Life and Existence

Music, when soft voices die, Vibrates in the memory; Odors, when sweet violets sicken, Live within the sense they quicken. Rose leaves, when the rose is dead, Are heaped for the beloved’s bed; And so thy thoughts, when thou art gone, Love itself shall slumber on.

The One remains, the many change and pass; Heaven’s light forever shines, earth’s shadows fly; Life, like a dome of many-colored glass, Stains the white radiance of eternity, Until Death tramples it to fragments—Die, If thou wouldst be with that which thou dost seek!

The One remains, the many change and pass; Heaven’s light forever shines, earth’s shadows fly; Life, like a dome of many-colored glass, Stains the white radiance of eternity, Until Death tramples it to fragments—Die, If thou wouldst be with that which thou dost seek!

He is a portion of the loveliness Which once he made more lovely.

He lives, he wakes—’tis Death is dead, not he.

He is made one with Nature: there is heard His voice in all her music, from the moan Of thunder to the song of night’s sweet bird.

He hath awakened from the dream of life.

He has outsoared the shadow of our night; Envy and calumny and hate and pain, And that unrest which men miscall delight Can touch him not and torture not again; From the contagion of the world’s slow stain He is secure, and now can never mourn A heart grown cold, a head grown gray in vain.

The Pilgrim of Eternity [Lord Byron], whose fame Over his living head like heaven is bent, An early but enduring monument, Came, veiling all the lightnings of his song In sorrow.

In mockery of monumental stone.

As long as skies are blue, and fields are green, Evening must usher night, night urge the morrow, Month follow month with woe, and year wake year to sorrow.

As long as skies are blue, and fields are green, Evening must usher night, night urge the morrow, Month follow month with woe, and year wake year to sorrow.

Alas! that all we loved of him should be, But for our grief, as if it had not been, And grief itself be mortal!

A moment, then is quenched in a most cold repose.

Ah woe is me! Winter is come and gone, But grief returns with the revolving year.

To that high capital, where kingly Death Keeps his pale court in beauty and decay, He came.

Lost Angel of a ruined Paradise!

Forget the Past, his fate and fame shall be An echo and a light unto eternity!

Forget the Past, his fate and fame shall be An echo and a light unto eternity!

I weep for Adonais [John Keats] 4 —he is dead! Oh, weep for Adonais! though our tears Thaw not the frost which binds so dear a head!

The world is weary of the past, Oh, might it die or rest at last!

The world is weary of the past, Oh, might it die or rest at last!

What! alive, and so bold, O earth?

The world’s great age begins anew, The golden years return, The earth doth like a snake renew Her winter weeds outworn.