Изображения страниц
PDF
EPUB

The spotted deer bask in the fresh moonlight
Before our gate; and the slow silent night

Is measured by the pants of their calm sleep.
Be this our home in life; and, when years heap
Their withered hours like leaves on our decay,
Let us become the overhanging day,

The living soul, of this elysian isle—
Conscious, inseparable, one. Meanwhile
We two will rise and sit and walk together
Under the roof of blue Ionian weather;
And wander in the meadows; or ascend
The mossy mountains, where the blue heavens bend
With lightest winds to touch their paramour ;
Or linger where the pebble-paven shore
Under the quick faint kisses of the sea
Trembles and sparkles as with ecstasy ;—
Possessing and possessed by all that is
Within that calm circumference of bliss,
And by each other, till to love and live
Be one; or at the noontide hour arrive
Where some old cavern hoar seems yet to keep
The moonlight of the expired Night asleep,
Through which the awakened Day can never peep;
A veil for our seclusion, close as Night's,

Where secure sleep may kill thine innocent lights—
Sleep, the fresh dew of languid love, the rain
Whose drops quench kisses till they burn again.
And we will talk, until thought's melody
Become too sweet for utterance, and it die
In words, to live again in looks, which dart
With thrilling tone into the voiceless heart,
Harmonising silence without a sound.
Our breath shall intermix, our bosoms bound,
And our veins beat together; and our lips,
With other eloquence than words, eclipse

The soul that burns between them; and the wells

Which boil under our being's inmost cells,

The fountains of our deepest life, shall be
Confused in passion's golden purity,

As mountain-springs under the morning sun.
We shall become the same, we shall be one
Spirit within two frames, oh wherefore two?
One passion in twin hearts, which grows and grew
Till, like two meteors of expanding flame,

Those spheres instinct with it become the same,
Touch, mingle, are transfigured; ever still
Burning, yet ever inconsumable ;

In one another's substance finding food,
Light flames too pure and light and unimbued
To nourish their bright lives with baser prey,
Which point to heaven and cannot pass away:
One hope within two wills, one will beneath
Two overshadowing minds, one life, one death,
One heaven, one hell, one immortality,
And one annihilation!

Woe is me!

The winged words on which my soul would pierce

Into the height of Love's rare universe

Are chains of lead around its flight of fire

I pant, I sink, I tremble, I expire!

ADONAIS; AN ELEGY ON THE DEATH OF

JOHN KEATS.

I.

I weep for Adonais-he is dead!

Oh 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.'

II.

Where wert thou, mighty Mother, when he lay, When thy son lay, pierced by the shaft which flies In darkness? Where was lorn Urania

When Adonais died? With veilèd eyes,

Mid listening Echoes, in her paradise

She sate, while one, with soft enamoured breath,

Rekindled all the fading melodies

With which, like flowers that mock the corse beneath, He had adorned and hid the coming bulk of Death.

III.

Oh 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;

Death feeds on his mute voice, and laughs at our despair.

IV.

Most musical of mourners, weep again!
Lament anew, Urania!-He died

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 loathèd 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.

V.

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.

VI.

But now thy youngest, dearest one has perished,
The nursling of thy widowhood, who grew,
Like a pale flower by some sad maiden cherished,
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, nipped before they blew,
Died on the promise of the fruit, is waste;
The broken lily lies-the storm is overpast.

VII.

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.

VIII.

He will awake no more, oh never more!

Within the twilight chamber spreads apace The shadow of white Death, and at the door Invisible Corruption waits to trace

His extreme way to her dim dwelling-place; The eternal Hunger sits, but pity and awe Soothe her pale rage, nor dares she to deface So fair a prey, till darkness and the law

Of change shall o'er his sleep the mortal curtain draw.

IX.

Oh weep for Adonais !—The quick Dreams,

The passion-wingèd 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 not—
Wander no more from kindling brain to brain,

But droop there whence they sprung; and mourn their lot
Round the cold heart where, after their sweet pain,
They ne'er will gather strength or find a home again.

X.

And one with trembling hands clasps his cold head,
And fans him with her moonlight wings, and cries,
'Our love, our hope, our sorrow, is not dead!
See, on the silken fringe of his faint eyes,
Like dew upon a sleeping flower, there lies
A tear some dream has loosened from his brain.'
Lost angel of a ruined paradise!

She knew not 'twas her own,-as with no stain
She faded, like a cloud which had outwept its rain.

XI.

One from a lucid urn of starry dew

Washed his light limbs, as if embalming them;
Another clipped 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 barbèd fire against his frozen cheek.

XII.

Another Splendour on his mouth alit,

That mouth whence it was wont to draw the breath
Which gave it strength to pierce the guarded wit,
And pass into the panting heart beneath

« ПредыдущаяПродолжить »