ADONAIS. by Percy Bysshe Shelley: Summary, Meaning & Analysis

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, _5 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!” 2. Where wert thou, mighty Mother, when he lay, _10 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, _15 Rekindled all the fading melodies, With which, like flowers that mock the corse beneath, He had adorned and hid the coming bulk of Death. 3. Oh, weep for Adonais—he is dead! Wake, melancholy Mother, wake and weep! _20 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 _25 Will yet restore him to the vital air; Death feeds on his mute voice, and laughs at our despair. 4. Most musical of mourners, weep again! Lament anew, Urania!—He died, Who was the Sire of an immortal strain, _30 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 _35 Yet reigns o’er earth; the third among the sons of light. 5. 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 _40 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. _45 6. 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! _50 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. 7. To that high Capital, where kingly Death _55 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 _60 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. 8. He will awake no more, oh, never more!— Within the twilight chamber spreads apace _65 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 _70 So fair a prey, till darkness and the law Of change, shall o’er his sleep the mortal curtain draw. 9. Oh, weep for Adonais!—The quick Dreams, The passion-winged Ministers of thought, Who were his flocks, whom near the living streams _75 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, _80 They ne’er will gather strength, or find a home again. 10. And one with trembling hands clasps his cold head, And fans him with her moonlight wings, and cries; ‘Our love, our hope, our sorrow, is not dead; See, on the silken fringe of his faint eyes, _85 Like dew upon a sleeping flower, there lies A tear some Dream has loosened from his brain.’ Lost Angel of a ruined Paradise! She knew not ’twas her own; as with no stain She faded, like a cloud which had outwept its rain. _90 11. One from a lucid urn of starry dew Washed his light limbs as if embalming them; Another clipped her profuse locks, and threw The wreath upon him, like an anadem, Which frozen tears instead of pearls begem; _95 Another in her wilful grief would break Her bow and winged reeds, as if to stem A greater loss with one which was more weak; And dull the barbed fire against his frozen cheek. 12. Another Splendour on his mouth alit, _100 That mouth, whence it was wont to draw the breath Which gave it strength to pierce the guarded wit, And pass into the panting heart beneath With lightning and with music: the damp death Quenched its caress upon his icy lips; _105 And, as a dying meteor stains a wreath Of moonlight vapour, which the cold night clips, It flushed through his pale limbs, and passed to its eclipse. 13. And others came...Desires and Adorations, Winged Persuasions and veiled Destinies, _110 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, _115 Came in slow pomp;—the moving pomp might seem Like pageantry of mist on an autumnal stream. 14. All he had loved, and moulded into thought, From shape, and hue, and odour, and sweet sound, Lamented Adonais. Morning sought _120 Her eastern watch-tower, and her hair unbound, Wet with the tears which should adorn the ground, Dimmed the aereal eyes that kindle day; Afar the melancholy thunder moaned, Pale Ocean in unquiet slumber lay, _125 And the wild Winds flew round, sobbing in their dismay. 15. Lost Echo sits amid the voiceless mountains, And feeds her grief with his remembered lay, And will no more reply to winds or fountains, Or amorous birds perched on the young green spray, _130 Or herdsman’s horn, or bell at closing day; Since she can mimic not his lips, more dear Than those for whose disdain she pined away Into a shadow of all sounds:—a drear Murmur, between their songs, is all the woodmen hear. _135 16. Grief made the young Spring wild, and she threw down Her kindling buds, as if she Autumn were, Or they dead leaves; since her delight is flown, For whom should she have waked the sullen year? To Phoebus was not Hyacinth so dear _140 Nor to himself Narcissus, as to both Thou, Adonais: wan they stand and sere Amid the faint companions of their youth, With dew all turned to tears; odour, to sighing ruth. 17. Thy spirit’s sister, the lorn nightingale _145 Mourns not her mate with such melodious pain; Not so the eagle, who like thee could scale Heaven, and could nourish in the sun’s domain Her mighty youth with morning, doth complain, Soaring and screaming round her empty nest, _150 As Albion wails for thee: the curse of Cain Light on his head who pierced thy innocent breast, And scared the angel soul that was its earthly guest! 18. Ah, woe is me! Winter is come and gone, But grief returns with the revolving year; _155 The airs and streams renew their joyous tone; The ants, the bees, the swallows reappear; Fresh leaves and flowers deck the dead Seasons’ bier; The amorous birds now pair in every brake, And build their mossy homes in field and brere; _160 And the green lizard, and the golden snake, Like unimprisoned flames, out of their trance awake. 19. Through wood and stream and field and hill and Ocean A quickening life from the Earth’s heart has burst As it has ever done, with change and motion, _165 From the great morning of the world when first God dawned on Chaos; in its stream immersed, The lamps of Heaven flash with a softer light; All baser things pant with life’s sacred thirst; Diffuse themselves; and spend in love’s delight, _170 The beauty and the joy of their renewed might. 20. The leprous corpse, touched by this spirit tender, Exhales itself in flowers of gentle breath; Like incarnations of the stars, when splendour Is changed to fragrance, they illumine death _175 And mock the merry worm that wakes beneath; Nought we know, dies. Shall that alone which knows Be as a sword consumed before the sheath By sightless lightning?—the intense atom glows A moment, then is quenched in a most cold repose. _180 21. Alas! that all we loved of him should be, But for our grief, as if it had not been, And grief itself be mortal! Woe is me! Whence are we, and why are we? of what scene The actors or spectators? Great and mean _185 Meet massed in death, who lends what life must borrow. As long as skies are blue, and fields are green, Evening must usher night, night urge the morrow, Month follow month with woe, and year wake year to sorrow. 22. HE will awake no more, oh, never more! _190 ‘Wake thou,’ cried Misery, ‘childless Mother, rise Out of thy sleep, and slake, in thy heart’s core, A wound more fierce than his, with tears and sighs.’ And all the Dreams that watched Urania’s eyes, And all the Echoes whom their sister’s song _195 Had held in holy silence, cried: ‘Arise!’ Swift as a Thought by the snake Memory stung, From her ambrosial rest the fading Splendour sprung. 23. She rose like an autumnal Night, that springs Out of the East, and follows wild and drear _200 The golden Day, which, on eternal wings, Even as a ghost abandoning a bier, Had left the Earth a corpse. Sorrow and fear So struck, so roused, so rapped Urania; So saddened round her like an atmosphere _205 Of stormy mist; so swept her on her way Even to the mournful place where Adonais lay. 24. Out of her secret Paradise she sped, Through camps and cities rough with stone, and steel, And human hearts, which to her aery tread _210 Yielding not, wounded the invisible Palms of her tender feet where’er they fell: And barbed tongues, and thoughts more sharp than they, Rent the soft Form they never could repel, Whose sacred blood, like the young tears of May, _215 Paved with eternal flowers that undeserving way. 25. In the death-chamber for a moment Death, Shamed by the presence of that living Might, Blushed to annihilation, and the breath Revisited those lips, and Life’s pale light _220 Flashed through those limbs, so late her dear delight. ‘Leave me not wild and drear and comfortless, As silent lightning leaves the starless night! Leave me not!’ cried Urania: her distress Roused Death: Death rose and smiled, and met her vain caress. _225 26. ‘Stay yet awhile! speak to me once again; Kiss me, so long but as a kiss may live; And in my heartless breast and burning brain That word, that kiss, shall all thoughts else survive, With food of saddest memory kept alive, _230 Now thou art dead, as if it were a part Of thee, my Adonais! I would give All that I am to be as thou now art! But I am chained to Time, and cannot thence depart! 27. ‘O gentle child, beautiful as thou wert, _235 Why didst thou leave the trodden paths of men Too soon, and with weak hands though mighty heart Dare the unpastured dragon in his den? Defenceless as thou wert, oh, where was then Wisdom the mirrored shield, or scorn the spear? _240 Or hadst thou waited the full cycle, when Thy spirit should have filled its crescent sphere, The monsters of life’s waste had fled from thee like deer. 28. ‘The herded wolves, bold only to pursue; The obscene ravens, clamorous o’er the dead; _245 The vultures to the conqueror’s banner true Who feed where Desolation first has fed, And whose wings rain contagion;—how they fled, When, like Apollo, from his golden bow The Pythian of the age one arrow sped _250 And smiled!—The spoilers tempt no second blow, They fawn on the proud feet that spurn them lying low. 29. ‘The sun comes forth, and many reptiles spawn; He sets, and each ephemeral insect then Is gathered into death without a dawn, _255 And the immortal stars awake again; So is it in the world of living men: A godlike mind soars forth, in its delight Making earth bare and veiling heaven, and when It sinks, the swarms that dimmed or shared its light _260 Leave to its kindred lamps the spirit’s awful night.’ 30. Thus ceased she: and the mountain shepherds came, Their garlands sere, their magic mantles rent; The Pilgrim of Eternity, whose fame Over his living head like Heaven is bent, _265 An early but enduring monument, Came, veiling all the lightnings of his song In sorrow; from her wilds Ierne sent The sweetest lyrist of her saddest wrong, And Love taught Grief to fall like music from his tongue. _270 31. Midst others of less note, came one frail Form, A phantom among men; companionless As the last cloud of an expiring storm Whose thunder is its knell; he, as I guess, Had gazed on Nature’s naked loveliness, _275 Actaeon-like, and now he fled astray With feeble steps o’er the world’s wilderness, And his own thoughts, along that rugged way, Pursued, like raging hounds, their father and their prey. 32. A pardlike Spirit beautiful and swift— _280 A Love in desolation masked;—a Power Girt round with weakness;—it can scarce uplift The weight of the superincumbent hour; It is a dying lamp, a falling shower, A breaking billow;—even whilst we speak _285 Is it not broken? On the withering flower The killing sun smiles brightly: on a cheek The life can burn in blood, even while the heart may break. 33. His head was bound with pansies overblown, And faded violets, white, and pied, and blue; _290 And a light spear topped with a cypress cone, Round whose rude shaft dark ivy-tresses grew Yet dripping with the forest’s noonday dew, Vibrated, as the ever-beating heart Shook the weak hand that grasped it; of that crew _295 He came the last, neglected and apart; A herd-abandoned deer struck by the hunter’s dart. 34. All stood aloof, and at his partial moan Smiled through their tears; well knew that gentle band Who in another’s fate now wept his own, _300 As in the accents of an unknown land He sung new sorrow; sad Urania scanned The Stranger’s mien, and murmured: ‘Who art thou?’ He answered not, but with a sudden hand Made bare his branded and ensanguined brow, _305 Which was like Cain’s or Christ’s—oh! that it should be so! 35. What softer voice is hushed over the dead? Athwart what brow is that dark mantle thrown? What form leans sadly o’er the white death-bed, In mockery of monumental stone, _310 The heavy heart heaving without a moan? If it be He, who, gentlest of the wise, Taught, soothed, loved, honoured the departed one, Let me not vex, with inharmonious sighs, The silence of that heart’s accepted sacrifice. _315 36. Our Adonais has drunk poison—oh! What deaf and viperous murderer could crown Life’s early cup with such a draught of woe? The nameless worm would now itself disown: It felt, yet could escape, the magic tone _320 Whose prelude held all envy, hate and wrong, But what was howling in one breast alone, Silent with expectation of the song, Whose master’s hand is cold, whose silver lyre unstrung. 37. Live thou, whose infamy is not thy fame! _325 Live! fear no heavier chastisement from me, Thou noteless blot on a remembered name! But be thyself, and know thyself to be! And ever at thy season be thou free To spill the venom when thy fangs o’erflow; _330 Remorse and Self-contempt shall cling to thee; Hot Shame shall burn upon thy secret brow, And like a beaten hound tremble thou shalt—as now. 38. Nor let us weep that our delight is fled Far from these carrion kites that scream below; _335 He wakes or sleeps with the enduring dead; Thou canst not soar where he is sitting now— Dust to the dust! but the pure spirit shall flow Back to the burning fountain whence it came, A portion of the Eternal, which must glow _340 Through time and change, unquenchably the same, Whilst thy cold embers choke the sordid hearth of shame. 39. Peace, peace! he is not dead, he doth not sleep— He hath awakened from the dream of life— ’Tis we, who lost in stormy visions, keep _345 With phantoms an unprofitable strife, And in mad trance, strike with our spirit’s knife Invulnerable nothings.—WE decay Like corpses in a charnel; fear and grief Convulse us and consume us day by day, _350 And cold hopes swarm like worms within our living clay. 40. 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; _355 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. _360 41. He lives, he wakes—’tis Death is dead, not he; Mourn not for Adonais.—Thou young Dawn, Turn all thy dew to splendour, for from thee The spirit thou lamentest is not gone; Ye caverns and ye forests, cease to moan! _365 Cease, ye faint flowers and fountains, and thou Air, Which like a mourning veil thy scarf hadst thrown O’er the abandoned Earth, now leave it bare Even to the joyous stars which smile on its despair! 42. He is made one with Nature: there is heard _370 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, Spreading itself where’er that Power may move _375 Which has withdrawn his being to its own; Which wields the world with never-wearied love, Sustains it from beneath, and kindles it above. 43. He is a portion of the loveliness Which once he made more lovely: he doth bear _380 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 To its own likeness, as each mass may bear; _385 And bursting in its beauty and its might From trees and beasts and men into the Heaven’s light. 44. The splendours of the firmament of time May be eclipsed, but are extinguished not; Like stars to their appointed height they climb, _390 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 Shall be its earthly doom, the dead live there _395 And move like winds of light on dark and stormy air. 45. The inheritors of unfulfilled renown Rose from their thrones, built beyond mortal thought, Far in the Unapparent. Chatterton Rose pale,—his solemn agony had not _400 Yet faded from him; Sidney, as he fought And as he fell and as he lived and loved Sublimely mild, a Spirit without spot, Arose; and Lucan, by his death approved: Oblivion as they rose shrank like a thing reproved. _405 46. And many more, whose names on Earth are dark, But whose transmitted effluence cannot die So long as fire outlives the parent spark, Rose, robed in dazzling immortality. ‘Thou art become as one of us,’ they cry, _410 ‘It was for thee yon kingless sphere has long Swung blind in unascended majesty, Silent alone amid a Heaven of Song. Assume thy winged throne, thou Vesper of our throng!’ 47. Who mourns for Adonais? Oh, come forth, _415 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 _420 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. 48. Or go to Rome, which is the sepulchre, Oh, not of him, but of our joy: ’tis nought _425 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 _430 Who waged contention with their time’s decay, And of the past are all that cannot pass away. 49. Go thou to Rome,—at once the Paradise, The grave, the city, and the wilderness; And where its wrecks like shattered mountains rise, _435 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 _440 A light of laughing flowers along the grass is spread; 50. 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 _445 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. _450 51. 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? 52. 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. 53. 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, 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. 54. 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. 55. 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. _495 NOTES: _49 true-love]true love editions 1821, 1839. _72 Of change, etc. so editions 1829 (Galignani), 1839; Of mortal change, shall fill the grave which is her maw edition 1821. _81 or edition 1821; nor edition 1839. _105 his edition 1821; its edition 1839. _126 round edition 1821; around edition 1839. _143 faint companions edition 1839; drooping comrades edition 1821. _204 See Editor’s Note. _252 lying low edition 1839; as they go edition 1821.

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