At Arlington, 1866 The summer blew its little drifts of sound— Tangled with wet leaf-shadows and the light Small breath of scattered morning buds—around The yellow path through which our footsteps wound.
To-night again the moon’s white mat Stretches across the dormitory floor While outside, like an evil cat The pion prowls down the dark corridor, Planning, I know, to pounce on me, in spite For getting leave to sleep in town last night. But it was none of us who made that noise, Only the old brown owl that hoots and flies
A hole torn in the fabric of the world, the web, the whole infernal weave through which life-giving rain is falling but mixing with the tears and with the blood. Dead body-snatchers enter, the mega-corpses, much in the news these days, enter and grind bones, flesh and sinews down to dry tree bark, mixing with tree bark, crawling with the demonic
I In a far country, and a distant age, Ere sprites and fays had bade farewell to earth, A boy was born of humble parentage; The stars that shone upon his lonely birth Did seem to promise sovereignty and fame— Yet no tradition hath preserved his name.
II ’T is said that on the night when he was born, A beauteous shape swept slowly through the room; Its eyes broke on the infant like a morn, And his cheek brightened like a rose in bloom;
I I weep for Adonais—he is dead! Oh, 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!"
II Where wert thou, mighty Mother, when he lay, When thy Son lay, pierc'd by the shaft which flies In darkness? where was lorn Urania
How strange it seems! These Hebrews in their graves, Close by the street of this fair seaport town, Silent beside the never-silent waves, At rest in all this moving up and down!
The trees are white with dust, that o'er their sleep Wave their broad curtains in the south-wind's breath, While underneath these leafy tents they keep The long, mysterious Exodus of Death.
And these sepulchral stones, so old and brown, That pave with level flags their burial-place, Seem like the tablets of the Law, thrown down And broken by Moses at the mountain's base.
Through Alpine meadows soft-suffused With rain, where thick the crocus blows, Past the dark forges long disused, The mule-track from Saint Laurent goes. The bridge is cross'd, and slow we ride, Through forest, up the mountain-side.
The autumnal evening darkens round, The wind is up, and drives the rain; While, hark! far down, with strangled sound Doth the Dead Guier's stream complain, Where that wet smoke, among the woods, Over his boiling cauldron broods.
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