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, 5
  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,
    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 5
  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.

28.

  ’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, 5
  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.

29.

  ’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:  5
  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.’

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,
    An early but enduring monument, 5
  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.

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 5
  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.