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!”

From the more universal and philosophical aspects of his theme, the poet once more turns to the special subject that had stirred him.  Adonais lies dead; and those who mourn him must seek his grave.  He has escaped:  to follow him is to die; and where should we learn to dote on death unterrified, if not in Rome?  In this way the description of Keat’s resting-place beneath the pyramid of Cestius, which was also destined to be Shelley’s own, is introduced:—­

    Who mourns for Adonais? oh come forth,
    Fond wretch! and show 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, let it make thee sink
    When hope has kindled hope, and lured thee to the brink.

    Or go to Rome, which is the sepulchre,
    Oh, 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,—­at once the Paradise,
    The grave, the city, and the wilderness;
    And where its wrecks like shattered mountains rise,
    And flowering weeds and fragrant corpses 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 grey 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.