Miscellanies (1885) :: :: University of Virginia Library

The sunshine on the floor is black! The air
Is changed to vapours, such as the dead breathe
In charnel pits! Poh! I am choked! There creeps
A clinging, black, contaminating mist
About me—'tis substantial, heavy, thick.
I cannot pluck it from me, for it glues
My fingers and my limbs to one another,
And eats into my sinews, and dissolves
My flesh to a pollution,” &c. &c.

306

[“And in its depths there is a mighty rock]

“And in its depths there is a mighty rock,
Which has, from unimaginable years,
Sustained itself with terror and with toil!
Over a gulph, and with the agony
With which it clings, seems slowly coursing down;
Even as a wretched soul, hour after hour,
Clings to the mass of life, yet clinging leans,
And, leaning, makes more dark the dread abyss
In which it fears to fall. Beneath this crag,
Huge as despair, as if in weariness,
The melancholy mountain yawns below,” &c. &c.

307

[“O weep for Adonais! He is dead!]

“O weep for Adonais! He is dead!
Weep, 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.
Death feeds on his mute voice, and laughs at our despair.”

[“Grief made the young Spring wild, and she threw down]

“Grief made the young Spring wild, and she threw down
Her kindling buds, as if the Autumn were,
Or they dead leaves, since her delight is flown,
For whom would she have waked the sullen year?
To Phœbus was not Hyacinth so dear,
Nor to himself Narcissus, as to both,
Thou, Adonais; wan they stand, and sere,
Amid the drooping comrades of their youth,
With dew all turned to tears, odour to sighing ruth.”

308

Absurdity.

The green lizard, and the golden snake,
Like unimprisoned flowers out of their trance awake. An hour—

Say, with me
Died Adonais, till the Future dares
Forget the Past—his fate and fame shall be
An echo and a light to all eternity.

Whose tapers yet burn there the night of Time,
For which suns perished!

Echo,—pined away
Into a shadow of all sounds.

That mouth whence it was wont to draw the breath
Which gave it strength to pierce the guarded wit!

Comfortless!
As silent lightning leaves the starless night.

Live thou whose infamy is not thy fame!

Thou noteless blot on a remembered name!

We in mad trance strike with our spirit's knife
Invulnerable nothings!

Where 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.

Who mourns for Adonais—oh! come forth,
Fond wretch! and know thyself and him aright,
Clasp with thy panting soul the pendulous earth!

309

Dart thy spirit's light
Beyond all worlds, until its spacious might
Satiate the void circumference!

Then sink
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.

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.

That benediction which th' 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.

[He is, “The coming bulk of Death,”]

He is, “The coming bulk of Death,”
Then “Death feeds on the mute voice.”
A clear sprite
Reigns over Death—
Kingly Death
Keeps his pale court.
Spreads apace
The shadow of white Death.
The damp Death
Quenched its caress—
Death
Blushed to annihilation!
Her distress
Roused Death. Death rose and smiled—
He lives, he wakes, 'tis Death is dead!