Keats with the kings of thought

"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,
O, not of him, but of our joy. 'tis naught
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,

Ard of the past are all that cannot pass away.

XLIX

Go thou to Rome,-at once the Paradise,

The

Rome:

The

grave, the city, and the wilderness; Protestant And where its wrecks like shattered moun- Cemetery

tains 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.

And

L

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 be-
neath,

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.

LI

Here pause these graves are all too young

as yet

To have outgrown the sorrow which con-
signed

Death the solution of all

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 forever 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 Shelley

near;

'Tis Adonais calls! oh, hasten thither,

No more let Life divide what Death can join

will join Keats

among the eternal

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 air 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 fro:n the trembling
throng

Whose sails were never to the tempest given;
The massy earth and spherèd 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.

unwilling bride

GINEVRA

An WILD, pale, and wonder-stricken, even as one
forth into the air and sun
Who staggers
From the dark chamber of a mortal fever,
Bewildered, and incapable, and ever

Fancying strange comments in her dizzy brain
Of usual shapes, till the familiar train
Of objects and of persons passed like things
Strange as a dreamer's mad imaginings,
Ginevra from the nuptial altar went;

The vows to which her lips had sworn assent 10
Rung in her brain still with a jarring din,
Deafening the lost intelligence within.

And so she moved under the bridal veil,
Which made the paleness of her cheek more pale,
And deepened the faint crimson of her mouth,
And darkened her dark locks, as moonlight
doth,-

And of the gold and jewels glittering there
She scarce felt conscious,--but the weary glare
Lay like a chaos of unwelcome light,

Vexing the sense with gorgeous undelight.
A moonbeam in the shadow of a cloud
Was less heavenly fair-her face was bowed,
And, as she passed, the diamonds in her hair
Were mirrored in the polished marble stair
Which led from the cathedral to the street;
And ever as she went her light fair feet
Erased these images.

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