With thrilling tone into the voiceless heart,
Harmonising silence without a sound.
Our breath shall intermix, our bosoms bound,
And our veins beat together; and our lips,
With other eloquence than words, eclipse

The soul that burns between them; and the wells
Which boil under our being's inmost cells,
The fountains of our deepest life, shall be
Confused in passion's golden purity,

As mountain-springs under the morning Sun.
We shall become the same, we shall be one
Spirit within two frames, oh! wherefore two?
One passion in twin-hearts, which grows and grew
Till like two meteors of expanding flame,
Those spheres instinct with it become the same,
Touch, mingle, are transfigured; ever still
Burning, yet ever inconsumable:

In one another's substance finding food,
Like flames too pure and light and unimbued
To nourish their bright lives with baser prey,
Which point to Heaven and cannot pass away:
One hope within two wills, one will beneath
Two overshadowing minds, one life, one death,
One Heaven, one Hell, one immortality,

And one annihilation. Woe is me!

The winged words on which my soul would pierce Into the height of love's rare Universe,

Are chains of lead around its flight of fire.

I pant, I sink, I tremble, I expire!

Weak verses, go, kneel at your Sovereign's feet, And say "We are the masters of thy slave; What wouldest thou with us and ours and thine?" Then call your sisters from Oblivion's cave, All singing loud: "Love's very pain is sweet, But its reward is in the world divine, Which, if not here, it builds beyond the grave." So shall ye live when I am there. Then haste Over the hearts of men, until ye meet Marina, Vanna, Primus, and the rest,

And bid them love each other, and be blest:

And leave the troop which errs, and which reproves, And come and be my guest,-for I am Love's.

ADONAIS;

AN ELEGY ON THE DEATH OF JOHN KEATS,

AUTHOR OF ENDYMION, HYPERION, ETC.

Αστὴς πρὶν μὲν ἔλαμπες ἐνὶ ζώοισιν ἐῶος.
Νῦν δὲ θανών, λάμπες έσπερος ἐν φθιμένοις.

PLATO.

PREFACE.

Φάρμακον ἦλθε, Βίων, ποτὶ τὸν στόμα, φάρμακον εἶδες·
Πῶς του τοῖς χείλεσσι ποτέδραμε, κοὐκ ἐγλυκάνθη;
Τίς δὲ βροτὸς τοσσοῦτον ἀνάμενος, ή κεράσαι του
Η δοῦναι λαλέοντι τὸ φάρμακον ; ἔκφυγεν ᾠδάν.

MOSCHUS, EPITAPH. BION.

It is my intention to subjoin to the London edition of this poem, a criticism upon the claims of its lamented object to be classed among the writers of the highest genius who have adorned our age. My known repugnance to the narrow principles of taste on which several of his earlier compositions were modelled, prove at least that I am an impartial judge. I consider the fragment of "Hyperion," as second to nothing that was ever produced by a writer of the same years.

John Keats died at Rome, of a consumption, in his twentyfourth year, on the 27th of December, 1820, and was buried in the romantic and lonely cemetery of the protestants in that city, under the pyramid which is the tomb of Cestius, and the massy walls and towers, now mouldering and desolate, which formed the circuit of ancient Rome. The cemetery is an open space among the ruins, covered in winter with violets and daisies. It might make one in love with death, to think that one should be buried in so sweet a place.

The genius of the lamented person to whose memory I have dedicated these unworthy verses, was not less delicate and fragile than it was beautiful; and where canker-worms abound, what wonder, if its young flower was blighted in the bud? The savage criticism on his " Endymion," which appeared in the Quarterly Review, produced the most violent effect on his susceptible mind; the agitation thus originated ended in the rupture of a blood-vessel in the lungs; a rapid consumption ensued; and the succeeding acknowledgments from more candid

critics, of the true greatness of his powers, were ineffectual to heal the wound thus wantonly inflicted.

It may be well said, that these wretched men know not what they do. They scatter their insults and their slanders without heed as to whether the poisoned shaft lights on a heart made callous by many blows, or one, like Keats's, composed of more penetrable stuff. One of their associates is, to my knowledge, a most base and unprincipled calumniator. As to Endymion," was it a poem, whatever might be its defects, to be treated contemptuously by those who had celebrated with various degrees of complacency and panegyric, "Paris," and "Woman," and a "Syrian Tale," and Mrs. Lefanu, and Mr. Barret, and Mr. Howard Payne, and a long list of the illustrious obscure? Are these the men, who in their venal good-nature, presumed to draw a parallel between the Rev. Mr. Milman and Lord Byron ? What gnat did they strain at here, after having swallowed all those camels? Against what woman taken in adultery dares the foremost of these literary prostitutes to cast his opprobrious stone? Miserable man! you, one of the meanest, have wantonly defaced one of the noblest specimens of the workmanship of God. Nor shall it be your excuse, that, murderer as you are, you have spoken daggers, but used none.

The circumstances of the closing scene of poor Keats's life were not made known to me until the Elegy was ready for the press. I am given to understand that the wound which his sensitive spirit had received from the criticism of "Endymion" was exasperated at the bitter sense of unrequited benefits; the poor fellow seems to have been hooted from the stage of life, no less by those on whom he had wasted the promise of his genius, than those on whom he had lavished his fortune and his care. He was accompanied to Rome, and attended in his last illness by Mr. Severn, a young artist of the highest promise, who, I have been informed, "almost risked his own life, and sacrificed every prospect, to unwearied attendance upon his dying friend." Had I known these circumstances before the completion of my poem, I should have been tempted to add my feeble tribute of applause to the more solid recompense which the virtuous man finds in the recollection of his own motives. Mr. Severn can dispense with a reward from "such stuff as dreams are made of." His conduct is a golden augury of the success of his future career may the unextinguished Spirit of his illustrious friend animate the creations of his pencil, and plead against Oblivion for his name!

I WEEP for ADONAIS-he is dead!

Oh, weep for Adonais! though our tears
Thaw not the frost which binds so dear a head!
And thou, sad Hour, selected from all years

To mourn our loss, rouse thy obscure compeers,
And teach them thine own sorrow; say: with me
Died Adonais; till the Future dares

Forget the Past, his fate and fame shall be
An echo and a light unto eternity!

II.

Where wert thou, mighty Mother, when he lay,
When thy son lay, pierced by the shaft which flies
In darkness? where was lorn Urania

When Adonais died? With veiled eyes,

'Mid listening Echoes, in her Paradise

She sate, while one, with soft enamoured breath,
Rekindled all the fading melodies,

With which, like flowers that mock the corse beneath, He had adorned and hid the coming bulk of death.

III.

Oh, weep for Adonais-he is dead!

Wake, melancholy Mother, wake and weep!

Yet wherefore? Quench within their burning bed
Thy fiery tears, and let thy loud heart keep,
Like his, a mute and uncomplaining sleep;

For he is gone, where all things wise and fair
Descend:-oh, dream not that the amorous Deep
Will yet restore him to the vital air;

Death feeds on his mute voice, and laughs at our despair.

IV.

Most musical of mourners, weep again!

Lament anew, Urania !-He died,

Who was the Sire of an immortal strain,

Blind, old, and lonely, when his country's pride

The priest, the slave, and the liberticide,

Trampled and mocked with many a loathed rite
Of lust and blood; he went, unterrified,
Into the gulf of death; but his clear Sprite

Yet reigns o'er earth; the third among the sons of light.

ADONAIS.

V.

Most musical of mourners, weep anew!

Not all to that bright station dared to climb:
And happier they their happiness who knew,
Whose tapers yet burn through that night of time
In which suns perished; others more sublime,
Struck by the envious wrath of man or God,
Have sunk, extinct in their refulgent prime;
And some yet live, treading the thorny road,

Which leads, through toil and hate, to Fame's serene abode.

VI.

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;
Most musical of mourners, weep anew!
Thy extreme hope, the loveliest and the last,
The bloom, whose petals nipt before they blew
Died on the promise of the fruit, is waste;
The broken lily lies-the storm is overpast.

VII.

To that high Capital, where kingly Death
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;
Awake him not! surely he takes his fill
Of deep and liquid rest, forgetful of all ill.

VIII.

He will awake no more, oh, never more!
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
Soothe her pale rage, nor dares she to deface
So fair a prey, till darkness and the law

Of change, shall o'er his sleep the mortal curtain draw.

IX.

Oh, weep for Adonais !-The quick Dreams,

The passion-winged Ministers of thought,

Who were his flocks, whom near the living streams

Of his young spirit he fed, and whom he taught

The love which was its music, wander not,

Wander no more, from kindling brain to brain,

But droop there, whence they sprung; and mourn their lot
Round the cold heart, where, after their sweet pain,

'They ne'er will gather strength, nor find a home again.