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 5
  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.

45.

  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 5
  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.

46.

  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; 5
  ’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!’

47.

  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 5
  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.

48.

  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 5
  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.

49.

  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, 5
  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.

50.