Ah broken is the golden bowl! the spirit flown forever!
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 innocent that died, and died so young?"

Peccavimus; but rave not thus! and let a Sabbath song
Go up to God so solemnly the dead may feel so 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 debonair, 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 damnéd 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."

     ‘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!