Trampled and mocked with many a loathed rite
Of lust and blood; he went, unterrified,
Into the gulph of death; but his clear Sprite0 spirit
Yet reigns o'er earth; the third among the sons of light.7
5
Most musical of mourners, weep anew!
Not all to that bright station dared to climb;
And happier they their happiness who knew,
Whose tapers0 yet burn through that night of time candles
In which suns perished; others more sublime,
Struck by the envious wrath of man or God,
Have sunk, extinct in their refulgent0 prime; radiant
And some yet live, treading the thorny road,
Which leads, through toil and hate, to Fame's serene abode.
6
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;8
Most musical of mourners, weep anew!
Thy extreme9 hope, the loveliest and the last,
The bloom, whose petals nipt before they blew0 bloomed
Died on the promise of the fruit, is waste;
The broken lily lies?the storm is overpast.
7
To that high Capital,0 where kingly Death Rome
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;
6. Milton, regarded as precursor of the great ton was the third great epic poet, along with poetic tradition in which Keats wrote. He had Homer and Dante. The stanza following describes adopted Urania as the muse of Paradise Lost. Lines the lot of other poets, up to Shelley's own time. 31?35 describe Milton's life during the restoration 8. An allusion to an incident in Keats's Isabella. of the Stuart monarchy. 9. Last, as well as highest. 7. In 'A Defence of Poetry,' Shelley says that Mil
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ADONAIS / 825
Awake him not! surely he takes his fill
Of deep and liquid rest, forgetful of all ill.
8
He will awake no more, oh, never more!?
65 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
70 Soothe her pale rage, nor dares she to deface
So fair a prey, till darkness, and the law
Of change, shall 'oer his sleep the mortal curtain draw. 9
