That you are faultless - would to God they

were

Who taunt me with your love! I then should

wear

These heavy chains of life with a light spirit,
And would to God I were, or even as near it
As you, dear heart. Alas! what are we?
Clouds

Driven by the wind in warring multitudes,
Which rain into the bosom of the earth,

And rise again, and in our death and birth,

And through our restless life, take as from heaven

Hues which are not our own, but which are

given,

And then withdrawn, and with inconstant glance Flash from the spirit to the countenance. There is a Power, a Love, a Joy, a God Which makes in mortal hearts its brief abode, A Pythian exhalation, which inspires

Love, only love—a wind which o'er the wires Of the soul's giant harp

There is a mood which language faints beneath;

You feel it striding, as Almighty Death
His bloodless steed.

And what is that most brief and bright delight Which rushes through the touch and through the sight,

And stands before the spirit's inmost throne,
A naked Seraph? None hath ever known.
Its birth is darkness, and its growth desire;
Untamable and fleet and fierce as fire,
Not to be touched but to be felt alone,
It fills the world with glory-and is gone.

It floats with rainbow pinions o'er the stream Of life, which flows, like a

Into the light of morning, to the grave

As to an ocean.

dream

What is that joy which serene infancy Perceives not, as the hours content them by, Each in a chain of blossoms, yet enjoys

The shapes of this new world, in giant toys
Wrought by the busy

ever new?

Remembrance borrows Fancy's glass, to show These forms more

sincere

Than now they are, than then, perhaps, they

were.

When everything familiar seemed to be

Wonderful, and the immortality

Of this great world, which all things must inherit,

Was felt as one with the awakening spirit,
Unconscious of itself, and of the strange
Distinctions which in its proceeding change
It feels and knows, and mourns as if each were
A desolation.

Were it not a sweet refuge, Emily,

For all those exiles from the dull insane

Who vex this pleasant world with pride and

pain,

For all that band of sister-spirits known

To one another by a voiceless tone?

Adonais

An Elegy on the Death of John Keats, Author of Endymion, Hyperion, etc.

«Αστὴρ πρὶν μὲν ἔλαμπες ἐνὶ ζωοῖσιν Εφος·

Νῦν δὲ θανών λάμπεις Εσπερος ἐν φθιμένοις.”

PLATO.