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Mourn not for Adonais.-Thou young Dawn, Turn all thy dew to splendour, for from thee The spirit thou lamentest is not gone;

18 i. e. Keats' hostile critic before referred to. 19 The second natural division of the elegy begins with this stanza. The first part is devoted to grief for Keats, indignation at his critics, and regrets over his loss to poetry; this second part is chiefly occupied with general reflections suggested by the fact of death. dominant note of this second part is hope.

The pre

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10

Therefore, on every morrow, are we wreathing
A flowery band to bind us to the earth,
Spite of despondence, of the inhuman dearth
Of noble natures, of the gloomy days,
Of all the unhealthy and o'erdarkened ways
Made for our searching: yes, in spite of all,
Some shape of beauty moves away the pall
From our dark spirits. Such the sun, the moon,
Trees old and young, sprouting a shady boon
For simple sheep; and such are daffodils
With the green world they live in; and clear
rills

15

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To one who has been long in city pent,

'Tis very sweet to look into the fair

And open face of heaven,-to breathe a prayer

Full in the smile of the blue firmament.

Who is more happy, when, with heart's con

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Catching the notes of Philomel,1-an eye Watching the sailing cloudlets' bright career, He mourns that day so soon has glided by: E'en like the passage of an angel's tear That falls through the clear ether silently.

XV

ON THE GRASSHOPPER AND CRICKET1 (Written December 30th, 1816) The poetry of earth is never dead:

When all the birds are faint with the hot sun, And hide in cooling trees, a voice will run From hedge to hedge about the new-mown mead;

That is the Grasshopper's-he takes the lead 5 In summer luxury,-he has never done

With his delights; for when tired out with

fun

He rests at ease beneath some pleasant weed. The poetry of earth is ceasing never:

On a lone winter evening, when the frost

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Has wrought a silence, from the stove there shrills

The Cricket's song, in warmth increasing ever, And seems to one in drowsiness half lost,

The Grasshopper's among some grassy hills.

ON SEEING THE ELGIN MARBLES FOR THE FIRST TIME (1817)

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My spirit is too weak-mortality
Weighs heavily on me like unwilling sleep,
And each imagined pinnacle and steep
Of godlike hardship, tells me I must die

The nightingale.

This sonnet and that of Hunt's (p. 507), were the result of a friendly competition.

1 V. p. 562, n. 15.

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