James and Mary Ford, eds. Every Day in the Year. 1902.
February 23An Elegy on the Death of John Keats
By Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822)From “Adonais”
I
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!
He has outsoared the shadow of our night;
Envy and calumny, and hate and pain,
And that unrest which men miscall delight,
Can touch him not and torture not again;
From the contagion of the world’s slow stain
He is secure, and now can never mourn
A heart grown cold, a head grown gray in vain;
Nor, when the spirit’s self has ceased to burn,
With sparkless ashes load an unlamented urn.
The breath whose might I have invoked in song
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 sphered 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.