| HE is made one with Nature: there is heard | |
| His voice in all her music, from the moan | |
| Of thunder, to the song of night’s sweet bird; | |
| He is a presence to be felt and known | |
| In darkness and in light, from herb and stone, | 5 |
| Spreading itself where’er that Power may move | |
| Which has withdrawn his being to its own; | |
| Which wields the world with never-wearied love, | |
| Sustains it from beneath, and kindles it above. | |
| |
| He is a portion of the loveliness | 10 |
| Which once he made more lovely: he doth bear | |
| His part, while the one Spirit’s plastic stress | |
| Sweeps through the dull dense world, compelling there, | |
| All new successions to the forms they wear; | |
| Torturing th’ unwilling dross that checks its flight | 15 |
| To its own likeness, as each mass may bear; | |
| And bursting in its beauty and its might | |
| From trees and beasts and men into the Heaven’s light. | |
| |
| The splendours of the firmament of time | |
| May be eclipsed, but are extinguished not; | 20 |
| Like stars to their appointed height they climb | |
| And death is a low mist which cannot blot | |
| The brightness it may veil. When lofty thought | |
| Lifts a young heart above its mortal lair, | |
| And love and life contend in it, for what | 25 |
| Shall be its earthly doom, the dead live there | |
| And move like winds of light on dark and stormy air. | |
| |
| 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, | 30 |
| 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 | 35 |
| The glory they transfuse with fitting truth to speak. | |
| |
| 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 passed from the revolving year, | 40 |
| 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 near: | |
| ’Tis Adonais calls! oh, hasten thither, | |
| No more let Life divide what Death can join together. | 45 |
| |
| 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 | 50 |
| 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. | |
| |
| The breath whose might I have invoked in song | 55 |
| Descends on me; my spirit’s bark is driven, | |
| Far from the shore, far from 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; | 60 |
| Whilst, burning through the inmost veil of Heaven, | |
| The soul of Adonais, like a star, | |
| Beacons from the abode where the Eternal are. | |
