XLVI.

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 wingèd throne, thou Vesper of our throng!"

XLVII.

Who mourns for Adonais? oh, come forth, Fond wretch, and know thyself and him aright. Clasp with thy panting soul the pendulous earth; As from a centre, dart thy spirit's light Beyond all worlds, until its spacious might Satiate the void circumference: then shrink 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.

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 times' decay,
And of the past are all that cannot pass away.

XLIX.

Go thou to Rome at once the paradise,

The grave, the city, and the wilderness:

And where its wrecks like shattered mountains rise, And flowering weeds and fragrant copses dress

The bones of Desolation's nakedness,

Pass, till the Spirit of the spot shall lead
Thy footsteps to a slope of green access,

Where, like an infant's smile, over the dead
A light of laughing flowers along the grass is spread,

L.

And grey 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.

LI.

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 Thine own well full, if thou returnest home, 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?

LII.

The One remains, the many change and pass;
Heaven's light for ever shines, earth's shadows fly;
Life, like a dome of many-coloured glass,
Stains the white radiance of eternity,

Until Death tramples it to fragments.

Die,

If thou wouldst be with that which thou dost seek! Follow where all is fled! - Rome's azure sky, Flowers, ruins, statues, music, words are weak The glory they transfuse with fitting truth to speak.

LIII.

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.

LIV.

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 wove
By man and beast and earth and sky and sea,
Burns bright or dim, as each are mirrors of
The fire for which all thirst, now beams on me,
Consuming the last clouds of cold mortality.

LV.

The breath whose might I have invoked in song
Descends on me; my spirit's bark is driven
Far from the shore, far from the trembling throng
Whose sails were never to the tempest given;
The massy earth and sphered skies are riven!

I am borne darkly, fearfully afar!

Whilst, burning through the inmost veil of heaven, The soul of Adonais, like a star,

Beacons from the abode where the Eternal are.

NOTES.

THE AUTHOR.

Percy Bysshe Shelley was the son of Sir Timothy Shelley, and was born at Field Place, Sussex, August 4, 1792. At the age of eighteen he was sent to Oxford University, but having written and published a pamphlet in defence of atheism, he was expelled before completing half his course. In 1814 he wrote Queen Mab, his first long poem. This was followed in 1815 by Alastor, or the Spirit of Solitude, and in 1817 by The Revolt of Islam. In 1818 he went to Italy and resided successively in Rome, Venice, and Pisa. There he produced the most important of his works the two dramas, Prometheus Unbound and The Cenci; also The Witch of Atlas, Epipsychidion, Adonais, and Hellas. On the 8th of April, 1822, he was drowned while attempting to cross the Gulf of Spezia in a boat. In compliance with the quarantine laws of Italy, his body was burned on the shore. His ashes were deposited in the Protestant cemetery at Rome, near the grave of Keats.

THE POEM.

Adonais was written at Pisa, Italy, in May, 1821. "There is much in Adonais," says Mrs. Shelley," which seems now more applicable to Shelley himself than to the young and gifted poet whom he mourned. The poetic view he takes of death, and the lofty scorn he displays towards his calum

niators, are as a prophecy on his own destiny when received among immortal names, and the poisonous breath of critics has vanished into emptiness before the fame he inherits."

"Adonais must rank among the most perfect of Shelley's poems for symmetry of design, united with rich elaboration of details," says Todhunter. "He has here done what Keats himself counselled him to do, — filled every rift of his subject with ore."

“It presents Shelley's qualities in a form of even and sustained beauty, brought within the sphere of the dullest apprehensions. Shelley dwells upon the art of the poem; and this, perhaps, is what at first sight will strike the student most."

R. H. Hutton describes the poem as “a shimmer of beautiful regret, full of arbitrary though harmonious and delicate fancies."

There is reason to believe that Shelley regarded Adonais as his masterpiece. "I confess," says he, "I should be surprised if that poem were born to an oblivion." "The Adonais," he writes to a friend, "is the least imperfect of my compositions." To another he says, "It is a highly wrought piece of art, and perhaps better, in point of composition, than anything I have written. To another, "It is absurd in any review to

criticise Adonais, and still more to pretend that the verses are bad." And again, "I know what to think of Adonais, but what to think of those who confound it with the many bad poems of the day, I know not."

THE TITLE.

Adonais. This name was probably suggested to Shelley by Bion's Lament for Adonis, of which it is in some parts an imitation. "Dr. Furnivall has suggested to me," says Rossetti, "that Adonais is Shelley's variant of Adonias, the women's yearly mourning for Adonis" (see note I, page 30).

̓Αστὴρ πρὶν κ. τ. λ. This distich from Plato is elsewhere translated by Shelley in the following lines To Stella:

John Keats died in February, 1821, - the day being given differently by different authors, as the 21st, 23d, 24th, or 27th,

- and not on the

27th of December, 1820, as stated in Shelley's Preface. He was not what