Oh, immortal verbiage, lasting specters of romance in the face of ephemeral objectual us:
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 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.
—Percy Bysshe Shelley, "Adonais" (a watery deathwish on Keats's death)
