XLVIII. Or go to Rome, which is the sepulchre, 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 grey walls moulder round, on which dull Time And one keen pyramid with wedge sublime, Like flame transformed to marble; and beneath 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; 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? 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 Whilst burning through the inmost veil of Heaven, Beacons from the abode where the Eternal are. TO NIGHT. SWIFTLY walk over the western wave, Out of the misty eastern cave, Where all the long and lone daylight, Wrap thy form in a mantle grey, Blind with thine hair the eyes of day, Then wander o'er city, and sea, and land, When I arose and saw the dawn, I sighed for thee; When light rode high, and the dew was gone, And the weary Day turned to his rest, Thy brother Death came, and cried, Thy sweet child Sleep, the filmy-eyed, Shall I nestle near thy side? Death will come when thou art dead, Sleep will come when thou art fled; Of neither would I ask the boon FROM THE ARABIC. AN IMITATION. My faint spirit was sitting in the light It panted for thee like the hind at noon Thy barb, whose hoofs outspeed the tempest's flight, My heart, for my weak feet were weary soon, Ah! fleeter far than fleetest storm or steed, The heart which tender thought clothes like a dove In the battle, in the darkness, in the need, Shall mine cling to thee, Nor claim one smile for all the comfort, love, |