from herb and stone,
Spreading itself where'er that Power move,
Which has withdrawn his being to its own;
Which wields the world with never-wearied love,
Sustains it from beneath, and kindles it above."

His cinereal ashes may lie beneath the cypresses, near the dust of the
"Adonais" of his muse, under Roman sod, and where he said:

"To see the sun shining on its bright grass, and hear the
whispering of the wind among the leaves of the trees, which
have overgrown the tomb of Cestius, and the soil which is
stirring in the sun-warm earth, and to mark the tombs,
mostly of women and young children, who, buried there, we
might, if we were to die, desire a sleep they seem to
sleep."

All this may have happened, but why need we repine, for as eternal as
the sea, as infinite as Nature, and as the phoenix, he revivifying
lives, transmigrated and transfused into humanity, for with certainty
we know that

"He lives, he wakes--'tis Death is dead, not he."

Immortal amid immortals, his spirit in communion with the Most High,
fully conscious in its individuality--immortal amid mortals, his place
need never be refilled, for he stands betwixt the old and the
new--immortal amid the sons of song, do poets still breathe his divine
afflatus--immortal amid philosophers and the regenerators of the race,
with Buddha, with Moses, with Socrates, with Mahomet, with
Christ--immortal amid the noble, the virtuous, the good, the
wise--immortal as when living here, for from spirit-spheres we hear
him bidding us repeat:

"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
Back to the burning fountain whence it came,
A portion of the Eternal, which must glow
Through time and change, unquenchably the same,"

* * * * *

"Peace! peace! he is not dead, he doth not sleep--
He hath awaken'd 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 spirits' knife,
Invulnerable nothings!"

FINIS CORONAT OPUS.

End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Percy Bysshe Shelley as a Philosopher
and Reformer, by Charles Sotheran

*** END