The beauty and the joy of their renewed might.
20
The leprous corpse touched by this spirit tender
Exhales itself in flowers of gentle breath;
Like incarnations of the stars, when splendour 175 Is changed to fragrance, they illumine death
And mock the merry worm that wakes beneath;
Nought we know, dies. Shall that alone which knows
Be as a sword consumed before the sheath1
By sightless0 lightning??th' intense atom glows invisible i8o A moment, then is quenched in a most cold repose.
21
Alas! that all we loved of him should be,
But for our grief, as if it had not been,
And grief itself be mortal! Woe is me!
Whence are we, and why are we? of what scene 185 The actors or spectators? Great and mean0 low
Meet massed in death, who lends what life must borrow.
7. To whom Keats had written 'Ode to a Night-is burned off and the film cleared from his eyes. ingale.' 9. The reviewer of Endymion. 8. In the legend the aged eagle, to renew his I. The 'sword' is the mind that knows; the youth, flies toward the sun until his old plumage 'sheath' is its vehicle, the material body.
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82 8 / PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY
As long as skies are blue, and fields are green, Evening must usher night, night urge the morrow, Month follow month with woe, and year wake year to sorrow.
22
190 He will awake no more, oh, never more! 'Wake thou,' cried Misery, 'childless Mother, rise Out of thy sleep, and slake,? in thy heart's core, assuage A wound more fierce than his with tears and sighs.' And all the Dreams that watched Urania's eyes,
195 And all the Echoes whom their sister's song2 Had held in holy silence, cried: 'Arise!' Swift as a Thought by the snake Memory stung,
From her ambrosial rest the fading Splendour0 sprung. Urania
23 She rose like an autumnal Night, that springs
200 Out of the East, and follows wild and drear The golden Day, which, on eternal wings, Even as a ghost abandoning a bier, Had left the Earth a corpse. Sorrow and fear So struck, so roused, so rapt Urania;
205 So saddened round her like an atmosphere Of stormy mist; so swept her on her way Even to the mournful place where Adonais lay.
24
Out of her secret Paradise she sped, Through camps and cities rough with stone, and steel,
210 And human hearts, which to her aery tread Yielding not, wounded the invisible Palms of her tender feet where'er they fell: And barbed tongues, and thoughts more sharp than they Rent0 the soft Form they never could repel, tore
215 Whose sacred blood, like the young tears of May, Paved with eternal flowers that undeserving way.
25 In the death chamber for a moment Death Shamed by the presence of that living Might Blushed to annihilation, and the breath
220 Revisited those lips, and life's pale light Flashed through those limbs, so late her dear delight. 'Leave me not wild and drear and comfortless, As silent lightning leaves the starless night! Leave me not!' cried Urania: her distress
225 Roused Death: Death rose and smiled, and met her vain caress.
26
'Stay yet awhile! speak to me once again; Kiss me, so long but as a kiss may live; And in my heartless' breast and burning brain
2. I.e., the Echo in line 127. 3. Because her heart had been given to Adonais.
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ADONAIS / 829
That word, that kiss shall all thoughts else survive
230 With food of saddest memory kept alive, Now thou art dead, as if it were a part Of thee, my Adonais! I would give All that I am to be as thou now art!
But I am chained to Time, and cannot thence depart!
