more a man drinketh of the world, the more it! intoxicateth; and age doth profit rather in the powers of understanding than in the virtues of the will and affections.

ADONAIS;

AN ELEGY ON THE DEATH OF JOHN KEATS. BY PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY.

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."

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.

O! 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;

But now thy youngest, dearest one has perished, The nursling of thy widowhood, who grew, Like a pale flower by some sad maiden cherishel, 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, nipp'd before they blew, Died on the promise of the fruit, is waste; The broken lily lies-the storm is overpast.

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.

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.

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 notWander no more from kindling brain to brain,

But droop there whence they sprung; and mourn their lot

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 mock'd 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.

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.

And one with trembling hand 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,
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.

One from a lucid urn of starry dew

Washed his light limbs, as if embalming them; Another clipp'd her profuse locks, and threw The wreath upon him, like an anadem Which frozen tears instead of pearls begem; Another in her wilful grief would break

Her bow and wingèd reeds, as if to stem A greater loss with one which was more weak, And dull the barbed fire against his frozen cheek.

Out of her secret paradise she sped,

Through camps and cities rough with stone and steel And human hearts, which, to her aery tread

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, Paved with eternal flowers that undeserving way.

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 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.

"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,

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.

"O gentle child, beautiful as thou wert,

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?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.

"The herded wolves bold only to pursue,

The obscene ravens clamorous o'er the dead, 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, And smiled!--The spoilers tempt no second blow, They fawn on the proud feet that spurn them lying low.

"The sun comes forth, and many reptiles spawn;
He sets, and each ephemeral insect then

Is gathered into death without a dawn,
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 Leave to its kindred lamps the spirit's awful night."

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,
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
'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
Acteon-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.

He is made one with Nature. There is heard 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 Which has withdrawn his being to its own, Which wields the world with never-wearied love, Sustains it from beneath, and kindles it above.

He is a portion of the loveliness

Which once he made more lovely. He doth bear 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 the unwilling dross, that checks its flight, To its own likeness, as each mass may bear; And bursting in its beauty and its might From trees and beasts and men into the heaven's light.

The splendours of the firmament of time

May be eclipsed, but are extinguished not; Like stars to their appointed height they climb, 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, And move like winds of light on dark and stormy air.

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

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.

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;
"It was for thee yon kingless sphere has long

Swung blind in unascended majesty,
Silent alone amid an heaven of song.

Assume thy winged throne, thou Vesper of our throng!"

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.

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.

Go thou to Rome, 1-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.

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.

Here pause. These graves are all too young as yet To have out-grown 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?

The One remains, the many change and pass; Heaven's light for ever 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.

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

1 Rome now also contains the ashes of him who poured out this strain of lamentation, more beautiful and passionate than ever poet uttered for the loss of another.

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.

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.

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.

JEANNOT AND COLIN.

FROM THE FRENCH OF VOLTAIRE.

Many credible persons have seen Jeannot and Colin of the village of Issoire in Auvergne, a place famous all over the world for its college and its cauldrons. Jeannot was the son of a very renowned mule-driver; Colin owed his existence to an honest labourer in the neighbourhood, who cultivated the earth with the help of four mules, and who, after he had paid the poll-tax, the military-tax, the royaltax, the excise-tax, the shilling-in-the-pound, the capitation, and the twentieths, did not find himself over-rich at the year's end.

Jeannot and Colin were very pretty lads for Auvergnians: they were remarkably attached to each other, and enjoyed together those little confidentialities, and those snug familiarities, which men always recollect with pleasure when they afterwards meet in the world.

The time dedicated to their studies was just upon the eve of elapsing when a tailor brought Jeannot a velvet coat of three colours, with a Lyons waistcoat made in the first taste; the whole was accompanied with a letter directed to Monsieur de la Jeannotiere. Colin could not help admiring the coat, though he was not

2 This satire upon a wretched phase of society in Voltaire's day, is not without point and application in our own time.