Mourning for Adonais

"From time to time, the heroes would get together for some common adventure: a hunting party, a conquest, a war. They are a magnificent sight, the heroes lining up in disciplined ranks on the benches of the Argo, muscles glistening like flames." (Calasso 323).


So yesterday, just like my regular day, I was surfing the web to see what I can discover about the mourning of Adonais. The only knowledge I know about Adonais came from the old TV series, Star Trek. I then came to discover more. (Ah, the magnificent world of the Internet..) It is a poem. A poem of 495 lines and in 55 Spenserian stanzas. It is also known as a pastoral elegy written by  Percy Bysshe Shelley for the death of John Keats.


It is a sad poem yet, very moving at the same time. "He is not dead," she says. "But it is the living who are dead,". We hardly ever come to realization that this quote is in fact true. We seem to always think that we will be here and present the next morning. So, we continue to take our time for granted. We always forget that time waits for no one. God's will does not tell time, and when that takes place, it only happens for a reason. Whether we know it or not..


Here, below, are some parts of the poem, that caught my eyes and my mind, which I feel the need to share;

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
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.

The One remains, the many change and pass;
Heaven's light forever shines, Earth's shadows fly;
Life, like a dome of many-coloured glass,
Stains the white radiance of Eternity,
Until Death tramples it to fragments. — Die,
If thou wouldst be with that which thou dost seek!
Follow where all is fled! — Rome's azure sky,
Flowers, ruins, statues, music, words, are weak
The glory they transfuse with fitting truth to speak.