flies,
A desert, or a paradise;

Let the beautiful and the brave
Share her glory, or a grave!

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And death's dark chasm hurrying to and fro, Clothe their unceasing flight

In the brief dust and light Gathered around their chariots as they go:

New shapes they still may weave, New gods, new laws, receive: Bright or dim are they, as the robes they last On Death's bare ribs had cast.

A power from the unknown God,
A Promethean conqueror, came;
Like a triumphal path he trod

The thorns of death and shame.
A mortal shape to him

Was like the vapour dim

Which the orient planet animates with light.
Hell, sin, and slavery came,

Like bloodhounds mild and tame,
Nor preyed until their lord had taken flight.
The moon of Mahomet
Arose, and it shall set :

While, blazoned as on heaven's immortal noon, The cross leads generations on.

Swift as the radiant shapes of sleep

From one whose dreams are paradise
Fly, when the fond wretch wakes to weep,
And day peers forth with her blank eyes;
So fleet, so faint, so fair,
The powers of earth and air

Fled from the folding-star of Bethlehem :
Apollo, Pan, and Love,
And even Olympian Jove,

Grew weak, for killing Truth had glared on them.
Our hills and seas and streams,
Dispeopled of their dreams,

Their waters turned to blood, their dew to tears,
Wailed for the golden years.

From 'The Triumph of Life.'

Swift as a spirit hastening to his task
Of glory and of good, the Sun sprang forth
Rejoicing in his splendour, and the mask

Of darkness fell from the awakened earth. The smokeless altars of the mountain snows Flamed above crimson clouds, and at the birth

Of light the ocean's orison arose,

To which the birds tempered their matin lay; All flowers in field or forest which unclose

Their trembling eyelids to the kiss of day, Swinging their censers in the element,

With orient incense lit by the new ray

Burned slow and inconsumably, and sent

Their odorous sighs up to the smiling air; And, in succession due, did continent,

Isle, ocean, and all things that in them wear The form and character of mortal mould,

Rise as the Sun their father rose, to bear

Their portion of the toil which he of old

Took as his own, and then imposed on them. But I, whom thoughts which must remain untold

Had kept as wakeful as the stars that gem The cone of night, now they were laid asleep Stretched my faint limbs beneath the hoary stem Which an old chesnut flung athwart the steep Of a green Apennine. Before me fled The night; behind me rose the day; the deep

Was at my feet, and heaven above my head ;When a strange trance over my fancy grew,

Which was not slumber, for the shade it spread Was so transparent that the scene came through As clear as, when a veil of light is drawn O'er evening hills, they glimmer; and I knew That I had felt the freshness of that dawn Bathe in the same cold dew my brow and hair, And sate as thus upon that slope of lawn Under the self-same bough, and heard as there The birds, the fountains, and the ocean hold Sweet talk in music through the enamoured air. And then a vision on my brain was rolled.

As in that trance of wondrous thought I lay, This was the tenour of my waking dream. Methought I sate beside a public way

Thick strewn with summer dust; and a great stream Of people there was hurrying to and fro,

Numerous as gnats upon the evening gleam,

All hastening onward, yet none seemed to know
Whither he went, or whence he came, or why
He made one of the multitude, and so

Was borne amid the crowd as through the sky
One of the million leaves of summer's bier.

Old age and youth, manhood and infancy,

Mixed in one mighty torrent did appear :

Some flying from the thing they feared, and some Seeking the object of another's fear.

And others, as with steps towards the tomb, Poured on the trodden worms that crawled beneath; And others mournfully within the gloom

Of their own shadow walked, and called it death;
And some fled from it as it were a ghost,
Half fainting in the affliction of vain breath.

But more, with motions which each other crossed, Pursued or shunned the shadows the clouds threw, Or birds within the noonday ether lost,

Upon that path where flowers never grew,—

And, weary with vain toil and faint for thirst, Heard not the fountains whose melodious dew

Out of their mossy cells for ever burst,
Nor felt the breeze which from the forest told
Of grassy paths, and wood lawns interspersed

With overarching elms, and caverns cold,
And violet-banks where sweet dreams brood ;-but
they

Pursued their serious folly as of old.

And, as I gazed, methought that in the way The throng grew wilder, as the woods of June When the south wind shakes the extinguished day;

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