XLVII.

Who mourns for Adonais? oh come forth Fond wretch! and know thyself and him aright. Clasp with thy panting soul the pendulous Earth; As from a centre, dart thy spirit's light Beyond all worlds, until its spacious might Satiate the void circumference; then shrink Even to a point within our day and night; And keep thy heart light lest it make thee sink When hope has kindled hope, and lured thee to the brink.

XLVIII.

Or go to Rome, which is the sepulchre

O, not of him, but of our joy: 'tis nought That ages, empires, and religions there Lie buried in the ravage they have wrought; For such as he can lend,—they borrow not Glory from those who made the world their prey; And he is gathered to the kings of thought Who waged contention with their time's decay, And of the past are all that cannot pass away.

XLIX.

Go thou to Rome,-at once the Paradise,

The grave, the city, and the wilderness;

And where its wrecks like shattered mountains rise, And flowering weeds, and fragrant copses dress

The bones of Desolation's nakedness

Pass, till the Spirit of the spot shall lead

Thy footsteps to a slope of green access

Where, like an infant's smile, over the dead,

A light of laughing flowers along the grass is spread.

L.

And gray walls moulder round, on which dull Time Feeds, like slow fire upon a hoary brand;

And one keen pyramid with wedge sublime,
Pavilioning the dust of him who planned
This refuge for his memory, doth stand

Like flame transformed to marble; and beneath,
A field is spread, on which a newer band

Have pitched in Heaven's smile their camp of death Welcoming him we lose with scarce extinguished breath.

LI.

Here pause: these graves are all too young as yet
To have outgrown the sorrow which consigned-
Its charge to each; and if the seal is set,
Here, on one fountain of a mourning mind,
Break it not thou! too surely shalt thou find
Thine own well full, if thou returnest home,
Of tears and gall. From the world's bitter wind
Seek shelter in the shadow of the tomb.
What Adonais is, why fear we to become?

LII.

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,
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

The glory they transfuse with fitting truth to speak.

LIII.

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 past from the revolving year,

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.

LIV.

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
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.

LV.

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 spherèd 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.

II.

SHELLEY, KEATS, AND ADONAIS:

EXTRACTS FROM SHELLEY'S LETTERS.

IN view of the great interest which attaches to the relative attitudes of two such men as Shelley and Keats, and to everything bearing upon such a poem as Adonais, it seems desirable to bring together here the many passages in Shelley's letters in which Keats and the Elegy on his death find mention. The following may not be all the utterances of Shelley on this subject; but I do not think there is much omitted; and it is worth noticing how tenaciously good an opinion the poet retained, in his modest way, of this particular work.

There is an unpublished letter written by Shelley from Italy to Mr. Ollier, belonging to August 1819, wherein he acknowledges the receipt of a parcel of books "which seems to have been a year on its voyage." He says “I have only had time to look at Lamb's works, but Altham and Endymion are both before me." In a postscript he says "Pray send a copy of my Poem or anything which I may hereafter publish to Mr. Keats with my best regards." He had added “If I should say when I have read it that I admire his Endymion he probably . . ." but this is cancelled in the manuscript. It was not long before he had read it. In a further letter from Shelley to Mr. Ollier, dated "Leghorn September 6th, 1819" (Shelley Memorials, page 119), he says

"I have read your Altham, and Keats's poem and

Lamb's works. For the second in this list much praise is due to me for having read it, the author's intention appearing to be that no person should possibly get to the end of it. Yet it is full of some of the highest and the finest gleams of poetry; indeed, everything seems to be viewed by the mind of a poet which is described in it. I think, if he had printed about fifty pages of fragments from it, I should have been led to admire Keats as a poet more than I ought, of which there is now no danger." In the same letter Shelley requested that, whenever he published, copies of his books might be sent to certain people, from him; and among these was Keats.

Writing to Thomas Love Peacock from Pisa early in November 1820, probably no great while after the receipt of the Lamia volume, Shelley says (Prose Works, Volume IV, page 191)

"Among the modern things which have reached me is a volume of poems by Keats: in other respects insignificant enough, but containing the fragment of a poem called Hyperion. I dare say you have not time to read it; but it is certainly an astonishing piece of writing, and gives me a conception of Keats which I confess I had not before."

It should be noted for what it may be worth that Medwin in the second volume of his Life of Shelley (page 109) says

"I will state what Shelley's opinions were of his [Keats's] poetry. Those he entertained respecting Endymion, are already before the public. He often lamented that, under the adoption of false canons of taste, he spoiled by their affectation his finest passages. But in the volume that Keats published in 1820, he perceived in every one of these productions a marked and