more a man drinketh of the world, the more it! intoxicateth; and age doth profit rather in the powers of understanding than in the virtues of the will and affections. ADONAIS; AN ELEGY ON THE DEATH OF JOHN KEATS. BY PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY. I weep for ADONAIS-he is dead! O! weep for Adonais, though our tears Thaw not the frost which binds so dear a head! And thou, sad Hour selected from all years 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 An echo and a light unto eternity." Where wert thou, mighty Mother, when he lay, When Adonais died? With veiled eyes, She sate, while one, with soft enamoured breath, With which, like flowers that mock the corse beneath, He had adorned and hid the coming bulk of Death. O! weep for Adonais-he is dead! Wake, melancholy Mother, wake and weep!— Yet wherefore? Quench within their burning bed Thy fiery tears, and let thy loud heart keep, Like his, a mute and uncomplaining sleep, For he is gone where all things wise and fair Descend. Oh! dream not that the amorous deep Will yet restore him to the vital air; But now thy youngest, dearest one has perished, The nursling of thy widowhood, who grew, Like a pale flower by some sad maiden cherishel, And fed with true-love tears instead of dew. Most musical of mourners, weep anew! Thy extreme hope, the loveliest and the last, The bloom whose petals, nipp'd before they blew, Died on the promise of the fruit, is waste; The broken lily lies-the storm is overpast. To that high Capital where kingly Death Keeps his pale court in beauty and decay He came; and bought, with price of purest breath, A grave among the eternal.-Come away! Haste, while the vault of blue Italian day Is yet his fitting charnel-roof, while still He lies as if in dewy sleep he lay Awake him not! surely he takes his fill Of deep and liquid rest, forgetful of all ill. He will awake no more, oh never more! Within the twilight chamber spreads apace Soothe her pale rage, nor dares she to deface Oh weep for Adonais !--The quick Dreams, The passion-winged ministers of thought, Who were his flocks, whom near the living streams Of his young spirit he fed, and whom he taught The love which was its music, wander notWander no more from kindling brain to brain, But droop there whence they sprung; and mourn their lot Round the cold hearth where, after their sweet pain, Death feeds on his mute voice, and laughs at our despair. They ne'er will gather strength or find a home again. 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 mock'd 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. Most musical of mourners, weep anew! Not all to that bright station dared to climb: And happier they their happiness who knew, Whose tapers yet burn through that night of time In which suns perished. Others more sublime, Struck by the envious wrath of man or god, Have sunk, extinct in their refulgent prime; And some yet live, treading the thorny road Which leads, through toil and hate, to Fame's serene abode. And one with trembling hand clasps his cold head, A tear some Dream has loosened from his brain." She knew not 'twas her own,-as with no stain She faded, like a cloud which had outwept its rain. One from a lucid urn of starry dew Washed his light limbs, as if embalming them; Another clipp'd her profuse locks, and threw The wreath upon him, like an anadem Which frozen tears instead of pearls begem; Another in her wilful grief would break Her bow and wingèd reeds, as if to stem A greater loss with one which was more weak, And dull the barbed fire against his frozen cheek. 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. 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 caress. "Stay yet awhile! speak to me once again! That word, that kiss, shall all thoughts else survive, Now thou art dead, as if it were a part "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. "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. "The sun comes forth, and many reptiles spawn; Is gathered into death without a dawn, 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." 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, A phantom among men, companionless With feeble steps o'er the world's wilderness, 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 Lifts a young heart above its mortal lair, 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, And many more, whose names on earth are dark, Swung blind in unascended majesty, Assume thy winged 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, O 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, 1-at once the paradise, The grave, the city, and the wilderness; And where its wrecks like shattered mountains rise, And flowering 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 gray 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 out-grown 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? 1 Rome now also contains the ashes of him who poured out this strain of lamentation, more beautiful and passionate than ever poet uttered for the loss of another. 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. 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 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. JEANNOT AND COLIN. FROM THE FRENCH OF VOLTAIRE. Many credible persons have seen Jeannot and Colin of the village of Issoire in Auvergne, a place famous all over the world for its college and its cauldrons. Jeannot was the son of a very renowned mule-driver; Colin owed his existence to an honest labourer in the neighbourhood, who cultivated the earth with the help of four mules, and who, after he had paid the poll-tax, the military-tax, the royaltax, the excise-tax, the shilling-in-the-pound, the capitation, and the twentieths, did not find himself over-rich at the year's end. Jeannot and Colin were very pretty lads for Auvergnians: they were remarkably attached to each other, and enjoyed together those little confidentialities, and those snug familiarities, which men always recollect with pleasure when they afterwards meet in the world. The time dedicated to their studies was just upon the eve of elapsing when a tailor brought Jeannot a velvet coat of three colours, with a Lyons waistcoat made in the first taste; the whole was accompanied with a letter directed to Monsieur de la Jeannotiere. Colin could not help admiring the coat, though he was not 2 This satire upon a wretched phase of society in Voltaire's day, is not without point and application in our own time. |