Selected Poetry and Prose. Percy Bysshe Shelley

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 Reverend 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 by 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!

      ADONAIS.

      I

      I weep for Adonais—he is dead!

      O, 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.

      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 nipped 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,