The Earth. I spin beneath my pyramid of night, Which points into the heavens dreaming delight, Murmuring victorious joy in my enchanted sleep; As a youth lull'd in love-dreams faintly sighing, Under the shadow of his beauty lying, Which round his rest a watch of light and warmth doth keep. The Moon. As in the soft and sweet eclipse, When soul meets soul on lovers' lips, High hearts are calm, and brightest eyes are dull ; So, when thy shadow falls on me, Then am I mute and still, by thee Thou art speeding round the sun, Like a Mænad, round the cup In the weird Cadmæan forest. Of thy soul from hungry space, As a lover, or cameleon Grows like what it looks upon ; Gazes on the azure sky Until its hue grows like what it beholds As a grey and watery mist Glows like solid amethyst Athwart the western mountain it enfolds When the sunset sleeps Upon its snow. Id. IV. THE ELEGY OF ELEGIES. I WEEP for ADONAIS-he is dead! Oh, weep for Adonais! though our tears Forget the Past, his fame and fate shall be 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 enamour'd breath, With which, like flowers that mock the corse beneath, He had adorn'd and hid the coming bulk of death. Oh, weep for Adonais-he is dead! Wake, melancholy Mother, wake and weep! Death feeds on his mute voice, and laughs at our despair. Most musical of mourners, weep again! Who was the sire of an immortal strain, Into the gulf of death; but his clear sprite Most musical of mourners, weep anew! Not all to that bright station dared to climb; F F 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. But now, thy youngest, dearest one, has perish'd, Thy extreme hope, the loveliest and the last, To that high Capital, where kingly Death He will awake no more, oh, never more! Of change shall o'er his sleep the mortal curtain draw. And others came,-Desires and Adorations, Splendours, and Glooms, and glimmering Incarnations Of hopes and fears, and twilight Phantasies, And Sorrow, with her family of Sighs, And Pleasure, blind with tears, led by the gleam Of her own dying smile instead of eyes, Came in slow pomp-the moving pomp might seem Like pageantry of mist on an autumnal stream. All he had loved, and moulded into thought, Her eastern watch-tower, and, her hair unbound, Afar the melancholy thunder moan'd, Pale Ocean in unquiet slumber lay, And the wild winds flew around, sobbing in their dismay. Lost Echo sits amid the voiceless mountains, Since she can mimic not his lips, more dear -a drear Than those for whose disdain they pined away Into a shadow of all sounds *. Murmur, between their songs, is all the woodmen hear. * See the beautiful story of the Nymph Echo and her fatal love for Narcissus, whose voice she is condemned by the vengeance of Juno to vainly repeat while she madly pursues him, until she pines away and is metamorphosed into the shadow of all sounds.' (Ovid. Metam. iii. 6.) |