What softer voice is hushed over the dead? Athwart what brow is that dark mantle thrown? What form leans sadly o'er the white death-bed, In mockery of monumental stone, The heavy heart heaving without a moan? 5 If it be he who, gentlest of the wise, Taught, soothed, loved, honoured, the departed one. Let me not vex with inharmonious sighs The silence of that heart's accepted sacrifice. 36. Our Adonais has drunk poison--oh What deaf and viperous murderer could crown Life's early cup with such a draught of woe? The nameless worm would now itself disown; It felt, yet could escape, the magic tone 5 Whose prelude held all envy, hate, and wrong, But what was howling in one breast alone, Silent with expectation of the song Whose master's hand is cold, whose silver lyre unstrung. 37. Live thou, whose infamy is not thy fame! Live! fear no heavier chastisement from me, Thou noteless blot on a remembered name! But be thyself, and know thyself to be! And ever at thy season be thou free 5 To spill the venom when thy fangs o'erflow; Remorse and self-contempt shall cling to thee, Hot shame shall burn upon thy secret brow, And like a beaten hound tremble thou shalt--as now. 38. Nor let us weep that our delight is fled Far from these carrion kites that scream below. He wakes or sleeps with the enduring dead; Thou canst not soar where he is sitting now. Dust to the dust: but the pure spirit shall flow 5 Back to the burning fountain whence it came, A portion of the Eternal, which must glow Through time and change, unquenchably the same, Whilst thy cold embers choke the sordid hearth of shame. 39. Peace, peace! he is not dead, he doth not sleep! He hath awakened from the dream of life. 'Tis we who, lost in stormy visions, keep With phantoms an unprofitable strife, And in mad trance strike with our spirit's knife 5 Invulnerable nothings. _We_ decay Like corpses in a charnel; fear and grief Convulse us and consume us day by day, And cold hopes swarm like worms within our living clay. 40. 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 5 He is secure; and now can never mourn A heart grown cold, a head grown grey in vain-- Nor, when the spirit's self has ceased to burn, With sparkless ashes load an unlamented urn. 41.