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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.

LENORE

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 ye 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?”

Peccavimus;1 yet rave not thus! but 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 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!—avaunt! to friends from fiends the indignant ghost is

riven—

From Hell unto a high estate within the utmost Heaven—

From moan and groan to a golden throne beside the King of

Heaven:—

Let no bell toll, then, lest her soul, amid its hallowed mirth—

Should catch the note as it doth float up from the damnéd

Earth!—

And I—tonight my heart is light:—no dirge will I upraise,

But waft the angel on her flight with a Pæan of old days!”

SONNET—SILENCE

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!

DREAM-LAND

By a route obscure and lonely,

Haunted by ill angels only,

Where an Eidolon,1 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.

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