Part II

._) 136 (_Tailpiece_) 143 (_Headpiece to Notes_) 144

Scenes from “Politian” (_decorated title_) 149 (_Headpiece_) 151 “I CANNOT PRAY!— MY SOUL IS AT WAR WITH GOD” 157 (_Tailpiece_) 170

LETTER TO MR. —— (_headpiece_) 173 (_Tailpiece_) 181

THE POETIC PRINCIPLE (_frontispiece_) 184 (_Headpiece_) 185

THE PHILOSOPHY OF COMPOSITION (_headpiece_) 211

FINIS 225

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INTRODUCTION

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“A lie,” says an American proverb, “will run from Maine to Mexico while Truth is putting on its boots,” and the memories of few celebrated men have been more freely aspersed or more tardily vindicated than has that of Edgar Allan Poe. No sooner was the breath out of his body than his enemies addressed themselves to the congenial task of bespattering his reputation, and continued to do so, unchecked and almost unchallenged, for many years. Amongst other charges so contemptible as to be unworthy of a moment’s consideration, he was held up to public execration as a confirmed inebriate and denounced as a shameless plagiarist. At this distance of time it is hardly necessary to remark that the former charge was a particularly cruel perversion of the truth, while the latter was entirely without foundation. But it is a well-known axiom that, if only a sufficiency of mud is thrown, some of it is sure to stick; and in consequence Poe was for a long time denied that place on the roll of fame to which his remarkable talents, both as a poet and a romancer, fairly entitled him. The present generation, however, has witnessed a signal reaction in his favour. Thanks to the untiring efforts of several prominent men of letters both in his own country and in England, the darker shadows which rested upon his name have been effectually dispersed; the world has gradually come to take a more just view both of his character and his genius; and in this, the closing year of the nineteenth century, we find Poe’s reputation more firmly established than at any time since his untimely death in 1849.

To a right understanding of the works of any author some knowledge of his life is essential, for a man’s writings are always to a greater or less extent the reflection of his character and his surroundings. Of course there are exceptions to this as to other rules. There are authors whose forte lies in describing the passions and the impossibility of controlling them, and who in private life are confirmed misogynists; while there are others, whose most entertaining books have been dictated upon a bed of suffering from which there was little chance of their ever rising again. But Poe was not one of these exceptions: in his writings—and more especially in his poetry—his character is mirrored for all men to behold it.

Naturally of a morbid temperament, Poe’s innate propensity to look upon the dark side of things was strengthened by the circumstances in which he was placed. His life was one of continuous disappointment. He laboured incessantly, and hardly earned enough to keep body and soul together; he was, perhaps, the most original genius of his time, and was accused of pilfering from the work of vastly inferior minds; he was intensely ambitious, and remained a literary hack to the end of his days; he was of a most affectionate disposition, and was compelled to witness the one whom he loved best upon earth in the grip of a cruel and lingering disease, without possessing the means of procuring her the comforts which might have alleviated her sufferings. Knowing all this, can we wonder at the tone of settled melancholy which pervades his poetry—the regret for what might have been, the yearning for what can never be? Here and there, it is true, he strikes a different note, as in “Eulalie” and the charming little lyric “To Helen,” which latter poem, however, was written when he was still a boy; but these variations, like glimpses of blue sky on a dark and lowering horizon, only serve to intensify the general gloom. And yet, in spite of their sadness, there is a pathetic sweetness in his verses, which appeals irresistibly to the heart, and makes the reader fain to admit that in his particular strain Poe is indeed a master.

Born at Boston on January 19th, 1809—the son of one David Poe, a man of good family, who had married an actress and subsequently adopted his wife’s profession—Edgar Allan Poe had the misfortune to lose both his parents in infancy, after which he was adopted by his godfather, Mr. John Allan, a wealthy and childless Richmond merchant, with the intention, it is thought, of making him his heir. The boy was handsome, witty, and precocious, and was petted and indulged by his adopted father to his heart’s content; indeed, it is to the injudicious treatment which he then received that Poe himself ascribes many of the difficulties which beset his path in after life.

When eight years old he was brought to England and placed at a school at Stoke Newington kept by a Dr. Bransby, who is amusingly depicted in “William Wilson,” one of Poe’s finest stories. Here he remained five years, when he returned to America, and after studying until he was seventeen at a Richmond academy, matriculated at the University of Virginia, at Charlottesville. At the University he seems to have acquired some reputation as a scholar; but at the end of his first session a difference of opinion with his godfather in respect of some gambling debts, which the old gentlemen very properly refused to pay, led to an open quarrel, and Poe, instead of returning to Charlottesville, set out for Europe, with the intention of assisting the Greeks, then struggling to free themselves from the intolerable yoke of Turkey. It does not appear, however, that he took any part in the war, nor even beheld, except in his mind’s eye, the remains of “the glory that _was_ Greece.” After wandering about the Continent for a couple of years he returned home, became reconciled to Mr. Allan, and, having expressed a wish to enter the army, was accordingly nominated to a cadetship at West Point. But, alas, the “Imp of the Perverse” was ever at his heels, and in less than twelve months he was cashiered “for various neglects of duty and disobedience of orders.”

The loss of his profession—no great matter in itself, for anyone less fitted for the strict discipline of a military life it would be difficult to imagine—was followed by another and far more serious quarrel with his adopted father, with the result that the young man found himself thrown upon his own resources. He had already published a small volume of poems—those comprised in his last collection as “Poems written in Youth”—which included the delightful stanzas beginning “Helen, thy beauty is to me,” and he now determined to turn to literature for a livelihood. Nothing is known of his career for the next two years; but in 1833 with a tale, “A MS. found in a Bottle,” and a poem, “The Coliseum,” he carried off two prizes offered for competition by a Baltimore newspaper, and having attracted the notice of one of the judges—Mr. John Kennedy, a well-known literary man—he obtained through his influence employment on “The Southern Literary Messenger,” at Richmond.

Henceforth, until his death, Poe was intimately connected with American journalism, and more than one moribund periodical was indebted to his eloquent pen for a fresh lease of life. He was an indefatigable worker, pouring forth poems, essays, stories, and reviews with feverish energy; and, at the same time, so fastidious that he never permitted a manuscript to leave his hands until he was satisfied that he had given the public of his very best. Unfortunately in America in those days literary work was very inadequately remunerated, while copyright was a mere farce; so that even for his finest poems and his most powerful tales Poe never received more than fifty or sixty dollars, and generally very much less, and was in consequence seldom free from pecuniary embarrassment. “The Raven,” which appeared in 1845 in Cotton’s “American Review,” brought him immediate fame, and—ten dollars; and while his poem was being read, and recited, and parodied all over the English-speaking world, the author was actually in want of the common necessaries of life. To add to his troubles, his wife, Virginia Clemm, a beautiful and charming girl whom he had married in 1836, and to whom he was most devotedly attached, had soon after their marriage contracted a fatal malady, and was slowly fading away before his eyes; and his anxiety on her behalf thoroughly unnerved him and weakened his power of self-restraint, never at any time very great. It was this, combined with ill-health and the strain of overwork, which drove him to the use of the stimulants which ultimately proved his ruin; but the statement that he habitually drank to excess was a malicious fabrication. The fact was that poor Poe, in common with many other people of a nervous, highly-strung temperament, was, as one of his most intimate friends assures us, unable to take “even a single glass of wine” with impunity.

Mrs. Poe died in 1847, and in the autumn of the following year Poe became engaged to a widow, named Mrs. Whitman, a lady of considerable literary attainments. This engagement, from which his friends hoped much, was unfortunately soon broken off, for reasons which have never been satisfactorily explained, and on October 7th, 1849, the poet died under painful circumstances at Baltimore.

It is frequently asserted that Poe is a single-poem poet—that he is indebted for the niche he now occupies in the Temple of Song mainly to his wonderful poem “The Raven”; and that if “The Raven” had never been written, Poe would now be remembered merely as a skilful weaver of sensational romances, who wrote passable, if somewhat fantastic, verses in his leisure moments. But those who hold this opinion not only do Poe a grave injustice, but admit themselves incapable of appreciating some of the very finest lyrics in the English language. “The Raven,” it is true, is the poem whose artificial qualities appeal most strongly to the fancy of the general reader, and for this reason, if for no other, is entitled to all due respect from the critic; but remarkable as it undoubtedly is, it is open to question whether, considered purely as a poem, it is quite on the same plane with that masterpiece of imagination “The City in the Sea,” the mystical town where “Death has reared himself a throne,” or with that exquisite lyric “The Sleeper,” in which Poe’s inimitable power as a word-painter rises to such a height that we almost seem to see the beautiful dead woman lying pale and still in her “length of tress” waiting to exchange her death-chamber

“For one more holy, This bed for one more melancholy.”

Again, if neither “The Raven” nor either of the two poems we have just mentioned had been given to the world, such productions as “The Haunted Palace,” “Annabel Lee,” and “To Helen,” to say nothing of “Israfel,” “Ulalume,” and “The Bells,” containing as they do passages of the rarest charm, would surely have sufficed to keep their author’s memory green for all time. What can one possibly desire finer of their kind than those lines from that splendid piece of verbal music, “The Haunted Palace,” which no lover of Poe can resist quoting?—

“Banners yellow, glorious, golden, On its roof did float and flow, (This—all this—was in the olden Time long ago,) And every gentle air that dallied, In that sweet day, Along the ramparts plumed and pallid, A wingèd odour went away.”

However, although, as we have said, “The Raven” is, in its poetical constituents, probably inferior to some of Poe’s other poems, yet it is in the mind of the average reader so inseparably connected with its author’s claim to rank among

“The bards sublime, Whose distant footsteps echo Through the corridors of Time,”

that it may not be out of place to say something about the way in which it came to be written. And first let us remark that the impression that still very generally prevails that “The Raven” was inspired by the death of the poet’s wife—that she is the “Lost Lenore” of the poem—is altogether erroneous, inasmuch as Virginia Poe’s death did not take place until January, 1847, while “The Raven” was first published in February, 1845—nearly two years earlier.

Poe himself, in his essay “The Philosophy of Composition,” in which he treats us to a very elaborate analysis of the methods employed in writing this poem, while ridiculing the suggestion that it was the offspring of any sudden impulse—of “any species of fine frenzy” under the influence of which poets are popularly believed to compose their masterpieces—does not admit that he is indebted for either the rhythm or the idea of “The Raven” to any extraneous sources. Several of his critics, however, regard this essay as not the least imaginative of his writings, and even hint that it is nothing more or less than an ingenious attempt to throw dust in the eyes of a too inquisitive public. One of the ablest and most discriminating of Poe’s critics, Mr. Stedman, in the admirable essay which is prefaced to Gustave Doré’s illustrations of this poem, while not going so far as this, is of the opinion that the rhythm of “The Raven” was suggested by Mrs. Browning’s (then Elizabeth Barrett) charming poem “Lady Geraldine’s Courtship,” in proof of which he points out a very remarkable similarity between certain verses in the two poems. Thus in Mrs. Browning’s poem we have:

“With a murmurous stir uncertain in the air the purple curtain Swelleth in and swelleth out around her motionless pale brows.”

While in “The Raven” we find:

“And the silken sad uncertain rustling of each purple curtain Thrilled me—filled me with fantastic terrors never felt before.”

The fact that it was very largely due to the influence of Poe that Mrs. Browning’s works received such a favourable reception in America (she was a frequent contributor to “Graham’s Magazine” while it was edited by him); that he always professed the most intense admiration both for her genius and her lyrical methods; and that he subsequently dedicated to her, as “the noblest of her sex,” “The Raven and Other Poems,” would certainly seem to lend colour to this suggestion. Mr. Stedman, it may be added, does not insinuate that there is anything in this similarity which can possibly be construed into an act of plagiarism on the part of the American writer; indeed, the whole motive of the two poems—the one a love-story pure and simple with an ideal ending; the other a weird, fantastic creation, breathing an atmosphere of doubt and despair, of desires unfulfilled and hope abandoned—is altogether different.

Another theory, propounded by Mr. Ingram, who has, perhaps, done more than anyone to vindicate the memory of Poe from the calumnies of his _soi-disant_ biographer, Griswold, is that the inspiration of “The Raven” is to be found in a poem called “Isidore,” which was contributed by Albert Pike, the Arkansas poet, to “The New Mirror,” at a time when Poe was writing for the same journal. In this poem a bird “whose song enhances depression”—a mocking-bird to wit—also figures, while the refrain is not unlike that of “The Raven.” However, even if we are prepared to admit that “The Raven” is not so entirely the fruit of its author’s imagination as was at first supposed, this fact does not sensibly detract from the merits of a work which must always retain its place amongst the masterpieces of English verse.

Poe then, as we have endeavoured to show, is very far from being a single-poem poet; but, on the other hand, he is undoubtedly the poet of a single mood—a mood which by no stretch of the imagination can be called a pleasing one in the ordinary acceptation of the term, but withal so striking and so original as to command—nay, even to compel—the reader’s attention. Poe does not sing of “emerald fields” and “ambient streams,” like Wordsworth; of wide, rolling prairies and dense forests of murmuring pines, like Longfellow; of “stainless knights” and “lily maids,” like Tennyson; nor of love both within and without the limits of the conscience, like Byron. No, his theme is a widely different one from all these. As with his prose romances so with his poetry. Just as in his romances he concerns himself in the main with subjects which most writers of fiction leave severely alone—with death in strange and awful forms; with the horrors of insanity and remorse; with men who under mesmeric influences continue to speak long after the King of Terrors has laid his icy finger upon them; with others who are prematurely buried, and who explore the secrets of the charnel-house—in a word, with what his friend honest John Kennedy called “the terrific”: so in his poetry his song is of phantom cities sinking into fathomless seas; of demon shapes flitting through enchanted palaces; of ghoul-haunted tarns; of “sheeted memories of the past”; of loved ones who have been taken from us, and of the utter hopelessness of reunion with them in “the distant Aidenn.” Sadness, as we have said elsewhere, is the dominant note of all his poetry; but sadness, as he himself tells us in his “Philosophy of Composition,” was his conception of the highest tone of Beauty, and therefore the most legitimate of all the poetical tones. Thus we understand why it is that the death of a beautiful woman—the saddest of all losses—forms the burden of so many of his finest lyrics. How different is all this from Shelley, who defines poetry as what redeems from decay the visitations of the divinity in man, and is the record of the best and happiest moments of the best and happiest minds; and yet Poe in his earlier efforts, such as “Tamerlane” and “Al Aaraaf,” was obviously the disciple of Shelley!

As we read these wonderful poems we are alternately repelled and attracted; still, strive as we may, we cannot escape the spell of those weird, mystic measures. When once we begin a poem, whether it be “The Raven,” “The City in the Sea,” or even “The Conqueror Worm,” we are compelled, in spite of ourselves, to read on to the end; and when the end is reached, it is not seldom with a sigh of regret that we close the book.

Poe confined himself almost entirely to simple ballad forms—which is the case even in poems like “Ulalume” and “The Bells,” where the measures certainly seem at first sight to be somewhat intricate—and relied for his effect upon the melody. With him everything was subordinate to sound. Here and there, as in “Ulalume,” it must be admitted that, in striving to please the ear, he approaches perilously near the point where “sense swoons into nonsense”; but, on the whole, as a melodist he achieved wonders, and no poet has used the refrain and the repetend in quite the same way or so effectively. What, for instance, in “The Bells” could possibly be more telling than the constant repetition of the word which gives its name to the poem? The repetend, his free use of which did so much for the success of “The Raven,” he employed even more lavishly in some of his later poems, such as “Lenore,” “Annabel Lee,” “Ulalume,” and “For Annie,” and with the happiest results. Thus:

“An anthem for the queenliest dead that ever died so young— A dirge for her the doubly dead in that she died so young.”

And again:

“It was hard by the dim lake of Auber, In the misty mid region of Weir— It was down by the dank tarn of Auber, In the ghoul-haunted woodland of Weir.”

In the management of his metres, too, Poe stands almost without a rival. Unlike the majority of poets, who, in determining the length of a poem, are guided by the sense rather than by the sound, he regarded the melody as of equal if not of primary importance, and one famous critic has declared that “it would be impossible to omit a line or stanza without injuring the metrical as well as the intelligible effect.”

Regret is often expressed that—with the single exception of “Al Aaraaf,” which, however, was written when his intellect was still in its adolescent stage, and has done comparatively little to enhance his reputation—Poe, almost alone among the great poets of the nineteenth century, should never have given us a poem of any considerable length. But as a journalistic hack, forced to write by the column for his daily bread, Poe had but scant leisure for the composition of a “Childe Harold,” an “Endymion,” or a “Hiawatha,” and, moreover, it is extremely doubtful whether, even if the range of his possibilities had not been limited by his poverty, he would have done so, as he seems to have had a most profound contempt for prolixity in poetry. In his essay, “The Poetic Principle,” he maintains that “the phrase ‘a long poem’ is simply a flat contradiction in terms,”—that a poem deserves its title only inasmuch as it excites by elevating the soul; and that, as all such emotions are, by a psychical necessity, transient, it is obviously impossible for the necessary degree of excitement to be maintained throughout a composition of any great length. “After the lapse of half an hour at the very utmost,” he says, “it flags—fails—a revulsion ensues—and then the poem is, in effect and in fact, no longer such.” This theory of Poe’s gave rise to much hostile criticism, and justly so; still, it cannot be doubted that the time-honoured notion that no poem can be termed great that is not a long one, and no poet worthy of the name who has not written a long poem, has deprived the world of much fine lyric poetry by compelling able men to expend their time and energy in the production of bulky epics, for which in many cases their genius was but ill-adapted, instead of confining themselves to the lighter forms of verse. While thus condemning prolixity, however, Poe does not deny that a poem may be “improperly brief,” and thus “degenerate into mere epigrammatism”; and that “a _very_ short poem,” however great its intrinsic merits may be, can never hope to produce a profound or a lasting effect. He mentions Shelley’s exquisite “Lines to an Indian Air,” and his own friend Willis’s pathetic ballad, “Unseen Spirits,” as instances of poems which had failed to receive adequate recognition by reason of undue brevity.

The secret of Poe’s hostility to the long poem is probably to be found in the fact that he had the strongest possible aversion to the introduction of metaphysics into poetry, which he regarded as the “child of Taste,” whose sole function ought to be “the rhythmical creation of Beauty”; and the long poem had to a very large extent become identified with the Didactic school of poets, of which Wordsworth was the principal exponent.

Poe was not the first to raise a protest against what he termed “the _heresy_ of the Didactic.” Years before, Keats had declared that “people hated poetry that had a palpable design upon them,” and that “poetry should be great and unobtrusive.” Poe, however, went very much farther than the author of “Endymion” would have been likely to accompany him, for he maintains that “poetry has only collateral relations with the intellect and the conscience, and, unless incidentally, no concern whatever with either duty or truth.” To anyone who has even a superficial acquaintance with the great masters of verse the fallacy of such a proposition is obvious. Without the conception of duty and of truth, from which spring noble passions and great deeds—religious enthusiasm, love of humanity, love of liberty, self-sacrifice, loyalty, and patriotism—we should have had no Æschylus, no Sophocles, no Euripides, no Homer, no Shakespeare, no Milton, and no Tennyson—which reflection may enable us to bear with comparative equanimity the platitudes of the latter-day poet.

What Poe might have done or have left undone, had not “unmerciful Disaster” dogged his footsteps, and carried him off, as it had carried off Burns, and Keats, and Shelley, and Byron, and many another child of genius, before he had reached the meridian of his days, it were idle to speculate; but this much is certain—that, when the works of far greater poets have fallen into neglect, Poe will still be read and still appreciated, for, in the domain which he made so peculiarly his own, it is hardly possible to imagine that he will ever have to encounter anything approaching serious rivalry, while the feelings which he appeals to are universal.

NOEL WILLIAMS.

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PREFACE AND DEDICATION OF VOLUME OF 1845

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PREFACE

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These trifles are collected and republished chiefly with a view to their redemption from the many improvements to which they have been subjected while going at random the “rounds of the press.” I am naturally anxious that what I have written should circulate as I wrote it, if it circulate at all. In defence of my own taste, nevertheless, it is incumbent upon me to say that I think nothing in this volume of much value to the public, or very creditable to myself. Events not to be controlled have prevented me from making, at any time, any serious effort in what, under happier circumstances, would have been the field of my choice. With me poetry has been not a purpose, but a passion; and the passions should be held in reverence: they must not—they cannot at will be excited, with an eye to the paltry compensations, or the more paltry commendations, of mankind.

E. A. P.

1845.

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DEDICATION OF THE VOLUME OF 1845

TO THE NOBLEST OF HER SEX—

TO THE AUTHOR OF “THE DRAMA OF EXILE”—

TO MISS ELIZABETH BARRETT BARRETT, OF ENGLAND,

_I DEDICATE THIS VOLUME_

WITH THE MOST ENTHUSIASTIC ADMIRATION AND WITH THE MOST SINCERE ESTEEM.

E. A. P.

Poems

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THE RAVEN

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Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary, Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore— While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping, As of some one gently rapping—rapping at my chamber door. “’Tis some visitor,” I muttered, “tapping at my chamber door— Only this and nothing more.”

Ah, distinctly I remember, it was in the bleak December, And each separate dying ember wrought its ghost upon the floor. Eagerly I wished the morrow;—vainly I had sought to borrow From my books surcease of sorrow—sorrow for the lost Lenore— For the rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name Lenore— Nameless here for evermore.

And the silken sad uncertain rustling of each purple curtain Thrilled me—filled me with fantastic terrors never felt before; So that now, to still the beating of my heart, I stood repeating “’Tis some visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door— Some late visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door;— This it is and nothing more.”

Presently my soul grew stronger; hesitating then no longer, “Sir,” said I, “or Madam, truly your forgiveness I implore; But the fact is I was napping, and so gently you came rapping, And so faintly you came tapping—tapping at my chamber door, That I scarce was sure I heard you”—here I opened wide the door:— Darkness there and nothing more.

Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there wondering, fearing, Doubting, dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared to dream before; But the silence was unbroken, and the darkness gave no token, And the only word there spoken was the whispered word, “Lenore!” This I whispered, and an echo murmured back the word, “Lenore!” Merely this and nothing more.

Back into the chamber turning, all my soul within me burning, Soon I heard again a tapping, somewhat louder than before. “Surely,” said I, “surely that is something at my window lattice; Let me see, then, what thereat is, and this mystery explore— Let my heart be still a moment, and this mystery explore;— ’Tis the wind and nothing more.”

Open here I flung the shutter, when, with many a flirt and flutter, In there stepped a stately Raven of the saintly days of yore; Not the least obeisance made he; not an instant stopped or stayed he; But, with mien of lord or lady, perched above my chamber door— Perched upon a bust of Pallas just above my chamber door— Perched, and sat, and nothing more.

Then this ebony bird beguiling my sad fancy into smiling, By the grave and stern decorum of the countenance it wore, “Though thy crest be shorn and shaven, thou,” I said, “art sure no craven, Ghastly grim and ancient Raven wandering from the Nightly shore— Tell me what thy lordly name is on the Night’s Plutonian shore!” Quoth the Raven, “Nevermore.”

Much I marvelled this ungainly fowl to hear discourse so plainly, Though its answer little meaning—little relevancy bore; For we cannot help agreeing that no living human being Ever yet was blessed with seeing bird above his chamber door— Bird or beast upon the sculptured bust above his chamber door, With such name as “Nevermore.”

But the Raven, sitting lonely on that placid bust, spoke only That one word, as if his soul in that one word he did outpour. Nothing further then he uttered—not a feather then he fluttered— Till I scarcely more than muttered, “Other friends have flown before— On the morrow _he_ will leave me, as my hopes have flown before.” Then the bird said, “Nevermore.”

Startled at the stillness broken by reply so aptly spoken, “Doubtless,” said I, “what it utters is its only stock and store, Caught from some unhappy master whom unmerciful Disaster Followed fast and followed faster till his songs one burden bore— Till the dirges of his Hope the melancholy burden bore Of ‘Never—nevermore.’”

But the Raven still beguiling all my sad soul into smiling, Straight I wheeled a cushioned seat in front of bird and bust and door; Then, upon the velvet sinking, I betook myself to linking Fancy unto fancy, thinking what this ominous bird of yore— What this grim, ungainly, ghastly, gaunt, and ominous bird of yore Meant in croaking “Nevermore.”

[Illustration: THE NIGHT’S]

[Illustration: PLUTONIAN SHORE]

This I sat engaged in guessing, but no syllable expressing To the fowl whose fiery eyes now burned into my bosom’s core; This and more I sat divining, with my head at ease reclining On the cushion’s velvet lining that the lamp-light gloated o’er, But whose velvet violet lining with the lamp-light gloating o’er, _She_ shall press, ah, nevermore!

Then, methought, the air grew denser, perfumed from an unseen censer Swung by Seraphim whose foot-falls tinkled on the tufted floor. “Wretch,” I cried, “thy God hath lent thee—by these angels he hath sent thee Respite—respite and nepenthe from thy memories of Lenore! Quaff, oh quaff this kind nepenthe, and forget this lost Lenore!” Quoth the Raven, “Nevermore.”

“Prophet!” said I, “thing of evil!—prophet still, if bird or devil!— Whether Tempter sent, or whether tempest tossed thee here ashore, Desolate yet all undaunted, on this desert land enchanted— On this home by Horror haunted—tell me truly, I implore— Is there—_is_ there balm in Gilead?—tell me—tell me, I implore!” Quoth the Raven, “Nevermore.”

“Prophet!” said I, “thing of evil!—prophet still, if bird or devil! By that Heaven that bends above us—by that God we both adore— Tell this soul with sorrow laden if, within the distant Aidenn, It shall clasp a sainted maiden whom the angels name Lenore— Clasp a rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name Lenore.” Quoth the Raven, “Nevermore.”

“Be that word our sign of parting, bird or fiend!” I shrieked, upstarting— “Get thee back into the tempest and the Night’s Plutonian shore! Leave no black plume as a token of that lie thy soul hath spoken! Leave my loneliness unbroken!—quit the bust above my door! Take thy beak from out my heart, and take thy form from off my door!” Quoth the Raven, “Nevermore.”

And the Raven, never flitting, still is sitting, still is sitting On the pallid bust of Pallas just above my chamber door; And his eyes have all the seeming of a demon’s that is dreaming, And the lamp-light o’er him streaming throws his shadow on the floor; And my soul from out that shadow that lies floating on the floor Shall be lifted—nevermore!

THE BELLS

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[Illustration: THE BELLS]

I

Hear the sledges with the bells— Silver bells! What a world of merriment their melody foretells! How they tinkle, tinkle, tinkle, In the icy air of night! While the stars, that oversprinkle All the heavens, seem to twinkle With a crystalline delight; Keeping time, time, time, In a sort of Runic rhyme, To the tintinnabulation that so musically wells From the bells, bells, bells, bells, Bells, bells, bells— From the jingling and the tinkling of the bells.

II

Hear the mellow wedding bells, Golden bells! What a world of happiness their harmony foretells! Through the balmy air of night How they ring out their delight! From the molten-golden notes, And all in tune, What a liquid ditty floats To the turtle-dove that listens, while she gloats On the moon!

Oh, from out the sounding cells, What a gush of euphony voluminously wells How it swells! How it dwells On the future! how it tells Of the rapture that impels To the swinging and the ringing Of the bells, bells, bells, Of the bells, bells, bells, bells, Bells, bells, bells— To the rhyming and the chiming of the bells!

III

Hear the loud alarum bells— Brazen bells! What a tale of terror now their turbulency tells! In the startled ear of night How they scream out their affright! Too much horrified to speak, They can only shriek, shriek, Out of tune, In a clamorous appealing to the mercy of the fire, In a mad expostulation with the deaf and frantic fire, Leaping higher, higher, higher, With a desperate desire, And a resolute endeavour Now—now to sit or never, By the side of the pale-faced moon. Oh, the bells, bells, bells! What a tale their terror tells Of Despair! How they clang, and crash, and roar! What a horror they outpour On the bosom of the palpitating air! Yet the ear it fully knows, By the twanging, And the clanging, How the danger ebbs and flows; Yet the ear distinctly tells, In the jangling, And the wrangling, How the danger sinks and swells, By the sinking or the swelling in the anger of the bells— Of the bells— Of the bells, bells, bells, bells, Bells, bells, bells— In the clamour and the clangour of the bells!

[Illustration]

IV

Hear the tolling of the bells— Iron bells! What a world of solemn thought their monody compels! In the silence of the night, How we shiver with affright At the melancholy menace of their tone! For every sound that floats From the rust within their throats Is a groan. And the people—ah, the people— They that dwell up in the steeple, All alone, And who tolling, tolling, tolling, In that muffled monotone, Feel a glory in so rolling On the human heart a stone— They are neither man nor woman— They are neither brute nor human— They are Ghouls: And their king it is who tolls; And he rolls, rolls, rolls, Rolls A pæan from the bells! And his merry bosom swells With the pæan of the bells! And he dances, and he yells; Keeping time, time, time, In a sort of Runic rhyme, To the pæan of the bells— Of the bells: Keeping time, time, time, In a sort of Runic rhyme, To the throbbing of the bells— Of the bells, bells, bells— To the sobbing of the bells; Keeping time, time, time, As he knells, knells, knells, In a happy Runic rhyme, To the rolling of the bells— Of the bells, bells, bells— To the tolling of the bells, Of the bells, bells, bells, bells, Bells, bells, bells— To the moaning and the groaning of the bells.

[Illustration]

ULALUME

[Illustration]

The skies they were ashen and sober; The leaves they were crispèd and sere— The leaves they were withering and sere; It was night in the lonesome October Of my most immemorial year; It was hard by the dim lake of Auber, In the misty mid region of Weir— It was down by the dank tarn of Auber, In the ghoul-haunted woodland of Weir.

Here once, through an alley Titanic, Of cypress, I roamed with my Soul— Of cypress, with Psyche, my Soul. These were days when my heart was volcanic As the scoriac rivers that roll— As the lavas that restlessly roll Their sulphurous currents down Yaanek In the ultimate climes of the pole— That groan as they roll down Mount Yaanek In the realms of the boreal pole.

Our talk had been serious and sober, But our thoughts they were palsied and sere— Our memories were treacherous and sere— For we knew not the month was October, And we marked not the night of the year— (Ah, night of all nights in the year!) We noted not the dim lake of Auber— (Though once we had journeyed down here)— Remembered not the dank tarn of Auber, Nor the ghoul-haunted woodland of Weir.

And now, as the night was senescent And star-dials pointed to morn— As the sun-dials hinted of morn— At the end of our path a liquescent And nebulous lustre was born, Out of which a miraculous crescent Arose with a duplicate horn— Astarte’s bediamonded crescent Distinct with its duplicate horn.

[Illustration: ASTARTE]

And I said—“She is warmer than Dian: She rolls through an ether of sighs— She revels in a region of sighs: She has seen that the tears are not dry on These cheeks, where the worm never dies, And has come past the stars of the Lion To point us the path to the skies— To the Lethean peace of the skies— Come up, in despite of the Lion, To shine on us with her bright eyes— Come up through the lair of the Lion, With love in her luminous eyes.”

But Psyche, uplifting her finger, Said—“Sadly this star I mistrust— Her pallor I strangely mistrust:— Oh, hasten!—oh, let us not linger! Oh, fly!—let us fly!—for we must.” In terror she spoke, letting sink her Wings till they trailed in the dust— In agony sobbed, letting sink her Plumes till they trailed in the dust— Till they sorrowfully trailed in the dust.

[Illustration]

I replied—“This is nothing but dreaming: Let us on by this tremulous light! Let us bathe in this crystalline light! Its Sibyllic splendour is beaming With Hope and in Beauty to-night:— See!—it flickers up the sky through the night! Ah, we safely may trust to its gleaming, And be sure it will lead us aright— We safely may trust to a gleaming That cannot but guide us aright, Since it flickers up to Heaven through the night.”

Thus I pacified Psyche and kissed her, And tempted her out of her gloom— And conquered her scruples and gloom; And we passed to the end of a vista, But were stopped by the door of a tomb— By the door of a legended tomb; And I said—“What is written, sweet sister, On the door of this legended tomb?” She replied—“Ulalume—Ulalume— ’Tis the vault of thy lost Ulalume!”

Then my heart it grew ashen and sober As the leaves that were crispèd and sere— As the leaves that were withering and sere; And I cried—“It was surely October On _this_ very night of last year That I journeyed—I journeyed down here— That I brought a dread burden down here! On this night of all nights in the year, Ah, what demon has tempted me here? Well I know, now, this dim lake of Auber— This misty mid region of Weir— Well I know, now, this dank tarn of Auber,— This ghoul-haunted woodland of Weir.”

[Illustration: ULALUME.]

BRIDAL BALLAD

[Illustration]

The ring is on my hand, And the wreath is on my brow; Satins and jewels grand Are all at my command, And I am happy now.

And my lord he loves me well; But, when first he breathed his vow, I felt my bosom swell— For the words rang as a knell, And the voice seemed _his_ who fell In the battle down the dell, And who is happy now.

But he spoke to reassure me, And he kissed my pallid brow, While a reverie came o’er me, And to the churchyard bore me, And I sighed to him before me, Thinking him dead D’Elormie, “Oh, I am happy now!”

And thus the words were spoken, And thus the plighted vow, And, though my faith be broken, And, though my heart be broken, Behold the golden token That _proves_ me happy now!

Would to God I could awaken! For I dream I know not how, And my soul is sorely shaken Lest an evil step be taken,— Lest the dead who is forsaken May not be happy now.

LENORE

[Illustration]

Ah, broken is the golden bowl! the spirit flown for ever! Let the bell toll!—a saintly soul floats on the Stygian river. And, Guy de Vere, hast _thou_ no tear?—weep now or never more! See! on yon drear and rigid bier low lies thy love, Lenore! Come! let the burial rite be read—the funeral song be sung!— An anthem for the queenliest dead that ever died so young— A dirge for her, the doubly dead in that she died so young.

“Wretches! ye loved her for her wealth and hated her for her pride, And when she fell in feeble health, ye blessed her— that she died! How _shall_ the ritual, then, be read?—the requiem how be sung By you—by yours, the evil eye,—by yours, the slanderous tongue That did to death the innocence that died, and died so young?”

[Illustration: LENORE]

_Peccavimus_; but rave not thus! and let a Sabbath song Go up to God so solemnly the dead may feel no wrong! The sweet Lenore hath “gone before,” with Hope, that flew beside, Leaving thee wild for the dear child that should have been thy bride— For her, the fair and _débonnaire_, that now so lowly lies, The life upon her yellow hair but not within her eyes— The life still there, upon her hair—the death upon her eyes.

“Avaunt! to-night my heart is light. No dirge will I upraise, But waft the angel on her flight with a pæan of old days! Let _no_ bell toll!—lest her sweet soul, amid its hallowed mirth, Should catch the note, as it doth float up from the damnèd Earth. To friends above, from fiends below, the indignant ghost is riven— From Hell unto a high estate far up within the Heaven— From grief and groan to a golden throne beside the King of Heaven.”

A VALENTINE

For her this rhyme is penned, whose luminous eyes, Brightly expressive as the twins of Leda, Shall find her own sweet name, that nestling lies Upon the page, enwrapped from every reader. Search narrowly the lines!—they hold a treasure Divine—a talisman—an amulet That must be worn _at heart_. Search well the measure— The words—the syllables! Do not forget The trivialest point, or you may lose your labour! And yet there is in this no Gordian knot Which one might not undo without a sabre, If one could merely comprehend the plot. Enwritten upon the leaf where now are peering Eyes scintillating soul, there lie _perdus_ Three eloquent words oft uttered in the hearing Of poets by poets—as the name is a poet’s, too. Its letters, although naturally lying Like the knight Pinto—Mendez Ferdinando— Still form a synonym for Truth—Cease trying! You will not read the riddle, though you do the best you _can_ do.

[To find the name, read the first letter of the first line in connection with the second letter of the second line, the third letter of the third line, the fourth of the fourth, and so on to the end.]

[Illustration]

[Illustration: A VALENTINE]

AN ENIGMA

[Illustration]

“Seldom we find,” says Solomon Don Dunce, “Half an idea in the profoundest sonnet. Through all the flimsy things we see at once As easily as through a Naples bonnet— Trash of all trash!—how _can_ a lady don it? Yet heavier far than your Petrarchan stuff— Owl-downy nonsense that the faintest puff Twirls into trunk-paper the while you con it.” And, veritably, Sol is right enough. The general tuckermanities are arrant Bubbles—ephemeral and _so_ transparent— But _this_ is, now—you may depend upon it— Stable, opaque, immortal—all by dint Of the dear names that lie concealed within ’t.

[To find the name, read as in the preceding poem.]

TO HELEN

[Illustration]

I saw thee once—once only—years ago: I must not say how many—but not many. It was a July midnight; and from out A full-orbed moon, that, like thine own soul, soaring, Sought a precipitate pathway up through heaven, There fell a silvery-silken veil of light, With quietude, and sultriness and slumber, Upon the upturn’d faces of a thousand Roses that grew in an enchanted garden, Where no wind dared to stir, unless on tiptoe— Fell on the upturn’d faces of these roses That gave out, in return for the love-light, Their odorous souls in an ecstatic death— Fell on the upturn’d faces of these roses That smiled and died in this parterre, enchanted By thee, and by the poetry of thy presence. Clad all in white, upon a violet bank I saw thee half-reclining; while the moon Fell on the upturn’d faces of the roses, And on thine own, upturn’d—alas, in sorrow!

Was it not Fate, that, on this July midnight— Was it not Fate (whose name is also Sorrow), That bade me pause before that garden-gate, To breathe the incense of those slumbering roses? No footstep stirred: the hated world all slept, Save only thee and me—(O Heaven!—O God! How my heart beats in coupling those two words!)— Save only thee and me. I paused—I looked— And in an instant all things disappeared. (Ah, bear in mind this garden was enchanted!) The pearly lustre of the moon went out: The mossy banks and the meandering paths, The happy flowers and the repining trees, Were seen no more: the very roses’ odours Died in the arms of the adoring airs. All—all expired save thee—save less than thou: Save only the divine light in thine eyes— Save but the soul in thine uplifted eyes. I saw but them—they were the world to me. I saw but them—saw only them for hours— Saw only them until the moon went down. What wild heart-histories seemed to lie enwritten Upon those crystalline, celestial spheres! How dark a woe! yet how sublime a hope! How silently serene a sea of pride! How daring an ambition! yet how deep— How fathomless a capacity for love!

But now, at length, dear Dian sank from sight, Into a western couch of thunder-cloud; And thou, a ghost, amid the entombing trees Didst glide away. _Only thine eyes remained._ They _would not_ go—they never yet have gone. Lighting my lonely pathway home that night, _They_ have not left me (as my hopes have) since. They follow me—they lead me through the years. They are my ministers—yet I their slave. Their office is to illumine and enkindle— My duty, _to be saved_ by their bright light, And purified in their electric fire, And sanctified in their elysian fire. They fill my soul with Beauty (which is Hope), And are far up in Heaven—the stars I kneel to In the sad, silent watches of my night; While even in the meridian glare of day I see them still—two sweetly scintillant Venuses, unextinguished by the sun!

[Illustration]

ANNABEL LEE

[Illustration]

It was many and many a year ago In a kingdom by the sea, That a maiden there lived whom you may know By the name of ANNABEL LEE; And this maiden she lived with no other thought Than to love and be loved by me.

_I_ was a child and _she_ was a child, In this kingdom by the sea: But we loved with a love that was more than love— I and my ANNABEL LEE; With a love that the wingèd seraphs of heaven Coveted her and me.

And this was the reason that, long ago, In this kingdom by the sea, A wind blew out of a cloud, chilling My beautiful ANNABEL LEE; So that her highborn kinsmen came And bore her away from me, To shut her up in a sepulchre In this kingdom by the sea.

The angels, not half so happy in heaven, Went envying her and me— Yes!—that was the reason (as all men know, In this kingdom by the sea) That the wind came out of the cloud by night, Chilling and killing my ANNABEL LEE.

But our love it was stronger by far than the love Of those who were older than we— Of many far wiser than we— And neither the angels in heaven above, Nor the demons down under the sea, Can ever dissever my soul from the soul Of the beautiful ANNABEL LEE.

For the moon never beams without bringing me dreams Of the beautiful ANNABEL LEE; And the stars never rise but I see the bright eyes Of the beautiful ANNABEL LEE; And so, all the night-tide, I lie down by the side Of my darling—my darling—my life and my bride, In her sepulchre there by the sea— In her tomb by the side of the sea.

FOR ANNIE

[Illustration]

Thank Heaven! the crisis— The danger is past, And the lingering illness Is over at last— And the fever called “Living” Is conquered at last.

Sadly, I know, I am shorn of my strength, And no muscle I move As I lie at full length— But no matter!—I feel I am better at length.

And I rest so composedly, Now in my bed, That any beholder Might fancy me dead— Might start at beholding me, Thinking me dead.

The moaning and groaning, The sighing and sobbing, Are quieted now, With that horrible throbbing At heart:—ah, that horrible, Horrible throbbing!

The sickness—the nausea— The pitiless pain— Have ceased, with the fever That maddened my brain— With the fever called “Living” That burned in my brain.

And oh! of all tortures _That_ torture the worst Has abated—the terrible Torture of thirst For the naphthaline river Of Passion accurst: I have drank of a water That quenches all thirst:—

Of a water that flows, With a lullaby sound, From a spring but a very few Feet under ground— From a cavern not very far Down under ground.

And ah! let it never Be foolishly said That my room it is gloomy And narrow my bed— For man never slept In a different bed; And, to _sleep_, you must slumber In just such a bed.

My tantalised spirit Here blandly reposes, Forgetting, or never Regretting its roses— Its old agitations Of myrtles and roses:

For now, while so quietly Lying, it fancies A holier odour About it, of pansies— A rosemary odour, Commingled with pansies— With rue and the beautiful Puritan pansies.

And so it lies happily, Bathing in many A dream of the truth And the beauty of Annie— Drowned in a bath Of the tresses of Annie.

She tenderly kissed me, She fondly caressed, And then I fell gently To sleep on her breast— Deeply to sleep From the heaven of her breast.

When the light was extinguished She covered me warm, And she prayed to the angels To keep me from harm— To the queen of the angels To shield me from harm.

And I lie so composedly, Now in my bed, (Knowing her love) That you fancy me dead— And I rest so contentedly, Now in my bed, (With her love at my breast) That you fancy me dead— That you shudder to look at me, Thinking me dead.

But my heart it is brighter Than all of the many Stars in the sky, For it sparkles with Annie— It glows with the light Of the love of my Annie— With the thought of the light Of the eyes of my Annie.

[Illustration]

TO F—S S. O—D

[Illustration]

Thou wouldst be loved?—then let thy heart From its present pathway part not; Being everything which now thou art, Be nothing which thou art not. So with the world thy gentle ways, Thy grace, thy more than beauty, Shall be an endless theme of praise, And love a simple duty.

TO —— ——

Not long ago, the writer of these lines, In the mad pride of intellectuality, Maintained “the power of words”—denied that ever A thought arose within the human brain Beyond the utterance of the human tongue: And now, as if in mockery of that boast, Two words—two foreign soft dissyllables— Italian tones, made only to be murmured By angels dreaming in the moonlit “dew That hangs like chains of pearl on Hermon hill,”— Have stirred from out the abysses of his heart, Unthought-like thoughts that are the souls of thought, Richer, far wilder, far diviner visions Than even the seraph harper, Israfel, (Who has “the sweetest voice of all God’s creatures,”) Could hope to utter. And I! my spells are broken. The pen falls powerless from my shivering hand. With thy dear name as text, though bidden by thee, I cannot write—I cannot speak or think— Alas, I cannot feel; for ’tis not feeling, This standing motionless upon the golden Threshold of the wide-open gate of dreams, Gazing, entranced, adown the gorgeous vista, And thrilling as I see, upon the right, Upon the left, and all the way along, Amid empurpled vapours, far away To where the prospect terminates—_thee only!_

[Illustration]

THE CITY IN THE SEA

[Illustration]

Lo! Death has reared himself a throne In a strange city lying alone Far down within the dim West, Where the good and the bad and the worst and the best Have gone to their eternal rest. There shrines and palaces and towers (Time-eaten towers that tremble not!) Resemble nothing that is ours. Around, by lifting winds forgot, Resignedly beneath the sky The melancholy waters lie.

No rays from the holy Heaven come down On the long night-time of that town; But light from out the lurid sea Streams up the turrets silently— Gleams up the pinnacles far and free— Up domes—up spires—up kingly halls— Up fanes—up Babylon-like walls— Up shadowy long-forgotten bowers Of sculptured ivy and stone flowers— Up many and many a marvellous shrine, Whose wreathèd friezes intertwine The viol, the violet, and the vine.

Resignedly beneath the sky The melancholy waters lie. So blend the turrets and shadows there That all seem pendulous in air, While from a proud tower in the town Death looks gigantically down.

There open fanes and gaping graves Yawn level with the luminous waves; But not the riches there that lie In each idol’s diamond eye— Not the gaily-jewelled dead Tempt the waters from their bed; For no ripples curl, alas! Along that wilderness of glass— No swellings tell that winds may be Upon some far-off happier sea— No heavings hint that winds have been On seas less hideously serene.

But lo, a stir is in the air! The wave—there is a movement there! As if the towers had thrust aside, In slightly sinking, the dull tide— As if their tops had feebly given A void within the filmy Heaven. The waves have now a redder glow— The hours are breathing faint and low— And when, amid no earthly moans, Down, down that town shall settle hence, Hell, rising from a thousand thrones, Shall do it reverence.

[Illustration]

THE CONQUEROR WORM

Lo! ’tis a gala night Within the lonesome latter years! An angel throng, bewinged, bedight In veils, and drowned in tears, Sit in a theatre, to see A play of hopes and fears, While the orchestra breathes fitfully The music of the spheres.

Mimes, in the form of God on high, Mutter and mumble low, And hither and thither fly— Mere puppets they, who come and go At bidding of vast formless things That shift the scenery to and fro, Flapping from out their Condor wings Invisible Woe!

[Illustration: WITH ITS PHANTOM CHASED FOR EVERMORE BY A CROWD THAT SEIZE IT NOT]

That motley drama—oh, be sure It shall not be forgot! With its Phantom chased for evermore, By a crowd that seize it not, Through a circle that ever returneth in To the self-same spot, And much of Madness, and more of Sin, And Horror the soul of the plot.

But see, amid the mimic rout A crawling shape intrude! A blood-red thing that writhes from out The scenic solitude! It writhes!—it writhes!—with mortal pangs The mimes become its food, And the angels sob at vermin fangs In human gore imbued.

Out—out are the lights—out all! And, over each quivering form, The curtain, a funeral pall, Comes down with the rush of a storm, And the angels, all pallid and wan, Uprising, unveiling, affirm That the play is the tragedy, “Man,” And its hero the Conqueror Worm.

[Illustration]

The SLEEPER

[Illustration]

At midnight, in the month of June, I stand beneath the mystic moon. An opiate vapour, dewy, dim, Exhales from out her golden rim, And, softly dripping, drop by drop, Upon the quiet mountain top, Steals drowsily and musically Into the universal valley. The rosemary nods upon the grave; The lily lolls upon the wave; Wrapping the fog about its breast, The ruin moulders into rest; Looking like Lethe, see! the lake A conscious slumber seems to take, And would not, for the world, awake. All Beauty sleeps!—and lo! where lies (Her casement open to the skies) Irene, with her Destinies!

Oh, lady bright! can it be right— This window open to the night? The wanton airs, from the tree-top, Laughingly through the lattice drop— The bodiless airs, a wizard rout, Flit through thy chamber in and out, And wave the curtain canopy So fitfully—so fearfully— Above the closed and fringed lid ’Neath which thy slumb’ring soul lies hid, That, o’er the floor and down the wall, Like ghosts the shadows rise and fall! Oh, lady dear, hast thou no fear? Why and what art thou dreaming here? Sure thou art come o’er far-off seas, A wonder to these garden trees! Strange is thy pallor! strange thy dress! Strange, above all, thy length of tress, And this all-solemn silentness!

[Illustration]

The lady sleeps! Oh, may her sleep, Which is enduring, so be deep! Heaven have her in its sacred keep! This chamber changed for one more holy, This bed for one more melancholy, I pray to God that she may lie For ever with unopened eye, While the dim sheeted ghosts go by!

My love, she sleeps! Oh, may her sleep, As it is lasting, so be deep; Soft may the worms about her creep! Far in the forest, dim and old, For her may some tall vault unfold— Some vault that oft hath flung its black And wingèd panels fluttering back, Triumphant, o’er the crested palls, Of her grand family funerals— Some sepulchre, remote, alone, Against whose portal she hath thrown, In childhood many an idle stone— Some tomb from out whose sounding door She ne’er shall force an echo more, Thrilling to think, poor child of sin! It was the dead who groaned within.

[Illustration]

THE COLISEUM

[Illustration]

Type of the antique Rome! Rich reliquary Of lofty contemplation left to Time By buried centuries of pomp and power! At length—at length—after so many days Of weary pilgrimage and burning thirst, (Thirst for the springs of lore that in thee lie,) I kneel, an altered and an humble man, Amid thy shadows, and so drink within My very soul thy grandeur, gloom, and glory!

Vastness! and Age! and Memories of Eld! Silence! and Desolation! and dim Night! I feel ye now—I feel ye in your strength— O spells more sure than e’er Judæan king Taught in the gardens of Gethsemane! O charms more potent than the rapt Chaldee Ever drew down from out the quiet stars!

Here, where a hero fell, a column falls! Here, where the mimic eagle glared in gold, A midnight vigil holds the swarthy bat! Here, where the dames of Rome their gilded hair Waved to the wind, now wave the reed and thistle! Here, where on golden throne the monarch lolled, Glides, spectre-like, unto his marble home, Lit by the wan light of the hornèd moon, The swift and silent lizard of the stones!

But stay! these walls—these ivy-clad arcades— These mouldering plinths—these sad and blackened shafts— These vague entablatures—this crumbling frieze— These shattered cornices—this wreck—this ruin— These stones—alas! these grey stones—are they all— All of the famed, and the colossal left By the corrosive Hours to Fate and me?

“Not all”—the Echoes answer me—“not all! Prophetic sounds and loud, arise for ever From us, and from all Ruin, unto the wise, As melody from Memnon to the Sun. We rule the hearts of mightiest men—we rule With a despotic sway all giant minds. We are not impotent—we pallid stones. Not all our power is gone—not all our fame— Not all the magic of our high renown— Not all the wonder that encircles us— Not all the mysteries that in us lie— Not all the memories that hang upon And cling around about us as a garment, Clothing us in a robe of more than glory.”

DREAMLAND

By a route obscure and lonely, Haunted by ill angels only, Where an Eidolon, named NIGHT, On a black throne reigns upright, I have reached these lands but newly From an ultimate dim Thule— From a wild weird clime that lieth, sublime Out of SPACE—out of TIME.

[Illustration: WHERE AN EIDOLON NAMED NIGHT ON A BLACK THRONE REIGNS UPRIGHT]

Bottomless vales and boundless floods, And chasms, and caves, and Titan woods With forms that no man can discover For the dews that drip all over; Mountains toppling evermore Into seas without a shore; Seas that restlessly aspire, Surging, unto skies of fire; Lakes that endlessly outspread Their lone waters—lone and dead, Their still waters—still and chilly With the snows of the lolling lily.

By the lakes that thus outspread Their lone waters, lone and dead,— Their sad waters, sad and chilly With the snows of the lolling lily,— By the mountains—near the river Murmuring lowly, murmuring ever,— By the grey woods,—by the swamp Where the toad and the newt encamp,— By the dismal tarns and pools Where dwell the Ghouls,— By each spot the most unholy— In each nook most melancholy,— There the traveller meets aghast Sheeted Memories of the Past— Shrouded forms that start and sigh As they pass the wanderer by— White-robed forms of friends long given, In agony, to the Earth—and Heaven.

For the heart whose woes are legion ’Tis a peaceful, soothing region— For the spirit that walks in shadow ’Tis—oh, ’tis an Eldorado! But the traveller, travelling through it, May not—dare not openly view it; Never its mysteries are exposed To the weak human eye unclosed; So wills its King, who hath forbid The uplifting of the fringèd lid; And thus the sad Soul that here passes Beholds it but through darkened glasses.

By a route obscure and lonely, Haunted by ill angels only, Where an Eidolon, named NIGHT, On a black throne reigns upright, I have wandered home but newly From this ultimate dim Thule.

EULALIE

[Illustration]

I dwelt alone In a world of moan, And my soul was a stagnant tide, Till the fair and gentle Eulalie became my blushing bride— Till the yellow-haired young Eulalie became my smiling bride.

Ah, less—less bright The stars of the night Than the eyes of the radiant girl! And never a flake That the vapour can make With the moon-tints of purple and pearl, Can vie with the modest Eulalie’s most unregarded curl— Can compare with the bright-eyed Eulalie’s most humble and careless curl.

Now Doubt—now Pain Come never again, For her soul gives me sigh for sigh, And all day long Shines, bright and strong, Astarte within the sky, While ever to her dear Eulalie upturns her matron eye— While ever to her young Eulalie upturns her violet eye.

TO MY MOTHER

[Illustration]

Because I feel that, in the Heavens above, The angels, whispering to one another, Can find, among their burning terms of love, None so devotional as that of “Mother,” Therefore by that dear name I long have called you— You who are more than mother unto me, And fill my heart of hearts, where Death installed you, In setting my Virginia’s spirit free. My mother, my own mother, who died early, Was but the mother of myself; but you Are mother to the one I loved so dearly, And thus are dearer than the mother I knew By that infinity with which my wife Was dearer to my soul than its soul-life.

ELDORADO

Gaily bedight, A gallant knight, In sunshine and in shadow, Had journeyed long, Singing a song, In search of Eldorado.

But he grew old— This knight so bold— And o’er his heart a shadow Fell as he found No spot of ground That looked like Eldorado.

And, as his strength Failed him at length, He met a pilgrim shadow— “Shadow,” said he, “Where can it be— This land of Eldorado?”

“Over the Mountains Of the Moon, Down the Valley of the Shadow, Ride, boldly ride,” The shade replied, “If you seek for Eldorado!”

[Illustration]

[Illustration: IN SEARCH OF ELDORADO]

TO F——

[Illustration]

BELOVED! amid the earnest woes That crowd around my earthly path— (Drear path, alas! where grows Not even one lonely rose)— My soul at least a solace hath In dreams of thee, and therein knows An Eden of bland repose.

And thus thy memory is to me Like some enchanted far-off isle In some tumultuous sea— Some ocean throbbing far and free With storm—but where meanwhile Serenest skies continually Just o’er that one bright island smile.

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TO ONE IN PARADISE

Thou wast that all to me, love, For which my soul did pine— A green isle in the sea, love, A fountain and a shrine, All wreathed with fairy fruits and flowers, And all the flowers were mine.

Ah, dream too bright to last! Ah, starry Hope! that didst arise But to be overcast! A voice from out the Future cries, “On! on!”—but o’er the Past (Dim gulf!) my spirit hovering lies Mute, motionless, aghast!

For, alas! alas! with me The light of Life is o’er! “No more—no more—no more”— (Such language holds the solemn sea To the sands upon the shore) Shall bloom the thunder-blasted tree, Or the stricken eagle soar!

And all my days are trances, And all my nightly dreams Are where thy dark eye glances, And where thy footstep gleams— In what ethereal dances, By what eternal streams!

Alas! for that accursèd time They bore thee o’er the billow, From love to titled age and crime, And an unholy pillow!— From me, and from our misty clime, Where weeps the silver willow!

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HYMN

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At morn—at noon—at twilight dim— Maria! thou hast heard my hymn! In joy and woe—in good and ill— Mother of God, be with me still! When the Hours flew brightly by, And not a cloud obscured the sky, My soul, lest it should truant be, Thy grace did guide to thine and thee; Now, when storms of Fate o’ercast Darkly my Present and my Past, Let my Future radiant shine With sweet hopes of thee and thine!

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A DREAM WITHIN A DREAM

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Take this kiss upon the brow! And, in parting from you now, Thus much let me avow— You are not wrong, who deem That my days have been a dream: Yet if hope has flown away In a night, or in a day, In a vision, or in none, Is it therefore the less _gone_? _All_ that we see or seem Is but a dream within a dream.

I stand amid the roar Of a surf-tormented shore, And I hold within my hand Grains of the golden sand— How few! yet how they creep Through my fingers to the deep, While I weep—while I weep! O God! can I not grasp Them with a tighter clasp? O God! can I not save _One_ from the pitiless wave? Is _all_ that we see or seem But a dream within a dream?

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TO ZANTE

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Fair isle, that from the fairest of all flowers, Thy gentlest of all gentle names dost take! How many memories of what radiant hours At sight of thee and thine at once awake! How many scenes of what departed bliss! How many thoughts of what entombed hopes! How many visions of a maiden that is No more—no more upon thy verdant slopes! _No more!_ alas, that magical sad sound Transforming all! Thy charms shall please _no more_— Thy memory _no more!_ Accursèd ground Henceforth I hold thy flower-enamelled shore, O hyacinthine isle! O purple Zante! “Isola d’oro! Fior di Levante!”

The HAUNTED PALACE

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In the greenest of our valleys By good angels tenanted, Once a fair and stately palace— Radiant palace—reared its head. In the monarch Thought’s dominion— It stood there! Never seraph spread a pinion Over fabric half so fair!

Banners yellow, glorious, golden, On its roof did float and flow, (This—all this—was in the olden Time long ago,) And every gentle air that dallied, In that sweet day, Along the ramparts plumed and pallid, A wingèd odour went away.

Wanderers in that happy valley, Through two luminous windows, saw Spirits moving musically, To a lute’s well-tunèd law, Round about a throne where, sitting (Porphyrogene!) In state his glory well befitting, The ruler of the realm was seen.

And all with pearl and ruby glowing Was the fair palace door, Through which came flowing, flowing, flowing, And sparkling evermore, A troop of Echoes, whose sweet duty Was but to sing, In voices of surpassing beauty, The wit and wisdom of their king.

But evil things, in robes of sorrow, Assailed the monarch’s high estate; (Ah, let us mourn!—for never morrow Shall dawn upon him desolate!) And round about his home the glory That blushed and bloomed, Is but a dim-remembered story Of the old time entombed.

[Illustration: BUT EVIL THINGS, IN ROBES OF SORROW]

[Illustration: ASSAILED THE MONARCH’S HIGH ESTATE]

And travellers now within that valley, Through the red-litten windows see Vast forms that move fantastically To a discordant melody; While, like a ghastly rapid river, Through the pale door A hideous throng rush out for ever And laugh—but smile no more.

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SILENCE

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There are some qualities—some incorporate things, That have a double life, which thus is made A type of that twin entity which springs From matter and light, evinced in solid and shade. There is a two-fold _Silence_—sea and shore— Body and soul. One dwells in lonely places, Newly with grass o’ergrown; some solemn graces, Some human memories and tearful lore, Render him terrorless: his name’s “No More.” He is the corporate Silence: dread him not! No power hath he of evil in himself; But should some urgent fate (untimely lot!) Bring thee to meet his shadow (nameless elf, That haunteth the lone regions where hath trod No foot of man), commend thyself to God!

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[Illustration: SILENCE]

ISRAFEL

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And the angel Israfel, whose heart-strings are a lute, and who has the sweetest voice of all God’s creatures.—_Koran._

In Heaven a spirit doth dwell “Whose heart-strings are a lute;” None sing so wildly well As the angel Israfel, And the giddy Stars (so legends tell), Ceasing their hymns, attend the spell Of his voice, all mute.

Tottering above In her highest noon, The enamoured Moon Blushes with love, While, to listen, the red levin (With the rapid Pleiads, even, Which were seven), Pauses in Heaven.

And they say (the starry choir And the other listening things) That Israfeli’s fire Is owing to that lyre By which he sits and sings— The trembling living wire Of those unusual strings.

But the skies that angel trod, Where deep thoughts are a duty— Where Love’s a grown-up God— Where the Houri glances are Imbued with all the beauty Which we worship in a star.

Therefore, thou art not wrong, Israfeli, who despisest An unimpassioned song; To thee the laurels belong, Best bard, because the wisest! Merrily live and long!

The ecstasies above With thy burning measures suit— Thy grief, thy joy, thy hate, thy love, With the fervour of thy lute— Well may the stars be mute!

Yes, Heaven is thine; but this Is a world of sweets and sours; Our flowers are merely—flowers, And the shadow of thy perfect bliss Is the sunshine of ours.

If I could dwell Where Israfel Hath dwelt, and he where I, He might not sing so wildly well A mortal melody, While a bolder note than this might swell From my lyre within the sky.

[Illustration: ISRAFEL]

TO M. L. S——

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Of all who hail thy presence as the morning— Of all to whom thine absence is the night— The blotting utterly from out high heaven The sacred sun—of all who, weeping, bless thee Hourly for hope—for life—ah, above all, For the resurrection of deep buried faith In truth, in virtue, in humanity— Of all who, on despair’s unhallowed bed Lying down to die, have suddenly arisen At thy soft-murmured words, “Let there be light!” At thy soft-murmured words that were fulfilled In the seraphic glancing of thine eyes— Of all who owe thee most, whose gratitude Nearest resembles worship,—oh, remember The truest, the most fervently devoted, And think that these weak lines are written by him— By him who, as he pens them, thrills to think His spirit is communing with an angel’s.

The VALLEY of UNREST

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Once it smiled a silent dell Where the people did not dwell; They had gone unto the wars, Trusting to the mild-eyed stars, Nightly, from their azure towers, To keep watch above the flowers, In the midst of which all day The red sunlight lazily lay. Now each visitor shall confess The sad valley’s restlessness. Nothing there is motionless— Nothing save the airs that brood Over the magic solitude.

Ah, by no wind are stirred those trees That palpitate like the chill seas Around the misty Hebrides! Ah, by no wind those clouds are driven That rustle through the unquiet Heaven Unceasingly, from morn till even, Over the violets there that lie In myriad types of the human eye— Over the lilies there that wave And weep above a nameless grave! They wave:—from out their fragrant tops Eternal dews come down in drops. They weep:—from off their delicate stems Perennial tears descend in gems.

POEMS WRITTEN IN YOUTH

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NOTE (1845)

Private reasons—some of which have reference to the sin of plagiarism, and others to the date of Tennyson’s first poems—have induced me, after some hesitation, to republish these, the crude compositions of my earliest boyhood. They are printed _verbatim_—without alteration from the original edition—the date of which is too remote to be judiciously acknowledged.—E. A. P.

TO HELEN

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Helen, thy beauty is to me Like those Nicean barks of yore, That gently, o’er a perfumed sea, The weary, wayworn wanderer bore To his own native shore.

On desperate seas long wont to roam, Thy hyacinth hair, thy classic face, Thy Naiad airs have brought me home To the glory that was Greece, To the grandeur that was Rome.

Lo! in yon brilliant window niche, How statue-like I see thee stand, The agate lamp within thy hand! Ah, Psyche, from the regions which Are Holy Land!

SONNET—TO SCIENCE

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Science! true daughter of Old Time thou art! Who alterest all things with thy peering eyes. Why preyest thou thus upon the poet’s heart, Vulture, whose wings are dull realities? How should he love thee? or how deem thee wise, Who wouldst not leave him in his wandering To seek for treasure in the jewelled skies, Albeit he soared with an undaunted wing? Hast thou not dragged Diana from her car? And driven the Hamadryad from the wood To seek a shelter in some happier star? Hast thou not torn the Naiad from her flood, The Elfin from the green grass, and from me The summer dream beneath the tamarind tree?

SPIRITS OF THE DEAD

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Thy soul shall find itself alone ’Mid dark thoughts of the grey tomb-stone— Not one, of all the crowd, to pry Into thine hour of secrecy. Be silent in that solitude Which is not loneliness—for then The spirits of the dead who stood In life before thee are again In death around thee—and their will Shall overshadow thee: be still. The night—tho’ clear—shall frown— And the stars shall not look down From their high thrones in the Heaven, With light like Hope to mortals given— But their red orbs, without beam, To thy weariness shall seem As a burning and a fever Which would cling to thee for ever. Now are thoughts thou shalt not banish— Now are visions ne’er to vanish— From thy spirit shall they pass No more—like dew-drops from the grass. The breeze—the breath of God—is still— And the mist upon the hill Shadowy—shadowy—yet unbroken, Is a symbol and a token— How it hangs upon the trees, A mystery of mysteries!

EVENING STAR

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’Twas noontide of summer, And midtime of night, And stars, in their orbits, Shone pale, through the light Of the brighter, cold moon, ’Mid planets her slaves, Herself in the Heavens, Her beam on the waves.

I gazed awhile On her cold smile, Too cold—too cold for me; There passed, as a shroud, A fleecy cloud, And I turned away to thee, Proud Evening Star, In thy glory afar And dearer thy beam shall be; For joy to my heart Is the proud part Thou bearest in Heaven at night, And more I admire Thy distant fire, Than that colder, lowly light.

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FAIRY LAND

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Dim vales—and shadowy floods— And cloudy-looking woods, Whose forms we can’t discover For the tears that drip all over! Huge moons there wax and wane— Again—again—again— Every moment of the night— For ever changing places— And they put out the star-light With the breath from their pale faces. About twelve by the moon-dial One more filmy than the rest (A kind which, upon trial, They have found to be the best) Comes down—still down—and down With its centre on the crown Of a mountain’s eminence, While its wide circumference In easy drapery falls Over hamlets, over halls, Wherever they may be— O’er the strange woods—o’er the sea— Over spirits on the wing— Over every drowsy thing— And buries them up quite In a labyrinth of light— And then, how deep!—O, deep! Is the passion of their sleep. In the morning they arise, And their moony covering Is soaring in the skies, With the tempests as they toss, Like——almost any thing— Or a yellow Albatross. They use that moon no more For the same end as before— Videlicet a tent— Which I think extravagant: Its atomies, however, Into a shower dissever, Of which those butterflies, Of Earth, who seek the skies, And so come down again (Never-contented things!) Have brought a specimen Upon their quivering wings.

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THE LAKE—

TO ——

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In spring of youth it was my lot To haunt of the wide world a spot The which I could not love the less— So lovely was the loneliness Of a wild lake, with black rock bound, And the tall pines that towered around.

But when the Night had thrown her pall Upon that spot, as upon all, And the mystic wind went by Murmuring in melody— Then—ah, then, I would awake To the terror of the lone lake.

Yet that terror was not fright, But a tremulous delight— A feeling not the jewelled mine Could teach or bribe me to define— Nor Love—although the Love were thine.

Death was in that poisonous wave, And in its gulf a fitting grave For him who thence could solace bring To his lone imagining— Whose solitary soul could make An Eden of that dim lake.

A DREAM

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In visions of the dark night I have dreamed of joy departed— But a waking dream of life and light Hath left me broken-hearted.

Ah! what is not a dream by day To him whose eyes are cast On things around him with a ray Turned back upon the past?

That holy dream—that holy dream, While all the world were chiding, Hath cheered me as a lovely beam, A lonely spirit guiding.

What though that light, thro’ storm and night, So trembled from afar— What could there be more purely bright In Truth’s day-star?

A PÆAN

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How shall the burial rite be read? The solemn song be sung? The requiem for the loveliest dead, That ever died so young?

Her friends are gazing on her, And on her gaudy bier, And weep!—oh! to dishonour Dead beauty with a tear!

They loved her for her wealth— And they hated her for her pride— But she grew in feeble health, And they _love_ her—that she died.

They tell me (while they speak Of her “costly broider’d pall”) That my voice is growing weak— That I should not sing at all—

Or that my tone should be Tuned to such solemn song So mournfully—so mournfully, That the dead may feel no wrong.

But she is gone above, With young Hope at her side, And I am drunk with love Of the dead, who is my bride.—

Of the dead—dead who lies All perfumed there, With the death upon her eyes, And the life upon her hair.

Thus on the coffin loud and long I strike—the murmur sent Through the grey chambers to my song, Shall be the accompaniment.

Thou diedst in thy life’s June— But thou didst not die too fair: Thou didst not die too soon, Nor with too calm an air.

From more than friends on earth, Thy life and love are riven, To join the untainted mirth Of more than thrones in heaven.—

Therefore, to thee this night I will no requiem raise, But waft thee on thy flight, With a Pæan of old days.

THE HAPPIEST DAY

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The happiest day—the happiest hour My seared and blighted heart hath known, The highest hope of pride and power, I feel hath flown.

Of power! said I? Yes! such I ween But they have vanished long, alas! The visions of my youth have been— But let them pass.

And pride, what have I now with thee? Another brow may ev’n inherit The venom thou hast poured on me— Be still my spirit!

The happiest day—the happiest hour Mine eyes shall see—have ever seen The brightest glance of pride and power I feel have been:

But were that hope of pride and power Now offered with the pain Ev’n _then_ I felt—that brightest hour I would not live again:

For on its wing was dark alloy And as it fluttered—fell An essence—powerful to destroy A soul that knew it well.

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ALONE

From childhood’s hour I have not been As others were—I have not seen As others saw—I could not bring My passions from a common spring. From the same source I have not taken My sorrow—I could not awaken My heart to joy at the same tone— And all I loved, _I_ loved alone. Then—in my childhood—in the dawn Of a most stormy life—was drawn From every depth of good and ill The mystery which binds me still— From the torrent, or the fountain— From the red cliff of the mountain— From the sun that round me rolled In its autumn tint of gold— From the lightning in the sky As it passed me flying by— From the thunder and the storm— And the cloud that took the form (When the rest of Heaven was blue) Of a demon in my view.

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STANZAS

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_How often we forget all time, when lone Admiring Nature’s universal throne; Her woods—her wilds—her mountains—the intense Reply of Hers to Our intelligence!_ BYRON.

I

In youth I have known one with whom the Earth In secret communing held—as he with it, In daylight, and in beauty, from his birth: Whose fervid, flickering torch of life was lit From the sun and stars, whence he had drawn forth A passionate light such for his spirit was fit— And yet that spirit knew not, in the hour Of its own fervour, what had o’er it power.

II

Perhaps it may be that my mind is wrought To a fever by the moonbeam that hangs o’er, But I will half believe that wild light fraught With more of sovereignty than ancient lore Hath ever told—or is it of a thought The unembodied essence, and no more That with a quickening spell doth o’er us pass As dew of the night-time o’er the summer grass?

III

Doth o’er us pass, when, as th’ expanding eye To the loved object—so the tear to the lid Will start, which lately slept in apathy? And yet it need not be—that object—hid From us in life, but common—which doth lie Each hour before us—but then only bid With a strange sound, as of a harp-string broken, To awake us—’Tis a symbol and a token

IV

Of what in other worlds shall be—and given In beauty by our God, to those alone Who otherwise would fall from life and Heaven, Drawn by their heart’s passion, and that tone, That high tone of the spirit, which hath striven Though not with Faith—with godliness—whose throne With desperate energy ’t hath beaten down; Wearing its own deep feeling as a crown.

TO ——.

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The bowers whereat, in dreams, I see The wantonest singing birds, Are lips—and all thy melody Of lip-begotten words—

Thine eyes, in Heaven of heart enshrined Then desolately fall, O God! on my funereal mind Like starlight on a pall—

Thy heart—_thy_ heart!—I wake and sigh, And sleep to dream till day Of the truth that gold can never buy— Of the baubles that it may.

TO THE RIVER

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Fair river! in thy bright, clear flow Of crystal, wandering water, Thou art an emblem of the glow Of beauty—the unhidden heart— The playful maziness of art In old Alberto’s daughter;

But when within thy wave she looks— Which glistens then, and trembles— Why, then, the prettiest of brooks Her worshipper resembles; For in his heart, as in thy stream, Her image deeply lies— His heart which trembles at the beam Of her soul-searching eyes.

TO ——

I heed not that my earthly lot Hath little of Earth in it, That years of love have been forgot In the hatred of a minute:— I mourn not that the desolate Are happier, sweet, than I, But that _you_ sorrow for _my_ fate Who am a passer-by.

SONG

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I saw thee on thy bridal day— When a burning blush came o’er thee, Though happiness around thee lay, The world all love before thee:

And in thine eye a kindling light (Whatever it might be) Was all on Earth my aching sight Of loveliness could see.

That blush, perhaps, was maiden shame— As such it well may pass— Though its glow hath raised a fiercer flame In the breast of him, alas!

Who saw thee on that bridal day, When that deep blush _would_ come o’er thee, Though happiness around thee lay, The world all love before thee.

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DREAMS

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Oh! that my young life were a lasting dream! My spirit not awakening, till the beam Of an Eternity should bring the morrow. Yes! though that long dream were of hopeless sorrow, ’Twere better than the cold reality Of waking life, to him whose heart must be, And hath been still, upon the lovely earth, A chaos of deep passion, from his birth. But should it be—that dream eternally Continuing—as dreams have been to me In my young boyhood—should it thus be given, ’Twere folly still to hope for higher Heaven. For I have revelled, when the sun was bright In the summer sky, in dreams of living light And loveliness,—have left my very heart In climes of mine imagining, apart From mine own home, with beings that have been Of mine own thought—what more could I have seen? ’Twas once—and only once—and the wild hour From my remembrance shall not pass—some power Or spell had bound me—’twas the chilly wind Came o’er me in the night, and left behind Its image on my spirit—or the moon Shone on my slumbers in her lofty noon Too coldly—or the stars—howe’er it was That dream was as that night-wind—let it pass. _I have been_ happy, though in a dream. I have been happy—and I love the theme: Dreams! in their vivid colouring of life As in that fleeting; shadowy, misty strife Of semblance with reality, which brings To the delirious eye more lovely things Of Paradise and Love—and all our own!— Than young Hope in his sunniest hour hath known.

ROMANCE

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Romance, who loves to nod and sing, With drowsy head and folded wing, Among the green leaves as they shake Far down within some shadowy lake, To me a painted paroquet Hath been—a most familiar bird— Taught me my alphabet to say— To lisp my very earliest word While in the wild wood I did lie, A child—with a most knowing eye.

Of late, eternal condor years So shake the very Heaven on high With tumult as they thunder by, I have no time for idle cares Through gazing on the unquiet sky. And when an hour with calmer wings Its down upon my spirit flings— That little time with lyre and rhyme To while away—forbidden things! My heart would feel to be a crime Unless it trembled with the strings.

TAMERLANE

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Kind solace in a dying hour! Such, father, is not (now) my theme— I will not madly deem that power Of Earth may shrive me of the sin Unearthly pride hath revelled in— I have no time to dote or dream: You call it hope—that fire of fire! It is but agony of desire: If I _can_ hope—O God! I can— Its fount is holier—more divine— I would not call thee fool, old man, But such is not a gift of thine.

Know thou the secret of a spirit Bowed from its wild pride into shame. O yearning heart! I did inherit Thy withering portion with the fame, The searing glory which hath shone Amid the jewels of my throne, Halo of Hell! and with a pain Not Hell shall make me fear again— O craving heart, for the lost flowers And sunshine of my summer hours! The undying voice of that dead time, With its interminable chime, Rings, in the spirit of a spell, Upon thy emptiness—a knell.

I have not always been as now: The fevered diadem on my brow I claimed and won usurpingly— Hath not the same fierce heirdom given Rome to the Cæsar—this to me? The heritage of a kingly mind, And a proud spirit which hath striven Triumphantly with human kind. On mountain soil I first drew life: The mists of the Taglay have shed Nightly their dews upon my head, And, I believe, the wingèd strife And tumult of the headlong air Have nestled in my very hair.

So late from Heaven—that dew—it fell (’Mid dreams of an unholy night) Upon me with the touch of Hell, While the red flashing of the light From clouds that hung, like banners, o’er, Appeared to my half-closing eye The pageantry of monarchy; And the deep trumpet-thunder’s roar Came hurriedly upon me, telling Of human battle, where my voice, My own voice, silly child!—was swelling (O! how my spirit would rejoice, And leap within me at the cry) The battle-cry of Victory!

The rain came down upon my head Unsheltered—and the heavy wind Rendered me mad and deaf and blind. It was but man, I thought, who shed Laurels upon me: and the rush— The torrent of the chilly air Gurgled within my ear the crush Of empires—with the captive’s prayer— The hum of suitors—and the tone Of flattery round a sovereign’s throne.

My passions, from that hapless hour, Usurped a tyranny which men Have deemed since I have reached to power, My innate nature—be it so: But, father, there lived one who, then, Then—in my boyhood—when their fire Burned with a still intenser glow (For passion must, with youth, expire) E’en _then_ who knew this iron heart In woman’s weakness had a part.

I have no words—alas!—to tell The loveliness of loving well! Nor would I now attempt to trace The more than beauty of a face Whose lineaments, upon my mind, Are——shadows on th’ unstable wind: Thus I remember having dwelt Some page of early lore upon, With loitering eye, till I have felt The letters—with their meaning—melt To fantasies with none.

O, she was worthy of all love! Love as in infancy was mine— ’Twas such as angel minds above Might envy; her young heart the shrine On which my every hope and thought Were incense—then a goodly gift, For they were childish and upright— Pure as her young example taught: Why did I leave it, and, adrift, Trust to the fire within, for light?

We grew in age and love together— Roaming the forest and the wild; My breast her shield in wintry weather— And, when the friendly sunshine smiled And she would mark the opening skies, _I_ saw no Heaven but in her eyes. Young Love’s first lesson is the heart: For ’mid that sunshine, and those smiles, When, from our little cares apart, And laughing at her girlish wiles, I’d throw me on her throbbing breast, And pour my spirit out in tears— There was no need to speak the rest— No need to quiet any fears Of her—who asked no reason why, But turned on me her quiet eye!

Yet _more_ than worthy of the love My spirit struggled with, and strove, When on the mountain peak alone Ambition lent it a new tone— I had no being but in thee: The world, and all it did contain In the earth—the air—the sea— Its joy—its little lot of pain That was new pleasure—the ideal, Dim vanities of dreams by night— And dimmer nothings which were real— (Shadows, and a more shadowy light!) Parted upon their misty wings, And so confusedly became Thine image and—a name—a name! Two separate yet most intimate things.

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I was ambitious—have you known The passion, father? You have not: A cottager, I marked a throne Of half the world as all my own, And murmured at such lowly lot; But, just like any other dream, Upon the vapour of the dew My own had past, did not the beam Of beauty which did while it thro’ The minute—the hour—the day—oppress My mind with double loveliness.

We walked together on the crown Of a high mountain which looked down Afar from its proud natural towers Of rock and forest, on the hills— The dwindled hills! begirt with bowers And shouting with a thousand rills.

I spoke to her of power and pride, But mystically—in such guise That she might deem it nought beside The moment’s converse; in her eyes I read, perhaps too carelessly, A mingled feeling with my own— The flush on her bright cheek, to me Seemed to become a queenly throne Too well that I should let it be Light in the wilderness alone.

I wrapped myself in grandeur then, And donned a visionary crown— Yet it was not that Fantasy Had thrown her mantle over me; But that, among the rabble—men, Lion ambition is chained down And crouches to a keeper’s hand: Not so in deserts where the grand, The wild, the terrible, conspire With their own breath to fan his fire.

Look round thee now on Samarcand!— Is she not queen of Earth? her pride Above all cities? in her hand Their destinies? in all beside Of glory which the world hath known Stands she not nobly and alone? Falling—her veriest stepping-stone Shall form the pedestal of a throne— And who her sovereign? Timour—he Whom the astonished people saw Striding o’er empires haughtily A diademed outlaw!

O, human love! thou spirit given, On Earth, of all we hope in Heaven! Which fall’st into the soul like rain Upon the Siroc-withered plain, And, failing in thy power to bless, But leav’st the heart a wilderness! Idea! which bindest life around With music of so strange a sound And beauty of so wild a birth— Farewell! for I have won the Earth.

When Hope, the eagle that towered, could see No cliff beyond him in the sky, His pinions were bent droopingly— And homeward turned his softened eye. ’Twas sunset: when the sun will part There comes a sullenness of heart To him who still would look upon The glory of the summer sun. That soul will hate the evening mist So often lovely, and will list To the sound of the coming darkness (known To those whose spirits hearken) as one Who, in a dream of night, _would_ fly, But _cannot_, from a danger nigh.

What tho’ the moon—the white moon Shed all the splendour of her noon? Her smile is chilly—and her beam, In that time of dreariness, will seem (So like you gather in your breath) A portrait taken after death. And boyhood is a summer sun Whose waning is the dreariest one— For all we live to know is known, And all we seek to keep hath flown. Let life, then, as the day-flower, fall With the noon-day beauty—which is all.

I reached my home—my home no more— For all had flown who made it so. I passed from out its mossy door, And, tho’ my tread was soft and low, A voice came from the threshold stone Of one whom I had earlier known— O, I defy thee, Hell, to show On beds of fire that burn below, An humbler heart—a deeper woe.

Father, I firmly do believe— I _know_—for Death who comes for me From regions of the blest afar, Where there is nothing to deceive, Hath left his iron gate ajar, And rays of truth you cannot see Are flashing thro’ Eternity—— I do believe that Eblis hath A snare in every human path; Else how, when in the holy grove I wandered of the idol, Love,— Who daily scents his snowy wings With incense of burnt offerings From the most unpolluted things, Whose pleasant bowers are yet so riven Above with trellised rays from Heaven No mote may shun—no tiniest fly— The lightning of his eagle eye— How was it that Ambition crept, Unseen, amid the revels there, Till growing bold, he laughed and leapt In the tangles of Love’s very hair?

[Illustration: TIMOUR]

AL AARAAF

[Illustration]

AL AARAAF.