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?

     For her this rhyme is penned, whose luminous eyes,
         Brightly expressive as the twins of Loeda,
     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 labor!
         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.

     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 tantalized 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 odor
         About it, of pansies—
     A rosemary odor,
         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.

     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.

     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 the 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.

     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 univeral 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 easement 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 sould lies hid,
     That o’er the floor and down the wall,
     Like ghosts the shadows rise and fall!
     Oh, lady dear, hast thous no fear?
     Why and what art thou dreaming here?
     Sure thou art come p’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!

     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
     Forever 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 winged pannels 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 fromout 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.

     THOU wast all that 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.

     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 Judaean 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 wanlight—wan light of the horned 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 gray 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 forever
     “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.”
 

     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 Wo!

     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.

     AT morn—at noon—at twilight dim—
     Maria! thou hast heard my hymn!
     In joy and wo—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!

PART I.

O! Nothing earthly save the ray
(Thrown back from flowers) of Beauty’s eye,
As in those gardens where the day
Springs from the gems of Circassy—
O! nothing earthly save the thrill
Of melody in woodland rill—
Or (music of the passion-hearted)
Joy’s voice so peacefully departed
That like the murmur in the shell,
Its echo dwelleth and will dwell—
Oh, nothing of the dross of ours—
Yet all the beauty—all the flowers
That list our Love, and deck our bowers—
Adorn yon world afar, afar—
The wandering star.

    ’Twas a sweet time for Nesace—for there
Her world lay lolling on the golden air,
Near four bright suns—a temporary rest—
An oasis in desert of the blest.
Away—away—‘mid seas of rays that roll
Empyrean splendor o’er th’ unchained soul—
The soul that scarce (the billows are so dense)
Can struggle to its destin’d eminence—
To distant spheres, from time to time, she rode,
And late to ours, the favour’d one of God—
But, now, the ruler of an anchor’d realm,
She throws aside the sceptre—leaves the helm,
And, amid incense and high spiritual hymns,
Laves in quadruple light her angel limbs.

    Now happiest, loveliest in yon lovely Earth,
Whence sprang the “Idea of Beauty” into birth,
(Falling in wreaths thro’ many a startled star,
Like woman’s hair ‘mid pearls, until, afar,
It lit on hills Achaian, and there dwelt)
She look’d into Infinity—and knelt.
Rich clouds, for canopies, about her curled—
Fit emblems of the model of her world—
Seen but in beauty—not impeding sight
Of other beauty glittering thro’ the light—
A wreath that twined each starry form around,
And all the opal’d air in color bound.

    All hurriedly she knelt upon a bed
Of flowers:  of lilies such as rear’d the head
On the fair Capo Deucato, and sprang
So eagerly around about to hang
Upon the flying footsteps of—deep pride—
**Of her who lov’d a mortal—and so died.
The Sephalica, budding with young bees,
Uprear’d its purple stem around her knees:
And gemmy flower, of Trebizond misnam’d—
Inmate of highest stars, where erst it sham’d
All other loveliness: its honied dew
(The fabled nectar that the heathen knew)
Deliriously sweet, was dropp’d from Heaven,
And fell on gardens of the unforgiven
In Trebizond—and on a sunny flower
So like its own above that, to this hour,
It still remaineth, torturing the bee
With madness, and unwonted reverie:
In Heaven, and all its environs, the leaf
And blossom of the fairy plant, in grief
Disconsolate linger—grief that hangs her head,
Repenting follies that full long have fled,
Heaving her white breast to the balmy air,
Like guilty beauty, chasten’d, and more fair:
Nyctanthes too, as sacred as the light
She fears to perfume, perfuming the night:
And Clytia pondering between many a sun,
While pettish tears adown her petals run:
And that aspiring flower that sprang on Earth—
And died, ere scarce exalted into birth,
Bursting its odorous heart in spirit to wing
Its way to Heaven, from garden of a king:
And Valisnerian lotus thither flown
From struggling with the waters of the Rhone:
And thy most lovely purple perfume, Zante!
Isola d’oro!—Fior di Levante!
And the Nelumbo bud that floats for ever
With Indian Cupid down the holy river—
Fair flowers, and fairy! to whose care is given
To bear the Goddess’ song, in odors, up to Heaven:

          “Spirit! that dwellest where,
                In the deep sky,
          The terrible and fair,
                In beauty vie!
          Beyond the line of blue—
                The boundary of the star
          Which turneth at the view
                Of thy barrier and thy bar—
          Of the barrier overgone
                By the comets who were cast
          From their pride, and from their throne
                To be drudges till the last—
          To be carriers of fire
                (The red fire of their heart)
          With speed that may not tire
                And with pain that shall not part—
          Who livest—that we know—
                In Eternity—we feel—
          But the shadow of whose brow
                What spirit shall reveal?
          Tho’ the beings whom thy Nesace,
                Thy messenger hath known
          Have dream’d for thy Infinity
                A model of their own—
          Thy will is done, Oh, God!
                The star hath ridden high
          Thro’ many a tempest, but she rode
                Beneath thy burning eye;
          And here, in thought, to thee—
                In thought that can alone
          Ascend thy empire and so be
                A partner of thy throne—
          By winged Fantasy,
                My embassy is given,
          Till secrecy shall knowledge be
                In the environs of Heaven.”

She ceas’d—and buried then her burning cheek
Abash’d, amid the lilies there, to seek
A shelter from the fervour of His eye;
For the stars trembled at the Deity.
She stirr’d not—breath’d not—for a voice was there
How solemnly pervading the calm air!
A sound of silence on the startled ear
Which dreamy poets name “the music of the sphere.”
Ours is a world of words:  Quiet we call
“Silence”—which is the merest word of all.
All Nature speaks, and ev’n ideal things
Flap shadowy sounds from visionary wings—
But ah! not so when, thus, in realms on high
The eternal voice of God is passing by,
And the red winds are withering in the sky!

    “What tho’ in worlds which sightless cycles run,
Link’d to a little system, and one sun—
Where all my love is folly and the crowd
Still think my terrors but the thunder cloud,
The storm, the earthquake, and the ocean-wrath—
(Ah! will they cross me in my angrier path?)
What tho’ in worlds which own a single sun
The sands of Time grow dimmer as they run,
Yet thine is my resplendency, so given
To bear my secrets thro’ the upper Heaven.
Leave tenantless thy crystal home, and fly,
With all thy train, athwart the moony sky—
*Apart—like fire-flies in Sicilian night,
And wing to other worlds another light!
Divulge the secrets of thy embassy
To the proud orbs that twinkle—and so be
To ev’ry heart a barrier and a ban
Lest the stars totter in the guilt of man!”

    Up rose the maiden in the yellow night,
The single-mooned eve!—on Earth we plight
Our faith to one love—and one moon adore—
The birth-place of young Beauty had no more.
As sprang that yellow star from downy hours
Up rose the maiden from her shrine of flowers,
And bent o’er sheeny mountain and dim plain
Her way—but left not yet her Therasaean reign.

PART II

High on a mountain of enamell’d head—
Such as the drowsy shepherd on his bed
Of giant pasturage lying at his ease,
Raising his heavy eyelid, starts and sees
With many a mutter’d “hope to be forgiven”
What time the moon is quadrated in Heaven—
Of rosy head, that towering far away
Into the sunlit ether, caught the ray
Of sunken suns at eve—at noon of night,
While the moon danc’d with the fair stranger light—
Uprear’d upon such height arose a pile
Of gorgeous columns on th’ unburthen’d air,
Flashing from Parian marble that twin smile
Far down upon the wave that sparkled there,
And nursled the young mountain in its lair.
Of molten stars their pavement, such as fall
Thro’ the ebon air, besilvering the pall
Of their own dissolution, while they die—
Adorning then the dwellings of the sky.
A dome, by linked light from Heaven let down,
Sat gently on these columns as a crown—
A window of one circular diamond, there,
Look’d out above into the purple air
And rays from God shot down that meteor chain
And hallow’d all the beauty twice again,
Save when, between th’ Empyrean and that ring,
Some eager spirit flapp’d his dusky wing.
But on the pillars Seraph eyes have seen
The dimness of this world: that grayish green
That Nature loves the best for Beauty’s grave
Lurk’d in each cornice, round each architrave—
And every sculptured cherub thereabout
That from his marble dwelling peered out,
Seem’d earthly in the shadow of his niche—
Achaian statues in a world so rich?
Friezes from Tadmor and Persepolis—
From Balbec, and the stilly, clear abyss
Of beautiful Gomorrah! Oh, the wave
Is now upon thee—but too late to save!

    Sound loves to revel in a summer night:
Witness the murmur of the gray twilight
That stole upon the ear, in Eyraco,
Of many a wild star-gazer long ago—
That stealeth ever on the ear of him
Who, musing, gazeth on the distance dim,
And sees the darkness coming as a cloud—
Is not its form—its voice—most palpable and loud?

    But what is this?—it cometh—and it brings
A music with it—’tis the rush of wings—
A pause—and then a sweeping, falling strain,
And Nesace is in her halls again.
From the wild energy of wanton haste
    Her cheeks were flushing, and her lips apart;
The zone that clung around her gentle waist
    Had burst beneath the heaving of her heart.
Within the centre of that hall to breathe
She paus’d and panted, Zanthe! all beneath,
The fairy light that kiss’d her golden hair
And long’d to rest, yet could but sparkle there!

    Young flowers were whispering in melody
To happy flowers that night—and tree to tree;
Fountains were gushing music as they fell
In many a star-lit grove, or moon-light dell;
Yet silence came upon material things—
Fair flowers, bright waterfalls and angel wings—
And sound alone that from the spirit sprang
Bore burthen to the charm the maiden sang:

          “ ’Neath blue-bell or streamer—
                Or tufted wild spray
          That keeps, from the dreamer,
                The moonbeam away—
          Bright beings! that ponder,
                With half-closing eyes,
          On the stars which your wonder
                Hath drawn from the skies,
          Till they glance thro’ the shade, and
                Come down to your brow
          Like—eyes of the maiden
                Who calls on you now—
          Arise! from your dreaming
                In violet bowers,
          To duty beseeming
                These star-litten hours—
          And shake from your tresses
                Encumber’d with dew
          The breath of those kisses
                That cumber them too—
          (O! how, without you, Love!
                Could angels be blest?)
          Those kisses of true love
                That lull’d ye to rest!
          Up! shake from your wing
                Each hindering thing:
          The dew of the night—
                It would weigh down your flight;
          And true love caresses—
                O! leave them apart!
          They are light on the tresses,
                But lead on the heart.

          Ligeia! Ligeia!
                My beautiful one!
          Whose harshest idea
                Will to melody run,
          O! is it thy will
                On the breezes to toss?
          Or, capriciously still,
                Like the lone Albatross,
          Incumbent on night
                (As she on the air)
          To keep watch with delight
                On the harmony there?

          Ligeia! wherever
                Thy image may be,
          No magic shall sever
                Thy music from thee.
          Thou hast bound many eyes
                In a dreamy sleep—
          But the strains still arise
                Which thy vigilance keep—
          The sound of the rain
                Which leaps down to the flower,
          And dances again
                In the rhythm of the shower—
          The murmur that springs
                From the growing of grass
          Are the music of things—
                But are modell’d, alas!
          Away, then, my dearest,
                O! hie thee away
          To springs that lie clearest
                Beneath the moon-ray—
          To lone lake that smiles,
                In its dream of deep rest,
          At the many star-isles
                That enjewel its breast—
          Where wild flowers, creeping,
                Have mingled their shade,
          On its margin is sleeping
                Full many a maid—
          Some have left the cool glade, and
                Have slept with the bee—
          Arouse them, my maiden,
                On moorland and lea—
          Go! breathe on their slumber,
                All softly in ear,
          The musical number
                They slumber’d to hear—
          For what can awaken
                An angel so soon
          Whose sleep hath been taken
                Beneath the cold moon,
          As the spell which no slumber
                Of witchery may test,
          The rhythmical number
                Which lull’d him to rest?”

Spirits in wing, and angels to the view,
A thousand seraphs burst th’ Empyrean thro’,
Young dreams still hovering on their drowsy flight—
Seraphs in all but “Knowledge,” the keen light
That fell, refracted, thro’ thy bounds afar,
O death! from eye of God upon that star;
Sweet was that error—sweeter still that death—
Sweet was that error—ev’n with us the breath
Of Science dims the mirror of our joy—
To them ‘twere the Simoom, and would destroy—
For what (to them) availeth it to know
That Truth is Falsehood—or that Bliss is Woe?
Sweet was their death—with them to die was rife
With the last ecstasy of satiate life—
Beyond that death no immortality—
But sleep that pondereth and is not “to be”—
And there—oh! may my weary spirit dwell—
Apart from Heaven’s Eternity—and yet how far from Hell!

What guilty spirit, in what shrubbery dim
Heard not the stirring summons of that hymn?
But two: they fell: for heaven no grace imparts
To those who hear not for their beating hearts.
A maiden-angel and her seraph-lover—
O! where (and ye may seek the wide skies over)
Was Love, the blind, near sober Duty known?
Unguided Love hath fallen—‘mid “tears of perfect moan.”

He was a goodly spirit—he who fell:
A wanderer by mossy-mantled well—
A gazer on the lights that shine above—
A dreamer in the moonbeam by his love:
What wonder? for each star is eye-like there,
And looks so sweetly down on Beauty’s hair—
And they, and ev’ry mossy spring were holy
To his love-haunted heart and melancholy.
The night had found (to him a night of wo)
Upon a mountain crag, young Angelo—
Beetling it bends athwart the solemn sky,
And scowls on starry worlds that down beneath it lie.
Here sate he with his love—his dark eye bent
With eagle gaze along the firmament:
Now turn’d it upon her—but ever then
It trembled to the orb of ^EARTH again.

    “Ianthe, dearest, see! how dim that ray!
How lovely ’tis to look so far away!
She seemed not thus upon that autumn eve
I left her gorgeous halls—nor mourned to leave,
That eve—that eve—I should remember well—
The sun-ray dropped, in Lemnos with a spell
On th’ Arabesque carving of a gilded hall
Wherein I sate, and on the draperied wall—
And on my eyelids—O, the heavy light!
How drowsily it weighed them into night!
On flowers, before, and mist, and love they ran
With Persian Saadi in his Gulistan:
But O, that light!—I slumbered—Death, the while,
Stole o’er my senses in that lovely isle
So softly that no single silken hair
Awoke that slept—or knew that he was there.

The last spot of Earth’s orb I trod upon
Was a proud temple called the Parthenon;
More beauty clung around her columned wall
Then even thy glowing bosom beats withal,
And when old Time my wing did disenthral
Thence sprang I—as the eagle from his tower,
And years I left behind me in an hour.
What time upon her airy bounds I hung,
One half the garden of her globe was flung
Unrolling as a chart unto my view—
Tenantless cities of the desert too!
Ianthe, beauty crowded on me then,
And half I wished to be again of men.”

“My Angelo! and why of them to be?
A brighter dwelling-place is here for thee—
And greener fields than in yon world above,
And woman’s loveliness—and passionate love.”
“But list, Ianthe! when the air so soft
Failed, as my pennoned spirit leapt aloft,
Perhaps my brain grew dizzy—but the world
I left so late was into chaos hurled,
Sprang from her station, on the winds apart,
And rolled a flame, the fiery Heaven athwart.
Methought, my sweet one, then I ceased to soar,
And fell—not swiftly as I rose before,
But with a downward, tremulous motion thro’
Light, brazen rays, this golden star unto!
Nor long the measure of my falling hours,
For nearest of all stars was thine to ours—
Dread star! that came, amid a night of mirth,
A red Daedalion on the timid Earth.”

“We came—and to thy Earth—but not to us
Be given our lady’s bidding to discuss:
We came, my love; around, above, below,
Gay fire-fly of the night we come and go,
Nor ask a reason save the angel-nod
She grants to us as granted by her God—
But, Angelo, than thine gray Time unfurled
Never his fairy wing o’er fairer world!
Dim was its little disk, and angel eyes
Alone could see the phantom in the skies,
When first Al Aaraaf knew her course to be
Headlong thitherward o’er the starry sea—
But when its glory swelled upon the sky,
As glowing Beauty’s bust beneath man’s eye,
We paused before the heritage of men,
And thy star trembled—as doth Beauty then!”

Thus in discourse, the lovers whiled away
The night that waned and waned and brought no day.
They fell: for Heaven to them no hope imparts
Who hear not for the beating of their hearts.

    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 all the 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 unimpassion’d 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 fervor 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.

     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—
     Forever 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.

     1831.

     In spring of youth it was my lot
     To haunt of the wide earth 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 tower’d 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.

     1827.

     A dark unfathom’d tide
     Of interminable pride—
     A mystery, and a dream,
     Should my early life seem;
     I say that dream was fraught
     With a wild, and waking thought
     Of beings that have been,
     Which my spirit hath not seen,
     Had I let them pass me by,
     With a dreaming eye!
     Let none of earth inherit
     That vision on my spirit;
     Those thoughts I would control
     As a spell upon his soul:
     For that bright hope at last
     And that light time have past,
     And my worldly rest hath gone
     With a sigh as it pass’d on
     I care not tho’ it perish
     With a thought I then did cherish.

     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!

                             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 fervor-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
         T’ 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.

          * Query “fervor”?—ED.

             I

     Beneath the vine-clad eaves,
         Whose shadows fall before
         Thy lowly cottage door
     Under the lilac’s tremulous leaves—
     Within thy snowy claspeed hand
         The purple flowers it bore..
     Last eve in dreams, I saw thee stand,
     Like queenly nymphs from Fairy-land—
     Enchantress of the flowery wand,
         Most beauteous Isadore!

              II

     And when I bade the dream
         Upon thy spirit flee,
         Thy violet eyes to me
     Upturned, did overflowing seem
     With the deep, untold delight
         Of Love’s serenity;
     Thy classic brow, like lilies white
     And pale as the Imperial Night
     Upon her throne, with stars bedight,
         Enthralled my soul to thee!

                 III

     Ah I ever I behold
         Thy dreamy, passionate eyes,
         Blue as the languid skies

     Hung with the sunset’s fringe of gold;
     Now strangely clear thine image grows,
         And olden memories
     Are startled from their long repose
     Like shadows on the silent snows
     When suddenly the night-wind blows
         Where quiet moonlight ties.

              IV

     Like music heard in dreams,
         Like strains of harps unknown,
         Of birds forever flown
     Audible as the voice of streams
     That murmur in some leafy dell,
         I hear thy gentlest tone,
     And Silence cometh with her spell
     Like that which on my tongue doth dwell,
     When tremulous in dreams I tell
         My love to thee alone!

              V

     In every valley heard,
         Floating from tree to tree,
         Less beautiful to, me,
     The music of the radiant bird,
     Than artless accents such as thine
         Whose echoes never flee!
     Ah! how for thy sweet voice I pine:—
     For uttered in thy tones benign
     (Enchantress!) this rude name of mine

         Doth seem a melody!

     In these rapid, restless shadows,
         Once I walked at eventide,
     When a gentle, silent maiden,
         Walked in beauty at my side
     She alone there walked beside me
         All in beauty, like a bride.

     Pallidly the moon was shining
         On the dewy meadows nigh;
     On the silvery, silent rivers,
         On the mountains far and high
     On the ocean’s star-lit waters,
         Where the winds a-weary die.

     Slowly, silently we wandered
     From the open cottage door,
     Underneath the elm’s long branches
     To the pavement bending o’er;
     Underneath the mossy willow
     And the dying sycamore.

     With the myriad stars in beauty
     All bedight, the heavens were seen,
     Radiant hopes were bright around me,
     Like the light of stars serene;
     Like the mellow midnight splendor
     Of the Night’s irradiate queen.

     Audibly the elm-leaves whispered
         Peaceful, pleasant melodies,
     Like the distant murmured music
         Of unquiet, lovely seas:
     While the winds were hushed in slumber
         In the fragrant flowers and trees.

     Wondrous and unwonted beauty
         Still adorning all did seem,
     While I told my love in fables
         ‘Neath the willows by the stream;
     Would the heart have kept unspoken
         Love that was its rarest dream!

     Instantly away we wandered
         In the shadowy twilight tide,
     She, the silent, scornful maiden,
         Walking calmly at my side,
     With a step serene and stately,
         All in beauty, all in pride.

     Vacantly I walked beside her.
         On the earth mine eyes were cast;
     Swift and keen there came unto me
         Ritter memories of the past
     On me, like the rain in Autumn
         On the dead leaves, cold and fast.

     Underneath the elms we parted,
         By the lowly cottage door;
     One brief word alone was uttered
         Never on our lips before;
     And away I walked forlornly,
         Broken-hearted evermore.

     Slowly, silently I loitered,
         Homeward, in the night, alone;
     Sudden anguish bound my spirit,
         That my youth had never known;
     Wild unrest, like that which cometh
         When the Night’s first dream hath flown.

     Now, to me the elm-leaves whisper
         Mad, discordant melodies,
     And keen melodies like shadows
         Haunt the moaning willow trees,
     And the sycamores with laughter
         Mock me in the nightly breeze.

     Sad and pale the Autumn moonlight
         Through the sighing foliage streams;
     And each morning, midnight shadow,
         Shadow of my sorrow seems;
     Strive, 0 heart, forget thine idol!
         And, 0 soul, forget thy dreams!

     ‘Tis said that when
     The hands of men
     Tamed this primeval wood,
     And hoary trees with groans of woe,
     Like warriors by an unknown foe,
     Were in their strength subdued,
     The virgin Earth Gave instant birth
     To springs that ne’er did flow
     That in the sun Did rivulets run,
     And all around rare flowers did blow
     The wild rose pale Perfumed the gale
     And the queenly lily adown the dale
     (Whom the sun and the dew
     And the winds did woo),
     With the gourd and the grape luxuriant grew.

     So when in tears
     The love of years
     Is wasted like the snow,
     And the fine fibrils of its life
     By the rude wrong of instant strife
     Are broken at a blow
     Within the heart
     Do springs upstart
     Of which it doth now know,
     And strange, sweet dreams,
     Like silent streams
     That from new fountains overflow,
     With the earlier tide
     Of rivers glide
     Deep in the heart whose hope has died—
     Quenching the fires its ashes hide,—
     Its ashes, whence will spring and grow
     Sweet flowers, ere long,
     The rare and radiant flowers of song!

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 tintinabulation 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 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 endeavor
         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 clash, 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 clamor and the clangor of the bells!

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.

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 winged 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 kinsman 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 feel 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 sounding sea.

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?