Adonais Poem Rhyme Scheme and Analysis
Rhyme Scheme: ABACCDCDD ECFCCGCHG AIAIIJIJJ FKFKKKKKK FLFLLKLKK KFKFFKFKK GEGEEMEMM NCNCCOCPP CKCKKFKFF KCKCCFCFF KQKQQRQSS KGKHGCHCC CCCCCQCQQ KKKKKKKKK CKCKKTKTT FTFTTUTVV WFWFFKFKK FTFTTRTRR FKFKKKKKK TGTGHCHCC DFDFFTFTT TCTCCXCYY CTCTTFTKK KZKA2B2KB2KK GKGKKCKCC FC2FC2C2KD2KK KFKFFTFTT CKCKKE2KTT FFFFFKFKK QKQKKXKXY QCQCCKCKK KTKTTSTSR FCFCCKCKK FKFKKE2KE2C KFKFFCFCC CFCFFXFXX QDQDDCDE2E2 KCKE2CQCQQ IF2IF2F2XG2XX KFKFFFFFF DFDFFTFTT KFKFFH2FI2I2 CTCTTKTKK QKQKKTKTT FKFKKKKKK XKXKKXKXX J2KK2KKXKXX KKKKKKKKK CCCCCKCKK QKQKKHKGG KKKKKQKQQ CKCKKXKXX KKKKKKKKK CH2CI2L2KI2KK XFXFFKFKKI weep for Adonais he is dead | A |
O weep for Adonais though our tears | B |
Thaw not the frost which binds so dear a head | A |
And thou sad Hour selected from all years | C |
To mourn our loss rouse thy obscure compeers | C |
And teach them thine own sorrow say With me | D |
Died Adonais till the Future dares | C |
Forget the Past his fate and fame shall be | D |
An echo and a light unto eternity | D |
- | |
Where wert thou mighty Mother when he lay | E |
When thy Son lay pierced by the shaft which flies | C |
In darkness where was lorn Urania | F |
When Adonais died With veiled eyes | C |
Mid listening Echoes in her Paradise | C |
She sate while one with soft enamoured breath | G |
Rekindled all the fading melodies | C |
With which like flowers that mock the corse beneath | H |
He had adorned and hid the coming bulk of death | G |
- | |
O weep for Adonais he is dead | A |
Wake melancholy Mother wake and weep | I |
Yet wherefore Quench within their burning bed | A |
Thy fiery tears and let thy loud heart keep | I |
Like his a mute and uncomplaining sleep | I |
For he is gone where all things wise and fair | J |
Descend oh dream not that the amorous Deep | I |
Will yet restore him to the vital air | J |
Death feeds on his mute voice and laughs at our despair | J |
- | |
Most musical of mourners weep again | F |
Lament anew Urania He died | K |
Who was the Sire of an immortal strain | F |
Blind old and lonely when his country's pride | K |
The priest the slave and the liberticide | K |
Trampled and mocked with many a loathed rite | K |
Of lust and blood he went unterrified | K |
Into the gulf of death but his clear Sprite | K |
Yet reigns o'er earth the third among the sons of light | K |
- | |
Most musical of mourners weep anew | F |
Not all to that bright station dared to climb | L |
And happier they their happiness who knew | F |
Whose tapers yet burn through that night of time | L |
In which suns perished others more sublime | L |
Struck by the envious wrath of man or god | K |
Have sunk extinct in their refulgent prime | L |
And some yet live treading the thorny road | K |
Which leads through toil and hate to Fame's serene abode | K |
- | |
But now thy youngest dearest one has perished | K |
The nursling of thy widowhood who grew | F |
Like a pale flower by some sad maiden cherished | K |
And fed with true love tears instead of dew | F |
Most musical of mourners weep anew | F |
Thy extreme hope the loveliest and the last | K |
The bloom whose petals nipped before they blew | F |
Died on the promise of the fruit is waste | K |
The broken lily lies the storm is overpast | K |
- | |
To that high Capital where kingly Death | G |
Keeps his pale court in beauty and decay | E |
He came and bought with price of purest breath | G |
A grave among the eternal Come away | E |
Haste while the vault of blue Italian day | E |
Is yet his fitting charnel roof while still | M |
He lies as if in dewy sleep he lay | E |
Awake him not surely he takes his fill | M |
Of deep and liquid rest forgetful of all ill | M |
- | |
He will awake no more oh never more | N |
Within the twilight chamber spreads apace | C |
The shadow of white Death and at the door | N |
Invisible Corruption waits to trace | C |
His extreme way to her dim dwelling place | C |
The eternal Hunger sits but pity and awe | O |
Soothe her pale rage nor dares she to deface | C |
So fair a prey till darkness and the law | P |
Of change shall o'er his sleep the mortal curtain draw | P |
- | |
O weep for Adonais The quick Dreams | C |
The passion winged Ministers of thought | K |
Who were his flocks whom near the living streams | C |
Of his young spirit he fed and whom he taught | K |
The love which was its music wander not | K |
Wander no more from kindling brain to brain | F |
But droop there whence they sprung and mourn their lot | K |
Round the cold heart where after their sweet pain | F |
They ne'er will gather strength or find a home again | F |
- | |
And one with trembling hands clasps his cold head | K |
And fans him with her moonlight wings and cries | C |
Our love our hope our sorrow is not dead | K |
See on the silken fringe of his faint eyes | C |
Like dew upon a sleeping flower there lies | C |
A tear some Dream has loosened from his brain | F |
Lost Angel of a ruined Paradise | C |
She knew not 'twas her own as with no stain | F |
She faded like a cloud which had outwept its rain | F |
- | |
One from a lucid urn of starry dew | K |
Washed his light limbs as if embalming them | Q |
Another clipped her profuse locks and threw | K |
The wreath upon him like an anadem | Q |
Which frozen tears instead of pearls begem | Q |
Another in her wilful grief would break | R |
Her bow and winged reeds as if to stem | Q |
A greater loss with one which was more weak | S |
And dull the barbed fire against his frozen cheek | S |
- | |
Another Splendour on his mouth alit | K |
That mouth whence it was wont to draw the breath | G |
Which gave it strength to pierce the guarded wit | K |
And pass into the panting heart beneath | H |
With lightning and with music the damp death | G |
Quenched its caress upon his icy lips | C |
And as a dying meteor stains a wreath | H |
Of moonlight vapour which the cold night clips | C |
It flushed through his pale limbs and passed to its eclipse | C |
- | |
And others came Desires and Adorations | C |
Winged Persuasions and veiled Destinies | C |
Splendours and Glooms and glimmering Incarnations | C |
Of hopes and fears and twilight Phantasies | C |
And Sorrow with her family of Sighs | C |
And Pleasure blind with tears led by the gleam | Q |
Of her own dying smile instead of eyes | C |
Came in slow pomp the moving pomp might seem | Q |
Like pageantry of mist on an autumnal stream | Q |
- | |
All he had loved and moulded into thought | K |
From shape and hue and odour and sweet sound | K |
Lamented Adonais Morning sought | K |
Her eastern watch tower and her hair unbound | K |
Wet with the tears which should adorn the ground | K |
Dimmed the aereal eyes that kindle day | K |
Afar the melancholy thunder moaned | K |
Pale Ocean in unquiet slumber lay | K |
And the wild Winds flew round sobbing in their dismay | K |
- | |
Lost Echo sits amid the voiceless mountains | C |
And feeds her grief with his remembered lay | K |
And will no more reply to winds or fountains | C |
Or amorous birds perched on the young green spray | K |
Or herdsman's horn or bell at closing day | K |
Since she can mimic not his lips more dear | T |
Than those for whose disdain she pined away | K |
Into a shadow of all sounds a drear | T |
Murmur between their songs is all the woodmen hear | T |
- | |
Grief made the young Spring wild and she threw down | F |
Her kindling buds as if she Autumn were | T |
Or they dead leaves since her delight is flown | F |
For whom should she have waked the sullen year | T |
To Phoebus was not Hyacinth so dear | T |
Nor to himself Narcissus as to both | U |
Thou Adonais wan they stand and sere | T |
Amid the faint companions of their youth | V |
With dew all turned to tears odour to sighing ruth | V |
- | |
Thy spirit's sister the lorn nightingale | W |
Mourns not her mate with such melodious pain | F |
Not so the eagle who like thee could scale | W |
Heaven and could nourish in the sun's domain | F |
Her mighty youth with morning doth complain | F |
Soaring and screaming round her empty nest | K |
As Albion wails for thee the curse of Cain | F |
Light on his head who pierced thy innocent breast | K |
And scared the angel soul that was its earthly guest | K |
- | |
Ah woe is me Winter is come and gone | F |
But grief returns with the revolving year | T |
The airs and streams renew their joyous tone | F |
The ants the bees the swallows reappear | T |
Fresh leaves and flowers deck the dead Season's bier | T |
The amorous birds now pair in every brake | R |
And build their mossy homes in field and brere | T |
And the green lizard and the golden snake | R |
Like unimprisoned flames out of their trance awake | R |
- | |
Through wood and stream and field and hill and Ocean | F |
A quickening life from the Earth's heart has burst | K |
As it has ever done with change and motion | F |
From the great morning of the world when first | K |
God dawned on Chaos in its stream immersed | K |
The lamps of Heaven flash with a softer light | K |
All baser things pant with life's sacred thirst | K |
Diffuse themselves and spend in love's delight | K |
The beauty and the joy of their renewed might | K |
- | |
The leprous corpse touched by this spirit tender | T |
Exhales itself in flowers of gentle breath | G |
Like incarnations of the stars when splendour | T |
Is changed to fragrance they illumine death | G |
And mock the merry worm that wakes beneath | H |
Nought we know dies Shall that alone which knows | C |
Be as a sword consumed before the sheath | H |
By sightless lightning the intense atom glows | C |
A moment then is quenched in a most cold repose | C |
- | |
Alas that all we loved of him should be | D |
But for our grief as if it had not been | F |
And grief itself be mortal Woe is me | D |
Whence are we and why are we of what scene | F |
The actors or spectators Great and mean | F |
Meet massed in death who lends what life must borrow | T |
As long as skies are blue and fields are green | F |
Evening must usher night night urge the morrow | T |
Month follow month with woe and year wake year to sorrow | T |
- | |
He will awake no more oh never more | T |
Wake thou cried Misery childless Mother rise | C |
Out of thy sleep and slake in thy heart's core | T |
A wound more fierce than his with tears and sighs | C |
And all the Dreams that watched Urania's eyes | C |
And all the Echoes whom their sister's song | X |
Had held in holy silence cried Arise | C |
Swift as a Thought by the snake Memory stung | Y |
From her ambrosial rest the fading Splendour sprung | Y |
- | |
She rose like an autumnal Night that springs | C |
Our of the East and follows wild and drear | T |
The golden Day which on eternal wings | C |
Even as a ghost abandoning a bier | T |
Had left the Earth a corpse Sorrow and fear | T |
So struck so roused so rapt Urania | F |
So saddened round her like an atmosphere | T |
Of stormy mist so swept her on her way | K |
Even to the mournful place where Adonais lay | K |
- | |
Our of her secret Paradise she sped | K |
Through camps and cities rough with stone and steel | Z |
And human hearts which to her aery tread | K |
Yielding not wounded the invisible | A2 |
Palms of her tender feet where'er they fell | B2 |
And barbed tongues and thoughts more sharp than they | K |
Rent the soft Form they never could repel | B2 |
Whose sacred blood like the young tears of May | K |
Paved with eternal flowers that undeserving way | K |
- | |
In the death chamber for a moment Death | G |
Shamed by the presence of that living Might | K |
Blushed to annihilation and the breath | G |
Revisited those lips and Life's pale light | K |
Flashed through those limbs so late her dear delight | K |
Leave me not wild and drear and comfortless | C |
As silent lightning leaves the starless night | K |
Leave me not cried Urania her distress | C |
Roused Death Death rose and smiled and met her vain caress | C |
- | |
'Stay yet awhile speak to me once again | F |
Kiss me so long but as a kiss may live | C2 |
And in my heartless breast and burning brain | F |
That word that kiss shall all thoughts else survive | C2 |
With food of saddest memory kept alive | C2 |
Now thou art dead as if it were a part | K |
Of thee my Adonais I would give | D2 |
All that I am to be as thou now art | K |
But I am chained to Time and cannot thence depart | K |
- | |
O gentle child beautiful as thou wert | K |
Why didst thou leave the trodden paths of men | F |
Too soon and with weak hands though mighty heart | K |
Dare the unpastured dragon in his den | F |
Defenceless as thou wert oh where was then | F |
Wisdom the mirrored shield or scorn the spear | T |
Or hadst thou waited the full cycle when | F |
Thy spirit should have filled its crescent sphere | T |
The monsters of life's waste had fled from thee like deer | T |
- | |
The herded wolves bold only to pursue | C |
The obscene ravens clamorous o'er the dead | K |
The vultures to the conqueror's banner true | C |
Who feed where Desolation first has fed | K |
And whose wings rain contagion how they fled | K |
When like Apollo from his golden bow | E2 |
The Pythian of the age one arrow sped | K |
And smiled The spoilers tempt no second blow | T |
They fawn on the proud feet that spurn them lying low | T |
- | |
The sun comes forth and many reptiles spawn | F |
He sets and each ephemeral insect then | F |
Is gathered into death without a dawn | F |
And the immortal stars awake again | F |
So is it in the world of living men | F |
A godlike mind soars forth in its delight | K |
Making earth bare and veiling heaven and when | F |
It sinks the swarms that dimmed or shared its light | K |
Leave to its kindred lamps the spirit's awful night | K |
- | |
Thus ceased she and the mountain shepherds came | Q |
Their garlands sere their magic mantles rent | K |
The Pilgrim of Eternity whose fame | Q |
Over his living head like Heaven is bent | K |
An early but enduring monument | K |
Came veiling all the lightnings of his song | X |
In sorrow from her wilds Irene sent | K |
The sweetest lyrist of her saddest wrong | X |
And Love taught Grief to fall like music from his tongue | Y |
- | |
Midst others of less note came one frail Form | Q |
A phantom among men companionless | C |
As the last cloud of an expiring storm | Q |
Whose thunder is its knell he as I guess | C |
Had gazed on Nature's naked loveliness | C |
Actaeon like and now he fled astray | K |
With feeble steps o'er the world's wilderness | C |
And his own thoughts along that rugged way | K |
Pursued like raging hounds their father and their prey | K |
- | |
A pardlike Spirit beautiful and swift | K |
A Love in desolation masked a Power | T |
Girt round with weakness it can scarce uplift | K |
The weight of the superincumbent hour | T |
It is a dying lamp a falling shower | T |
A breaking billow even whilst we speak | S |
Is it not broken On the withering flower | T |
The killing sun smiles brightly on a cheek | S |
The life can burn in blood even while the heart may break | R |
- | |
His head was bound with pansies overblown | F |
And faded violets white and pied and blue | C |
And a light spear topped with a cypress cone | F |
Round whose rude shaft dark ivy tresses grew | C |
Yet dripping with the forest's noonday dew | C |
Vibrated as the ever beating heart | K |
Shook the weak hand that grasped it of that crew | C |
He came the last neglected and apart | K |
A herd abandoned deer struck by the hunter's dart | K |
- | |
All stood aloof and at his partial moan | F |
Smiled through their tears well knew that gentle band | K |
Who in another's fate now wept his own | F |
As in the accents of an unknown land | K |
He sung new sorrow sad Urania scanned | K |
The Stranger's mien and murmured Who art thou | E2 |
He answered not but with a sudden hand | K |
Made bare his branded and ensanguined brow | E2 |
Which was like Cain's or Christ's oh that it should be so | C |
- | |
What softer voice is hushed over the dead | K |
Athwart what brow is that dark mantle thrown | F |
What form leans sadly o'er the white death bed | K |
In mockery of monumental stone | F |
The heavy heart heaving without a moan | F |
If it be He who gentlest of the wise | C |
Taught soothed loved honoured the departed one | F |
Let me not vex with inharmonious sighs | C |
The silence of that heart's accepted sacrifice | C |
- | |
Our Adonais has drunk poison oh | C |
What deaf and viperous murderer could crown | F |
Life's early cup with such a draught of woe | C |
The nameless worm would now itself disown | F |
It felt yet could escape the magic tone | F |
Whose prelude held all envy hate and wrong | X |
But what was howling in one breast alone | F |
Silent with expectation of the song | X |
Whose master's hand is cold whose silver lyre unstrung | X |
- | |
Live thou whose infamy is not thy fame | Q |
Live fear no heavier chastisement from me | D |
Thou noteless blot on a remembered name | Q |
But be thyself and know thyself to be | D |
And ever at thy season be thou free | D |
To spill the venom when thy fangs o'erflow | C |
Remorse and Self contempt shall cling to thee | D |
Hot Shame shall burn upon thy secret brow | E2 |
And like a beaten hound tremble thou shalt as now | E2 |
- | |
Nor let us weep that our delight is fled | K |
Far from these carrion kites that scream below | C |
He wakes or sleeps with the enduring dead | K |
Thou canst not soar where he is sitting now | E2 |
Dust to the dust but the pure spirit shall flow | C |
Back to the burning fountain whence it came | Q |
A portion of the Eternal which must glow | C |
Through time and change unquenchably the same | Q |
Whilst thy cold embers choke the sordid hearth of shame | Q |
- | |
Peace peace he is not dead he doth not sleep | I |
He hath awakened from the dream of life | F2 |
'Tis we who lost in stormy visions keep | I |
With phantoms an unprofitable strife | F2 |
And in mad trance strike with our spirit's knife | F2 |
Invulnerable nothings We decay | X |
Like corpses in a charnel fear and grief | G2 |
Convulse us and consume us day by day | X |
And cold hopes swarm like worms within our living clay | X |
- | |
He has outsoared the shadow of our night | K |
Envy and calumny and hate and pain | F |
And that unrest which men miscall delight | K |
Can touch him not and torture not again | F |
From the contagion of the world's slow stain | F |
He is secure and now can never mourn | F |
A heart grown cold a head grown grey in vain | F |
Nor when the spirit's self has ceased to burn | F |
With sparkless ashes load an unlamented urn | F |
- | |
He lives he wakes 'tis Death is dead not he | D |
Mourn not for Adonais Thou young Dawn | F |
Turn all thy dew to splendour for from thee | D |
The spirit thou lamentest is not gone | F |
Ye caverns and ye forests cease to moan | F |
Cease ye faint flowers and fountains and thou Air | T |
Which like a mourning veil thy scarf hadst thrown | F |
O'er the abandoned Earth now leave it bare | T |
Even to the joyous stars which smile on its despair | T |
- | |
He is made one with Nature there is heard | K |
His voice in all her music from the moan | F |
Of thunder to the song of night's sweet bird | K |
He is a presence to be felt and known | F |
In darkness and in light from herb and stone | F |
Spreading itself where'er that Power may move | H2 |
Which has withdrawn his being to its own | F |
Which wields the world with never wearied love | I2 |
Sustains it from beneath and kindles it above | I2 |
- | |
He is a portion of the loveliness | C |
Which once he made more lovely he doth bear | T |
His part while the one Spirit's plastic stress | C |
Sweeps through the dull dense world compelling there | T |
All new successions to the forms they wear | T |
Torturing th' unwilling dross that checks its flight | K |
To its own likeness as each mass may bear | T |
And bursting in its beauty and its might | K |
From trees and beasts and men into the Heavens' light | K |
- | |
The splendours of the firmament of time | Q |
May be eclipsed but are extinguished not | K |
Like stars to their appointed height they climb | Q |
And death is a low mist which cannot blot | K |
The brightness it may veil When lofty thought | K |
Lifts a young heart above its mortal lair | T |
And love and life contend in it for what | K |
Shall be its earthly doom the dead live there | T |
And move like winds of light on dark and stormy air | T |
- | |
The inheritors of unfulfilled renown | F |
Rose from their thrones built beyond mortal thought | K |
Far in the Unapparent Chatterton | F |
Rose pale his solemn agony had not | K |
Yet faded from him Sidney as he fought | K |
And as he fell and as he lived and loved | K |
Sublimely mild a Spirit without spot | K |
Arose and Lucan by his death approved | K |
Oblivion as they rose shrank like a thing reproved | K |
- | |
And many more whose names on Earth are dark | X |
But whose transmitted effluence cannot die | K |
So long as fire outlives the parent spark | X |
Rose robed in dazzling immortality | K |
Thou art become as one of us they cry | K |
It was for thee yon kingless sphere has long | X |
Swung blind in unascended majesty | K |
Silent alone amid an Heaven of Song | X |
Assume thy winged throne thou Vesper of our throng | X |
- | |
Who mourns for Adonais Oh come forth | J2 |
Fond wretch and know thyself and him aright | K |
Clasp with thy panting soul the pendulous Earth | K2 |
As from a centre dart thy spirit's light | K |
Beyond all worlds until its spacious might | K |
Satiate the void circumference then shrink | X |
Even to a point within our day and night | K |
And keep thy heart light lest it make thee sink | X |
When hope has kindled hope and lured thee to the brink | X |
- | |
Or go to Rome which is the sepulchre | K |
Oh not of him but of our joy 'tis nought | K |
That ages empires and religions there | K |
Lie buried in the ravage they have wrought | K |
For such as he can lend they borrow not | K |
Glory from those who made the world their prey | K |
And he is gathered to the kings of thought | K |
Who waged contention with their time's decay | K |
And of the past are all that cannot pass away | K |
- | |
Go thou to Rome at once the Paradise | C |
The grave the city and the wilderness | C |
And where its wrecks like shattered mountains rise | C |
And flowering weeds and fragrant copses dress | C |
The bones of Desolation's nakedness | C |
Pass till the spirit of the spot shall lead | K |
Thy footsteps to a slope of green access | C |
Where like an infant's smile over the dead | K |
A light of laughing flowers along the grass is spread | K |
- | |
And grey walls moulder round on which dull Time | Q |
Feeds like slow fire upon a hoary brand | K |
And one keen pyramid with wedge sublime | Q |
Pavilioning the dust of him who planned | K |
This refuge for his memory doth stand | K |
Like flame transformed to marble and beneath | H |
A field is spread on which a newer band | K |
Have pitched in Heaven's smile their camp of death | G |
Welcoming him we lose with scarce extinguished breath | G |
- | |
Here pause these graves are all too young as yet | K |
To have outgrown the sorrow which consigned | K |
Its charge to each and if the seal is set | K |
Here on one fountain of a mourning mind | K |
Break it not thou too surely shalt thou find | K |
Thine own well full if thou returnest home | Q |
Of tears and gall From the world's bitter wind | K |
Seek shelter in the shadow of the tomb | Q |
What Adonais is why fear we to become | Q |
- | |
The One remains the many change and pass | C |
Heaven's light forever shines Earth's shadows fly | K |
Life like a dome of many coloured glass | C |
Stains the white radiance of Eternity | K |
Until Death tramples it to fragments Die | K |
If thou wouldst be with that which thou dost seek | X |
Follow where all is fled Rome's azure sky | K |
Flowers ruins statues music words are weak | X |
The glory they transfuse with fitting truth to speak | X |
- | |
Why linger why turn back why shrink my Heart | K |
Thy hopes are gone before from all things here | K |
They have departed thou shouldst now depart | K |
A light is passed from the revolving year | K |
And man and woman and what still is dear | K |
Attracts to crush repels to make thee wither | K |
The soft sky smiles the low wind whispers near | K |
'Tis Adonais calls oh hasten thither | K |
No more let Life divide what Death can join together | K |
- | |
That Light whose smile kindles the Universe | C |
That Beauty in which all things work and move | H2 |
That Benediction which the eclipsing Curse | C |
Of birth can quench not that sustaining Love | I2 |
Which through the web of being blindly wove | L2 |
By man and beast and earth and air and sea | K |
Burns bright or dim as each are mirrors of | I2 |
The fire for which all thirst now beams on me | K |
Consuming the last clouds of cold mortality | K |
- | |
The breath whose might I have invoked in song | X |
Descends on me my spirit's bark is driven | F |
Far from the shore far from the trembling throng | X |
Whose sails were never to the tempest given | F |
The massy earth and sphered skies are riven | F |
I am borne darkly fearfully afar | K |
Whilst burning through the inmost veil of Heaven | F |
The soul of Adonais like a star | K |
Beacons from the abode where the Eternal are | K |
Percy Bysshe Shelley
(1)
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