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XXVIII

'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,

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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.

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XXIX

'The sun comes forth, and many reptiles spawn;
He sets, and each ephemeral insect then
Is gathered into death without a dawn,
And the immortal stars awake again;
So is it in the world of living men:

A godlike mind soars forth, in its delight
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.'

XXX

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,

An early but enduring monument,

Came, veiling all the lightnings of his song

In sorrow; from her wilds Ierne sent

The sweetest lyrist of her saddest wrong,

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And Love taught Grief to fall like music from his tongue. 270

XXXI

Midst others of less note, came one frail Form,

A phantom among men; companionless

As the last cloud of an expiring storm

Whose thunder is its knell; he, as I guess,
Had gazed on Nature's naked loveliness,
Actaeon-like, and now he fled astray

With feeble steps o'er the world's wilderness,
And his own thoughts, along that rugged way,

Pursued, like raging hounds, their father and their prey.

XXXII

A pardlike Spirit beautiful and swift

A Love in desolation masked ;-a Power

Girt round with weakness;-it can scarce uplift
The weight of the superincumbent hour;

It is a dying lamp, a falling shower,

252 lying low ed. 1839; as they go ed. 1821.

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A breaking billow;-even whilst we speak
Is it not broken? On the withering flower
The killing sun smiles brightly: on a cheek

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The life can burn in blood, even while the heart may break.

XXXIII

His head was bound with pansies overblown,
And faded violets, white, and pied, and blue;
And a light spear topped with a cypress cone,
Round whose rude shaft dark ivy-tresses grew
Yet dripping with the forest's noonday dew,
Vibrated, as the ever-beating heart

Shook the weak hand that grasped it; of that crew
He came the last, neglected and apart;

A herd-abandoned deer struck by the hunter's dart.

XXXIV

All stood aloof, and at his partial moan

Smiled through their tears; well knew that gentle band Who in another's fate now wept his own,

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As in the accents of an unknown land

He sung new sorrow; sad Urania scanned

The Stranger's mien, and murmured: 'Who art thou?'
He answered not, but with a sudden hand
Made bare his branded and ensanguined brow,

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Which was like Cain's or Christ's-oh! that it should be so!

XXXV

What softer voice is hushed over the dead?
Athwart what brow is that dark mantle thrown?

What form leans sadly o'er the white death-bed,
In mockery of monumental stone,

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The heavy heart heaving without a moan?

If it be He, who, gentlest of the wise,

Taught, soothed, loved, honoured the departed one,
Let me not vex, with inharmonious sighs,

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The silence of that heart's accepted sacrifice.

XXXVI

Our Adonais has drunk poison-oh!

What deaf and viperous murderer could crown
Life's early cup with such a draught of woe?
The nameless worm would now itself disown:

It felt, yet could escape, the magic tone

Whose prelude held all envy, hate, and wrong,
But what was howling in one breast alone,
Silent with expectation of the song,

Whose master's hand is cold, whose silver lyre unstrung.

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XXXVII

Live thou, whose infamy is not thy fame!
Live! fear no heavier chastisement from me,
Thou noteless blot on a remembered name!
But be thyself, and know thyself to be!
And ever at thy season be thou free

To spill the venom when thy fangs o'erflow:
Remorse and Self-contempt shall cling to thee;
Hot Shame shall burn upon thy secret brow,
And like a beaten hound tremble thou shalt-as now.

XXXVIII

Nor let us weep that our delight is fled

Far from these carrion kites that scream below; He wakes or sleeps with the enduring dead; Thou canst not soar where he is sitting nowDust to the dust! but the pure spirit shall flow Back to the burning fountain whence it came, A portion of the Eternal, which must glow Through time and change, unquenchably the same, Whilst thy cold embers choke the sordid hearth of shame.

XXXIX

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 within our living clay.

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XL

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.

XLI

He lives, he wakes-'tis Death is dead, not he;
Mourn not for Adonais.-Thou young Dawn,
Turn all thy dew to splendour, for from thee
The spirit thou lamentest is not gone;

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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
O'er the abandoned Earth, now leave it bare
Even to the joyous stars which smile on its despair!

XLII

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.

XLIII

He is a portion of the loveliness

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Which once he made more lovely: he doth bear
His part, while the one Spirit's plastic stress

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All new successions to the forms they wear;

Sweeps through the dull dense world, compelling there,

Torturing th' 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.

XLIV

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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

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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

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And move like winds of light on dark and stormy air.

XLV

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

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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.

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XLVI

And many more, whose names on Earth are dark,
But whose transmitted effluence cannot die

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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!'

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XLVII

Who mourns for Adonais? Oh, come forth,.
Fond wretch! and know thyself and him aright.

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Beyond all worlds, until its spacious might
Satiate the void circumference: then shrink
Even to a point within our day and night;

Clasp with thy panting soul the pendulous Earth;
As from a centre, dart thy spirit's light

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And keep thy heart light lest it make thee sink

When hope has kindled hope, and lured thee to the brink.

XLVIII

Or go to Rome, which is the sepulchre,

Oh, 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.

XLIX

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Go thou to Rome,-at once the Paradise,

The grave, the city, and the wilderness;

And where its wrecks like shattered mountains rise,

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And flowering weeds, and fragrant copses dress
The bones of Desolation's nakedness

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Where, like an infant's smile, over the dead

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A light of laughing flowers along the grass is spread;

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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

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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. 450

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