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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.

1.

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 veiled 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 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 cf 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.

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 lo
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

With lightning and with music: the damp death Quenched its caress upon his icy lips;

And, as a dying meteor stains a wreath

Of moonlight vapour which the cold night clips, It flushed through his pale limbs, and passed to its eclipse.

XIII.

And others came. Desires and Adorations;
Winged Persuasions, and veiled Destinies ;
Splendours, and Glooms, and glimmering incarnations
Of Hopes and Fears, and twilight Fantasies;
And Sorrow, with her family of Sighs;

And Pleasure, blind with tears, led by the gleam
Of her own dying smile instead of eyes,—
Came in slow pomp ;-the moving pomp might seem
Like pageantry of mist on an autumnal stream.

XIV.

All he had loved, and moulded into thought

From shape and hue and odour and sweet sound, Lamented Adonais. Morning sought

Her eastern watch-tower, and her hair unbound, Wet with the tears which should adorn the ground, Dimmed the aërial eyes that kindle day;

Afar the melancholy Thunder moaned,

Pale Ocean in unquiet slumber lay,

And the wild Winds flew round, sobbing in their dismay.

XV.

Lost Echo sits amid the voiceless mountains,
And feeds her grief with his remembered lay,
And will no more reply to winds or fountains,

Or amorous birds perched on the young green spray,
Or herdsman's horn, or bell at closing day;
Since she can mimic not his lips, more dear
Than those for whose disdain she pined away

Into a shadow of all sounds :-a drear

Murmur, between their songs, is all the woodmen hear.

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