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 with-
in 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 gray

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
[thee
Turn all thy dew to splendor, for from
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

And bursting in its beauty and its might From trees and beasts and men into the Heaven's light.

The splendors 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.

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 winged throne, thou Vesper of our throng!"

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 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 [home, Thine own well full, if thou returnest 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

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! 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

Yet were life a charnel where
Hope lay coffined with Despair;
Yet were truth a sacred lie,
Love were lust-If Liberty

Lent not life its soul of light,
Hope its iris of delight,
Truth its prophet's robe to wear,
Love its power to give and bear.
From Hellas. 1821. 1822.

WORLDS ON WORLDS ARE ROLLING EVER

WORLDS on worlds are rolling ever
From creation to decay,

Like the bubbles on a river
Sparkling, bursting, borne away.
But they are still immortal

Who, through birth's orient portal 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 vapor 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 Hellas. 1821. 1822.

SONGS FROM HELLAS

DARKNESS has dawned in the East

On the noon of time:

The death-birds descend to their feast, From the hungry clime.

Let Freedom and Peace flee far

To a sunnier strand,

And follow Love's folding star
To the Evening land!

The young moon has fed
Her exhausted horn,
With the sunset's fire:

The weak day is dead,

But the night is not born; And, like loveliness panting with wild desire [light,

While it trembles with fear and deHesperus flies from awakening night, And pants in its beauty and speed with light

Fast flashing, soft, and bright. Thou beacon of love! thou lamp of the free!

Guide us far, far away,

To climes where now veiled by the ardor of day

Through the walls of our prison; And Greece, which was dead, is arisen! 1821. 1822.

THE WORLD'S GREAT AGE BEGINS
ANEW

THE world's great age begins anew,
The golden years return,

The earth doth like a snake renew

Her winter weeds outworn: Heaven smiles, and faiths and empires gleam,

Like wrecks of a dissolving dream.

A brighter Hellas rears its mountains
From waves serener far;

A new Peneus rolls his fountains
Against the morning star.

Where fairer Tempes bloom, there sleep
Young Cyclads on a sunnier deep.

A loftier Argo cleaves the main,
Fraught with a later prize;
Another Orpheus sings again,

And loves, and weeps, and dies.
A new Ulysses leaves once more
Calypso for his native shore.

Oh, write no more the tale of Troy, If earth Death's scroll must be! Nor mix with Laian rage the joy Which dawns upon the free: Although a subtler Sphinx renew Riddles of death Thebes never knew.

Another Athens shall arise,

And to remoter time

Bequeath, like sunset to the skies,
The splendor 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, than One who rose, Than many unsubdued: 1

1 Saturn and Love were among the deities of a real or imaginary state of innocence and happiness. All those who fell, or the Gods of Greece, Asia, and Egypt; the One who rose, or Jesus Christ, at whose appearance the idols of the Pagan World were amerced of their worship; and the many unsubdued, or the monstrous ob jects of the idolatry of China, India, the Antarctie islands, and the native tribes of America. certainly have reigned over the understandings of men in conjunction or in succession, during periods in which all we know of evil has been in a state of portentous, and, until the revival of learning and the arts, perpetually increasing activity. (From Shelley's Note.)