# THE POETICAL WORKS
OF
EDGAR ALLAN POE

WITH ORIGINAL MEMOIR.

ILLUSTRATED BY F. R. PICKERSGILL, R.A.
JOHN TENNIEL, BIRKET FOSTER, FELIX DARLEY, JASPER CROPSEY,
P. DUGGAN, PERCIVAL SKELTON, AND A. M. MADOT.

LONDON:
SAMPSON LOW, SON & CO.
47, LUDGATE HILL.
MDCCCLVIII.

LONDON:
PRINTED BY RICHARD CLAY,
BREAD STREET HILL.

## PREFACE.

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.

CONTENTS.

MISCELLANEOUS POEMS:—
| PAGE
The Raven | 1
Lenore | 9
A Valentine | 12
The Coliseum | 13
To —— —— | 15
To Helen | 17
An Enigma | 22
Ulalume | 23
To —— | 28
To my Mother | 29
The Bells | 30
The Conqueror Worm | 39
Annabel Lee | 42
The Valley of Unrest | 46
Israfel | 48
Silence | 52
To Zante | 53
To F——s S. O——d | 55
Bridal Ballad | 56
The Haunted Palace | 58
Eulalie | 62
To F—— | 64
To One in Paradise | 65
Dream-land | 67
Hymn | 71
The Sleeper | 72
For Annie | 76
Eldorado | 82
A Dream within a Dream | 85
The City in the Sea | 87
Scenes from “Politian;” an unpublished Drama | 91
POEMS WRITTEN IN YOUTH:—
Al Aaraaf | 149
Sonnet—To Science | 173
To the River —— | 174
Tamerlane | 176
To —— | 192
A Dream | 194
Romance | 195
Fairy-Land | 197
The Lake. —— To —— | 201
Song | 203
To M. L. S. | 204
To Helen | 205
Notes to Al Aaraaf | 207
THE POETIC PRINCIPLE | 217

[Pg ix]

ILLUSTRATIONS.

| ARTIST. | ENGRAVER. | PAGE
Portrait of Edgar Allan Poe. | Daguerreotype | J. Cooper | xvii
THE RAVEN.
And the silken sad uncertain rustling of each purple curtain
Thrilled me—filled me with fantastic terrors never felt before. | John Tenniel | J. Cooper | 1
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. | John Tenniel | J. Cooper | 3
“Wretch,” I cried, “thy God hath lent thee—by these angels he hath sent thee
Respite—respite and nepenthe from thy memories of Lenore!” | John Tenniel | J. Cooper | 6
And the Raven, never flitting, still is sitting, still is sitting
On the pallid bust of Pallas just above my chamber door. | John Tenniel | J. Cooper | 8
LENORE.
The life upon her yellow hair, but not within her eyes—
The life still there, upon her hair—the death upon her eyes. | F. R. Pickersgill | W. J. Linton | 9
The sweet Lenore hath “gone before,” with Hope, that flew beside,
Leaving thee wild for the dear child that should have been thy bride. | Felix Darley | J. Cooper | 11
THE COLISEUM. [Pg x]
But stay! these walls—these ivy-clad arcades—
These mouldering plinths—these sad and blackened shafts. | Jasper Cropsey | W. J. Linton | 13
TO HELEN.
It was a July midnight; and from out
A full-orbed moon, ...
There fell a silvery-silken veil of light. | Birket Foster | W. T. Green | 17
Clad all in white, upon a violet bank
I saw thee half reclining. | F. R. Pickersgill | W. J. Linton | 19
And thou, a ghost, amid the entombing trees
Didst glide away. | Birket Foster | J. Cooper | 21
ULALUME.
It was down by the dank tarn of Auber,
In the ghoul-haunted woodland of Weir. | Jasper Cropsey | W. J. Linton | 23
That I brought a dread burden down here—
On this night of all nights in the year. | F. R. Pickersgill | W. J. Linton | 27
THE BELLS.
Hear the sledges with the bells—
Silver bells! | Felix Darley | J. Cooper | 30
Through the balmy air of night
How they ring out their delight! | Birket Foster | E. Evans | 32
Hear the loud alarum bells—
.  .  .  .  .  .
In a clamorous appealing to the mercy of the fire. | Felix Darley | J. Cooper | 34
In the silence of the night,
How we shiver with affright. | F. R. Pickersgill | W. J. Linton | 36
ANNABEL LEE. [Pg xi]
I was a child and she was a child,
In this kingdom by the sea. | Birket Foster | J. Cooper | 42
For the moon never beams, without bringing me dreams
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee. | Birket Foster | J. Cooper | 44
ISRAFEL.
In heaven a spirit doth dwell
“Whose heart-strings are a lute.” | P. Duggan | W. J. Linton | 48
TO ZANTE.
Fair isle, that from the fairest of all flowers,
Thy gentlest of all gentle names dost take! | Birket Foster | E. Evans | 53
THE HAUNTED PALACE.
Once a fair and stately palace—
Radiant palace—reared its head. | A. M. Madot | E. Evans | 58
EULALIE.
Till the fair and gentle Eulalie became my blushing bride—
Till the yellow-haired young Eulalie became my smiling bride. | F. R. Pickersgill | W. J. Linton | 62
TO ONE IN PARADISE.
Such language holds the solemn sea
To the sands upon the shore. | Birket Foster | E. Evans | 65
DREAM-LAND.
Shrouded forms that start and sigh
As they pass the wanderer by. | F. R. Pickersgill | W. J. Linton | 69
THE SLEEPER. [Pg xii]
At midnight, in the month of June,
I stand beneath the mystic moon. | Birket Foster | E. Evans | 72
FOR ANNIE.
And she prayed to the angels
To keep me from harm. | F. R. Pickersgill | W. J. Linton | 78
ELDORADO.
And, as his strength
Failed him at length,
He met a pilgrim shadow. | F. R. Pickersgill | W. J. Linton | 83
A DREAM WITHIN A DREAM.
I stand amid the roar
Of a surf-tormented shore. | Birket Foster | J. Cooper | 85
THE CITY IN THE SEA.
Lo! Death has reared himself a throne
In a strange city lying alone. | Jasper Cropsey | W. J. Linton | 87
The waves have now a redder glow—
The hours are breathing faint and low. | Jasper Cropsey | W. J. Linton | 89
SCENES FROM “POLITIAN.”
View of Rome. | Percival Skelton | J. Cooper | 93
Heard I aright?
I speak to him—he speaks of Lalage! | F. R. Pickersgill | Hammond | 97
A garden. | Birket Foster | J. Cooper | 102
[Pg xiii]
Think of eternal things;
Give up thy soul to penitence, and pray! | F. R. Pickersgill | E. Evans | 110
Politian, it doth grieve me
To see thee thus. | A. M. Madot | E. Evans | 114
Listen now—listen!—the faintest sound,
And yet the sweetest that ear ever heard!
A lady’s voice!—and sorrow in the tone! | A. M. Madot | H. Harral | 120
Weep not! oh, sob not thus!—thy bitter tears
Will madden me. Oh, mourn not, Lalage! | Birket Foster | J. Cooper | 127
Hist! hush! within the gloom
Of yonder trees methought a figure passed. | F. R. Pickersgill | E. Evans | 132
The suburbs of Rome. | Percival Skelton | J. Cooper | 136
AL AARAAF.
O! nothing earthly save the thrill
Of melody in woodland rill. | Birket Foster | J. Cooper | 149
Of her who loved a mortal—and so died. | F. R. Pickersgill | W. J. Linton | 152
As sprang that yellow star from downy hours,
Up rose the maiden from her shrine of flowers. | A. M. Madot | W. Thomas | 157
High on a mountain of enamelled head—
.  .  .  .  .  . arose a pile
Of gorgeous columns. | Percival Skelton | J. Whymper | 159
On its margin is sleeping
Full many a maid. | F. R. Pickersgill | W. J. Linton | 166
Was a proud temple called the Parthenon. | Percival Skelton | J. Cooper | 170
TO THE RIVER.
For in his heart, as in thy stream,
Her image deeply lies. | Birket Foster | E. Evans | 174
[Pg xiv]
TAMERLANE.
We grew in age—and love—together—
Roaming the forest, and the wild. | A. M. Madot | W. J. Linton | 181
We walked together on the crown
Of a high mountain. | Birket Foster | J. Cooper | 185
A voice came from the threshold stone
Of one whom I had earlier known. | A. M. Madot | W. J. Linton | 189
TO ——.
The bowers whereat, in dreams, I see
The wantonest singing birds. | Birket Foster | E. Evans | 192
FAIRY-LAND.
Dim vales—and shadowy floods—
And cloudy-looking woods. | Birket Foster | J. Cooper | 198
THE LAKE.
A wild lake, with black rock bound,
And the tall pines that towered around. | Birket Foster | J. Cooper | 201
The Head and Tail-pieces and Initial Letters. | W. Harry Rogers | E. Evans |
Under the Superintendence of Joseph Cundall. [Pg xv]

[Pg xvi]

## MEMOIR OF
EDGAR ALLAN POE.

[Pg xvii]

It would be well for all poets if nothing more were known of their lives than what they themselves infuse into their poetry. Too close a knowledge of the weaknesses and errors of the inspired children of Parnassus, cannot but impair, in some degree, the delicate aroma of their songs. The inner life of the poet, the secrets of his inspiration, the mysterious processes by which his pearls of thought are produced, can never be made known, and the accidents of his daily life have but little more interest than those which fall to common men. [Pg xviii] Under all circumstances the poet is a mystery, and the utterances of his fancy are but the drapery of the veiled statue which still leaves the figure itself unknown. A dissection of the song-bird gives us no insight into the secret of his melodious notes. Some of the great modern poets have had their whole lives exposed with minute accuracy; but in what are we the wiser for the knowledge we have obtained of them? We only know they lived and suffered like other men, and their inspirations are still a cause of wonder and delight. The subtle secret of their power is still hidden from our search; and though we know more of the daily habits of the men, we know no more of the hidden power of the poet. But there is still a yearning to know how the men lived whose genius has charmed and instructed us, and a vague feeling exists, that in probing the lives of poets we may learn something of the art by which they produced their works. But it is like the useless labour of Reynolds, who scraped a painting by Titian to learn the secret of his colouring.

Of all the poets whose lives have been a puzzle and a mystery to the world, there is no one more difficult to be understood than Edgar Allan Poe. It is impossible to carry in the mind a double idea of a man, and to believe him to be both a saint and a fiend; yet such is the embarrassment felt by those who have first read the poems of this strange being, and then read any of the biographies of him which pretend to anything like an accurate account of his life. Like his own [Pg xix] Raven, he is, to his readers, “bird or fiend,” they know not which. But a close study of his works will reveal the fact, which may serve in some degree to remove this embarrassment, that there is nowhere discoverable in them a consciousness of moral responsibility. They are full of the subtleties of passion, of grief, despair, and longing, but they contain nothing that indicates a sense of moral rectitude. They are the productions of one whose religion was a worship of the Beautiful, and who knew no beauty but that which was purely sensuous. There were but two kinds of beauty for him, and they were Form and Colour. He revelled in an ideal world of perfect shows, and was made wretched by any imperfections of art. The Leonore whose loss he deplored was a being fair to the eye, a beautiful creature, like Undine, without a soul. With this key to the character of the poet, there is no difficulty in fully comprehending the strange inconsistencies, the basenesses and nobleness which his wayward life exhibited.

Some of the biographers of Poe have been harshly judged for the view given of his character, and it has naturally been supposed that private pique has led to the exaggeration of his personal defects. But such imputations are unjust; a truthful delineation of his career would give a darker hue to his character than it has received from any of his biographers. In fact, he has been more fortunate than most poets in his historians. Lowell and Willis have sketched him with gentleness and a reverent feeling for his genius; and Griswold, his literary executor, [Pg xx] in his fuller biography, has generously suppressed much that he might have given. This is neither the proper time nor place to write a full history of this unhappy genius; those who scan his marvellous poems closely, may find therein the man, for it is impossible for the true poet to veil himself from his readers. What he writes he is.

The waywardness of Poe was an inheritance; though descended from a family of great respectability, his immediate parents were dissolute in their morals, and members of a profession which almost always begets irregularity of habits. The paternal grandfather of the poet was a distinguished officer in the Maryland line during the war of the Revolution, and his great grandfather, John Poe, married a daughter of Admiral McBride, of the British Navy. His father, the fourth son of the Revolutionary officer, was a native of Maryland, and studied for the bar; but becoming enamoured of a beautiful actress named Elizabeth Arnold, he abandoned the law and adopted the stage as a profession. They lived together six or seven years, wandering from theatre to theatre, when they both died within a very short time of each other, in Richmond, Virginia, leaving three children in utter destitution. Edgar, the second child, who was born in Baltimore in January 1811, was a remarkably bright and beautiful boy; and he attracted the attention of a wealthy merchant in Richmond, who had known his parents, and who had no children of his own. Mr. Allan adopted the little orphan, and he was afterwards called Edgar Allan. The precocious child was petted by his [Pg xxi] adopted parents, who took pride in his forwardness and beauty; he was sent to the best schools, and was regarded as the heir to their property. In 1816 Mr. and Mrs. Allan made a journey to Europe, and Edgar accompanied them. He was placed at the school of the Rev. Dr. Bransby, at Stoke Newington, near London, where he remained some four or five years; but all that we know of him during this period of his life, is what he has himself told us in the tale entitled “William Wilson,” wherein he describes with great minuteness his recollections of his school-days in England, and gives a characteristic picture of the school-house and its surroundings.

On his return to the United States, in the year 1822, he was placed for a few months at an academy at Richmond, and then was transferred to the University of Virginia, at Charlottesville. The students at Charlottesville were noted, at that time, for their reckless and dissolute manner of life, and young Poe was the most dissolute and reckless among them. Though extremely slight in person, and almost effeminate in his manner, he is represented to have been foremost in all athletic sports and games, and there is good testimony to his having performed the almost impossible feat of swimming, for a wager, from Richmond to Warwick, a distance of seven miles, against a current of two or three knots an hour. Notwithstanding his dissolute habits and extravagance at the University, he excelled in his studies, was always at the head of his class, and would, doubtless, have graduated with honour, had he not been expelled on account of his profligacy and wild excesses. [Pg xxii]

His allowance of money had been liberal at the University, but he quitted it in debt; and when his indulgent friend refused to accept his drafts to meet his gambling losses, Poe wrote him an abusive letter, and quitted the country with the design of offering his services to the Greeks, who were then fighting for their emancipation from the Turks. But he never reached Greece, and all that is known of his career in Europe is, that he found himself in St. Petersburgh, in extreme destitution, where the American Minister, Mr. Middleton, was called upon to save him from arrest, on account of an indiscretion; through the kind offices of this gentleman the young adventurer was sent home to America, and, on his arrival in Richmond, Mr. Allan received him with kindness, forgave him his past misconduct, and procured him a cadetship at the United States Military Academy at West Point. Unfortunately for him, just before he left Richmond for his new appointment, Mrs. Allan, the wife of his benefactor, died. She had always treated him with motherly affection, and he had paid more deference to her than to any one else. At West Point he applied himself with great energy and success for a while to his new course of studies; but the rigid discipline of that institution ill sorted with the irrepressible recklessness of his nature, and after ten months he was ignominiously expelled. [Pg xxiii]

After leaving “the Point” he returned to Richmond, and was again kindly received and welcomed to his home by Mr. Allan. But there was a change in the house where the wayward boy had been a pet. There was a new and a younger mistress. Mr. Allan had taken a second wife, a lady much younger than himself, and who was disposed to treat the expelled cadet as a son. But he soon contrived to quarrel with her, and was compelled to abandon the house of his adopted father, never to return. The cause of the quarrel which led to this final disruption between Poe and his generous patron has been variously stated; the family of Mr. Allan give a version of it which throws a dark shade on the character of the poet; but let it have been as it may, it must have been of a very grave nature, for, on the death of Mr. Allan, shortly after, in 1834, the name of his adopted son, who it was supposed would have inherited all his wealth, was not mentioned in his will.

On leaving the house of his benefactor for the last time, Poe was left without a friend, and thrown upon his own resources. He had published a volume of poems in Baltimore, just after his expulsion from West Point, under the title of “Al Aaraaf” and “Tamerlane,” to which a few smaller poems were added. These were the production of his early years, probably between his fifteenth and sixteenth years, though the exact date of their production cannot be ascertained. The commendations bestowed upon these precocious poems encouraged him to devote himself to literature for a profession. But his first attempts to earn a living by literature must have been discouraging, for soon after publishing his [Pg xxiv] first volume, he was driven by his necessities to enlist as a private soldier in the army. Here he was recognised by officers who had known him at West Point, and who interested themselves to obtain his discharge, and, if possible, a commission. But their kind intentions were frustrated by his desertion. The next attempt he made in literature proved more successful; he had fruitlessly tried to find a publisher for a volume of stories; but on a premium of one hundred dollars, for a tale in prose, and a similar reward for a poem, being offered by the publisher of a literary periodical in Baltimore, Poe obtained both prizes; though he was only allowed to retain the prize for the tale, as it was thought not prudent to give both prizes to the same writer. The tale chosen was the “Manuscript found in a Bottle,” a composition which contains many of his most marked peculiarities of style and invention. The award was made in October 1833, and, fortunately for the young author, there was one gentleman on the committee who made the decision, who had it in his power to render him essential service.

This was John P. Kennedy, the novelist, author of “Horse Shoe Robinson,” and eminent as a lawyer and a statesman. To this gentleman Poe came on hearing of his success, poorly clad, pale, and emaciated; he told his story, and his ambition, and at once gained the confidence and affection of the more prosperous author. He was in utter want, and had not yet received the amount to which he was entitled for his story. Mr. Kennedy took him by the hand, furnished him with means to render [Pg xxv] him immediately comfortable, and enabled him to make a respectable appearance; and in a short time afterwards procured for him a situation as editor of the “Literary Messenger,” a monthly magazine published in Richmond. In his new place he continued for a while to work with great industry, and wrote a great number of reviews and tales; but he fell into his old habits, and after a debauch quarrelled with the proprietor of the “Messenger,” and was dismissed.

It was one of the strange peculiarities of Poe to make humble and penitent appeals for forgiveness and reconciliation to those he had offended by his abuse and insolence, and he was no sooner conscious of his error in quarrelling with the publisher of the “Messenger” than he endeavoured to regain the position he had lost. He was successful; and though he often fell into his old habits, yet he retained his connexion with the work until January, 1837, when he abandoned the “Messenger” and left Richmond for New York. During his last residence in Richmond, while working for a salary of ten dollars a week, he married his cousin, Virginia Clemm, a young, amiable, and gentle girl, without fortune or friends, and as ill-calculated as himself to buffet the waves of an adverse fortune. In New York he wrote for the literary periodicals, but soon removed to Philadelphia, where he was employed as editor of “Burton’s Gentleman’s Magazine;” he continued but a year in his post, and after several quarrels with the proprietor of the magazine, left him to establish a magazine of his own. To have a [Pg xxvi] magazine of his own, which he could manage as he pleased, was always the great ambition of his life. He had invented a title, selected a motto, written an introduction, and made the entire plans for the great work, which was to be called the “Stylus;” it was the chimera which he nursed, the castle in the air which he longed for, the rainbow of his cloudy hopes. But he did not succeed in establishing it then, and was soon installed as editor of “Graham’s Magazine.” As a matter of course he quarrelled with Graham, and then went to New York, where he engaged as a sub-editor on the “Mirror,” a daily paper, of which his friend Willis was editor. But he did not remain long at this employment, which was wholly unsuited to him, and he left the “Mirror” without quarrelling with the proprietor. During his engagements with these different periodicals, he had written some of his finest prose tales, had published an anonymous work in the style of Robinson Crusoe, entitled the “Adventures of Arthur Gordon Pym,” and a collection of his tales in a volume, which he called “Tales of the Grotesque and the Arabesque,” and gained another prize by his story of the Gold Bug. He was beginning to be known as a fierce and terrible critic, rather than as a poet or a writer of tales, when the publication of his poem of the Raven in the “American Review,” a New York monthly magazine, first attracted the attention of the literary world to his singular and powerful genius. Up to the appearance of this wild fantasy, he had not been generally recognised as a poet, and had known nothing of society. [Pg xxvii] But he became at once a lion, and his writings were eagerly sought after by publishers. The prospect lay bright before him; he abandoned for awhile the vices which so fearfully beset him; he was living quietly in a pleasant rural neighbourhood in Westchester, near the city, with his delicate wife and her mother, and a brilliant future appeared to be in store for him. But he could never keep clear from magazine editing, and he joined Mr. C. F. Briggs in publishing the “Broadway Journal,” a literary weekly periodical; but the inevitable quarrel ensued, and this project was abandoned at the end of a year. It was while editing the “Broadway Journal” that he engaged in furious onslaught upon Longfellow, whom he accused of plagiarising from his poems, and, at the same time, involved himself in numberless disputes and quarrels with other authors. But he also gained the affection and admiration of many estimable literary people, some of whom he alienated by appearing before them when in a state of intoxication. He delivered a lecture on poetry, but attracted no hearers, and he was so chagrined by his disappointment, that he fell again into his old habits, and disgusted his new friends by his gross misconduct; he involved himself in another quarrel with some of the literati of Boston, and to show his contempt for them, went there and delivered a poem in public, which he pretended to have written in his tenth year. On his return to New York he was again reduced to great straits; and in 1848 he advertised a series of lectures, in order to raise sufficient means to put into execution his long-cherished plan of a magazine; but he delivered only one lecture on the Cosmogony of the Universe, which was afterwards [Pg xxviii] published under the title of “Eureka, a Prose Poem.” His wife had died the year previously, and during her illness he was reduced to such extremities that public appeals, which were generously responded to, were made in his behalf by the papers of New York.

Not long after the death of his wife he formed an intimacy with an accomplished literary lady of Rhode Island, a widow, and was engaged to be married to her. It was to her that he addressed the poem “Annabel Lee;” the day was appointed for their marriage; but he had, in the meantime, formed other plans; and, to disentangle himself from this engagement, he visited the house of his affianced bride, where he conducted himself with such indecent violence that the aid of the police had to be called in to expel him. This, of course, put an end to the engagement. In a short time after he went to Richmond, and there gained the confidence and affections of a lady of good family and considerable fortune. The day was appointed for their marriage, and he left Virginia to return to New York to fulfil some literary arrangements previous to the consummation of this new engagement. He had written to his friends that he had, at last, a prospect of happiness. The Lost Lenore was found. He arrived in Baltimore on his way to the north, and gave his baggage into the charge of a porter, intending to leave in an hour for Philadelphia. Stepping into an hotel to obtain some refreshments, he met some of his former companions, who invited him to drink with them. In a few moments all was over with him. [Pg xxix] He spent the night in revelry, wandered out into the street in a state of insanity, and was found in the morning literally dying from exposure, and a single night’s excesses. He was taken to a hospital, and, on the 7th October, 1849, at the age of thirty-eight, he closed his troubled life. Three days before he had left his newly-affianced bride to prepare for their nuptials. He lies in a burying-ground in Baltimore, his native city, without a stone to mark the place of his last rest.

In person Edgar Allan Poe was slight, and hardly of the medium height; his motions were quick and nervous, his air was abstracted, and his countenance generally serious and pale. He never laughed, and rarely smiled; but in conversation he was vivacious, earnest, and respectful; and though he appeared generally under restraint, as though guarding against a half-subdued passion, yet his manners were engaging, and he never failed to win the confidence and kind feelings of those with whom he conversed for the first time; and there were a few who knew him long and intimately who could never believe that he was ever otherwise than the pleasant, intelligent, respectful, and earnest companion he appeared to them. Though he was at times so reckless and profligate in his conduct, and so indifferent to external proprieties, he was generally scrupulously exact in everything he did. He dressed with extreme neatness and perfectly good taste, avoiding all ornaments and everything of a bizarre appearance. He was painfully alive to all imperfections of art; and a false rhyme, an ambiguous sentence, or even [Pg xxx] a typographical error, threw him into an ecstasy of passion. It was this sensitiveness to all artistic imperfections, rather than any malignity of feeling, which made his criticisms so severe, and procured him a host of enemies among persons towards whom he never entertained any personal ill-will. He criticised his own productions with the same severity that he exercised towards the writings of others; and all his poems, though he sometimes represented them as offsprings of a sudden inspiration, were the work of elaborate study. His handwriting was always neat and singularly uniform, and his manuscripts were invariably on long slips of paper about four inches wide, which he never folded, but always made into a roll. Nothing he ever did had the appearance of haste or slovenliness, and he preserved with religious care every scrap he had ever written, and every letter he ever received, so that he left behind him the amplest materials for the composition of his literary life. At his own request these remnants of his existence were entrusted to Doctor Griswold, a gentleman with whom he had quarrelled, and had lampooned in his lectures; Doctor Griswold, in a generous spirit, accepted the charge, and produced from the papers entrusted to him, the best biography of the strange being that has been published, which was appended to the collection of his works in four volumes issued in New York.

June, 1857.

[Pg 1]

## MISCELLANEOUS POEMS.

### THE RAVEN.

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, [Pg 2]
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 mortals ever dared to dream before; [Pg 3]
But the silence was unbroken, and the stillness 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.

[Pg 4]

Back into the chamber turning, all my soul within me burning,
Soon again I heard a tapping something 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 a minute 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 marveled 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, [Pg 5]
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 farther 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 that 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.”
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!

[Pg 6]

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!” [Pg 7]
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; [Pg 8]
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!

[Pg 9]

### LENORE.

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! [Pg 10]
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.
retches! 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?
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.” [Pg 11]

[Pg 12]

### A VALENTINE.

or her this rhyme is penned, whose luminous eyes,
Brightly expressive as the twins of Lœda,
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 translate the address, read the first letter of the first line in connexion 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. The name will thus appear.

[Pg 13]

### THE COLISEUM.

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 [Pg 14]
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? [Pg 15]
“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.”

### TO —— ——.

ot 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: [Pg 16]
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 moon-lit “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 unpurpled vapours, far away
To where the prospect terminates—thee only.

[Pg 17]

### TO HELEN.

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, [Pg 18]
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.
lad 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. (Oh, Heaven!—oh, 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!) [Pg 19]
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.
[Pg 20]
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!
ut 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 [Pg 21]
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!

[Pg 22]

### AN ENIGMA.

eldom 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.

[Pg 23]

### ULALUME.

The skies they were ashen and sober;
The leaves they were crisped and sere—
The leaves they were withering and sere;
It was night in the lonesome October [Pg 24]
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 Pysche, 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. [Pg 25]
And now, as the night was senescent
And star-dials pointed to morn—
As the star-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.
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 Pysche, 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.” [Pg 26]
In terror she spoke, letting sink her
Wings until 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.
I replied—“This is nothing but dreaming:
Let us on by this tremulous light!
Let us bathe in this crystalline light!
Its Sybilic 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 the 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!” [Pg 27]
Then my heart it grew ashen and sober
As the leaves that were crisped and sere—
As the leaves that were withering and sere,
And I cried—“It was surely October [Pg 28]
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.”

### 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.

[Pg 29]

### TO MY MOTHER.

ecause 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.

[Pg 30]

### 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! [Pg 31]
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
[Pg 32]
Of the bells, bells, bells,
Of the bells, bells, bells, bells,
Bells, bells, bells—
To the rhyming and the chiming of the bells!

[Pg 33]

III.
ear 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 clash, and roar!
What a horror they outpour [Pg 34]
On the besom of the palpitating air!
Yet the ear it fully knows,
By the twanging,
And the clanging, [Pg 35]
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!
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. [Pg 36]
And the people—ah, the people—
They that dwell up in the steeple,
All alone,
And who tolling, tolling, tolling, [Pg 37]
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, [Pg 38]
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.

[Pg 39]

### THE CONQUEROR WORM.

o! ’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! [Pg 40]
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, [Pg 41]
And the angels, all pallid and wan,
Uprising, unveiling, affirm
That the play is the tragedy “Man,”
And its hero the Conqueror Worm.

[Pg 42]

### ANNABEL LEE.

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. [Pg 43]
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 high-born 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. [Pg 44]
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: [Pg 45]
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 the sepulchre there by the sea,
In her tomb by the sounding sea.

[Pg 46]

### THE VALLEY OF UNREST.

NCE 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 sun-light 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
Uneasily, from morn till even, [Pg 47]
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.

[Pg 48]

### ISRAFEL.⁠[1]

In heaven a spirit doth dwell
“Whose heart-strings are a lute;” [Pg 49]
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. [Pg 50]
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. [Pg 51]
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.

[Pg 52]

### SILENCE.

here 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!

[Pg 53]

### TO ZANTE.

Fair isle, that from the fairest of all flowers,
Thy gentlest of all gentle names dost take! [Pg 54]
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 entombèd 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!”

[Pg 55]

### TO F——S S. O——D.

hou 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.

[Pg 56]

### BRIDAL BALLAD.

he 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 church-yard bore me,
And I sighed to him before me,
Thinking him dead D’Elormie,
“Oh, I am happy now!” [Pg 57]
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 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.

[Pg 58]

### THE HAUNTED PALACE.

In the greenest of our valleys
By good angels tenanted,
Once a fair and stately palace—
Radiant palace—reared its head. [Pg 59]
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. [Pg 60]
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.
And travellers now, within that valley,
Through the red-litten windows see
Vast forms, that move fantastically
To a discordant melody, [Pg 61]
While, like a ghastly rapid river,
Through the pale door
A hideous throng rush out for ever
And laugh—but smile no more.

[Pg 62]

### EULALIE.

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. [Pg 63]
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,
Astarté within the sky,
While ever to her dear Eulalie upturns her matron eye—
While ever to her young Eulalie upturns her violet eye.

[Pg 64]

### TO F——.

eloved! 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 storms—but where meanwhile
Serenest skies continually
Just o’er that one bright island smile.

[Pg 65]

### 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. [Pg 66]
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.

[Pg 67]

### DREAM-LAND.

y 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.
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 [Pg 68]
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. [Pg 69]
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, [Pg 70]
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 fringed 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.

[Pg 71]

### HYMN.

t 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!

[Pg 72]

### THE SLEEPER.

At midnight, in the month of June,
I stand beneath the mystic moon. [Pg 73]
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— [Pg 74]
Above the close 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!
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, [Pg 75]
For her may some tall vault unfold—
Some vault that oft hath flung its black
And winged 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.

[Pg 76]

### FOR ANNIE.

hank 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— [Pg 77]
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 drunk of a water
That quenches all thirst:—

[Pg 78]

Of a water that flows,
With a lullaby sound,
From a spring but a very few
Feet under ground— [Pg 79]
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 odour
About it, of pansies—
A rosemary odour, [Pg 80]
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. [Pg 81]
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.

[Pg 82]

### 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. [Pg 83]
And, as his strength
Failed him at length,
He met a pilgrim shadow— [Pg 84]
“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!”

[Pg 85]

### A DREAM WITHIN A DREAM.

Take this kiss upon the brow!
And, in parting from you now,
Thus much let me avow— [Pg 86]
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?

[Pg 87]

### THE CITY IN THE SEA.

Lo! Death has reared himself a throne
In a strange city lying alone [Pg 88]
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 [Pg 89]
That all seem pendulous in air,
While from a proud tower in the town
Death looks gigantically down. [Pg 90]
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.

[Pg 91]

## SCENES FROM “POLITIAN;”

AN UNPUBLISHED DRAMA. [Pg 92]

[Pg 93]

I.

ROME.—A Hall in a Palace. Alessandra and Castiglione.

ALESSANDRA.
Thou art sad, Castiglione. [Pg 94]
CASTIGLIONE.
Sad!—not I.
Oh, I’m the happiest, happiest man in Rome!
A few days more, thou knowest, my Alessandra,
Will make thee mine. Oh, I am very happy!
ALESSANDRA.
Methinks thou hast a singular way of showing
Thy happiness!—what ails thee, cousin of mine?
Why didst thou sigh so deeply?
CASTIGLIONE.
Did I sigh?
I was not conscious of it. It is a fashion,
A silly—a most silly fashion I have
When I am very happy. Did I sigh?[Sighing.
ALESSANDRA.
Thou didst. Thou art not well. Thou hast indulged
Too much of late, and I am vexed to see it. [Pg 95]
Late hours and wine, Castiglione,—these
Will ruin thee! thou art already altered—
Thy looks are haggard—nothing so wears away
The constitution as late hours and wine.
CASTIGLIONE [musing].
Nothing, fair cousin, nothing—not even deep sorrow—
Wears it away like evil hours and wine.
I will amend.
ALESSANDRA.
Do it! I would have thee drop
Thy riotous company, too—fellows low born—
Ill suit the like with old Di Broglio’s heir
And Alessandra’s husband.
CASTIGLIONE.
I will drop them. [Pg 96]
ALESSANDRA.
Thou wilt—thou must. Attend thou also more
To thy dress and equipage—they are over plain
For thy lofty rank and fashion—much depends
Upon appearances.
CASTIGLIONE.
I’ll see to it.
ALESSANDRA.
Then see to it!—pay more attention, Sir,
To a becoming carriage—much thou wantest
In dignity.
CASTIGLIONE.
Much, much, oh much I want
In proper dignity. [Pg 97]
ALESSANDRA [haughtily].
Thou mockest me, sir! [Pg 98]
CASTIGLIONE [abstractedly].
Sweet, gentle Lalage!
ALESSANDRA.
Heard I aright?
I speak to him—he speaks of Lalage!
Sir Count! [Places her hand on his shoulder.]
What, art thou dreaming? he’s not well!
What ails thee, Sir?
CASTIGLIONE [starting].
Cousin! fair cousin!—madam!
I crave thy pardon—indeed I am not well—
Your hand from off my shoulder, if you please.
This air is most oppressive!—Madam—the Duke!
Enter Di Broglio.
DI BROGLIO.
My son, I’ve news for thee!—hey?—what’s the matter?
[Observing Alessandra.
I’ the pouts? Kiss her, Castiglione! kiss her, [Pg 99]
You dog! and make it up, I say, this minute!
I’ve news for you both. Politian is expected
Hourly in Rome—Politian, Earl of Leicester!
We’ll have him at the wedding. ’Tis his first visit
To the imperial city.
ALESSANDRA.
What! Politian
Of Britain, Earl of Leicester?
DI BROGLIO.
The same, my love.
We’ll have him at the wedding. A man quite young
In years, but grey in fame. I have not seen him,
But Rumour speaks of him as of a prodigy
Pre-eminent in arts, and arms, and wealth,
And high descent. We’ll have him at the wedding.
ALESSANDRA.
I have heard much of this Politian. [Pg 100]
Gay, volatile, and giddy—is he not?
And little given to thinking.
DI BROGLIO.
Far from it, love.
No branch, they say, of all philosophy
So deep abstruse he has not mastered it.
Learned as few are learned.
ALESSANDRA.
’Tis very strange!
I have known men have seen Politian
And sought his company. They speak of him
As of one who entered madly into life,
Drinking the cup of pleasure to the dregs.
CASTIGLIONE.
Ridiculous! Now, I have seen Politian,
And know him well—nor learned nor mirthful he. [Pg 101]
He is a dreamer and a man shut out
From common passions.
DI BROGLIO.
Children, we disagree.
Let us go forth and taste the fragrant air
Of the garden. Did I dream, or did I hear
Politian was a melancholy man?[Exeunt.

[Pg 102]

II.

ROME.—A Lady’s apartment, with a window open and looking into a garden. Lalage, in deep mourning, reading at a table on which lie some books and a hand mirror. In the background Jacinta (a servant maid) leans carelessly upon a chair.

LALAGE.
Jacinta! is it thou? [Pg 103]
JACINTA [pertly].
Yes, Ma’am, I’m here.
LALAGE.
I did not know, Jacinta, you were in waiting.
Sit down!—let not my presence trouble you—
Sit down!—for I am humble, most humble.
JACINTA [aside].
’Tis time.
[Jacinta seats herself in a side-long manner upon the
chair, resting her elbows upon the back, and
regarding her mistress with a contemptuous look.
Lalage continues to read.
LALAGE.
“It in another climate, so he said,
Bore a bright golden flower, but not i’ this soil!” [Pg 104]
[Pauses—turns over some leaves, and resumes.
“No lingering winters there, nor snow, nor shower—
But Ocean ever to refresh mankind
Breathes the shrill spirit of the western wind.”
Oh, beautiful!—most beautiful!—how like
To what my fevered soul doth dream of Heaven!
O happy land! [Pauses.] She died!—the maiden died!
O still more happy maiden who couldst die!
Jacinta!
[Jacinta returns no answer, and Lalage presently resumes.
Again!—a similar tale
Told of a beauteous dame beyond the sea!
Thus speaketh one Ferdinand in the words of the play—
“She died full young”—one Bossola answers him—
“I think not so—her infelicity
Seemed to have years too many”—Ah luckless lady!
Jacinta!
[Still no answer.
Here’s a far sterner story,
But like—oh, very like in its despair— [Pg 105]
Of that Egyptian queen, winning so easily
A thousand hearts—losing at length her own.
She died. Thus endeth the history—and her maids
Lean over her and weep—two gentle maids
With gentle names—Eiros and Charmion!
Rainbow and Dove!——Jacinta!
JACINTA [pettishly].
Madam, what is it?
LALAGE.
Wilt thou, my good Jacinta, be so kind
As go down in the library and bring me
The Holy Evangelists?
JACINTA. [Pg 106]
Pshaw!
[Exit.
LALAGE.
If there be balm
For the wounded spirit in Gilead, it is there!
Dew in the night-time of my bitter trouble
Will there be found—“dew sweeter far than that
Which hangs like chains of pearl on Hermon hill.”
Re-enter Jacinta, and throws a volume on the table.
JACINTA.
There, Ma’am, ’s the book. Indeed she is very troublesome.
[Aside.
LALAGE [astonished].
What didst thou say, Jacinta? Have I done aught
To grieve thee or to vex thee?—I am sorry.
For thou hast served me long, and ever been
Trustworthy and respectful.
[Resumes her reading.
JACINTA.
I can’t believe
She has any more jewels—no—no—she gave me all. [Aside.
LALAGE. [Pg 107]
What didst thou say, Jacinta? Now I bethink me
Thou hast not spoken lately of thy wedding.
How fares good Ugo?—and when is it to be?
Can I do aught?—is there no farther aid
Thou needest, Jacinta?
JACINTA.
Is there no farther aid!
That’s meant for me. [Aside.] I’m sure, Madam, you need not
Be always throwing those jewels in my teeth.
LALAGE.
Jewels! Jacinta,—now indeed, Jacinta,
I thought not of the jewels.
JACINTA.
Oh! perhaps not!
But then I might have sworn it. After all, [Pg 108]
There’s Ugo says the ring is only paste,
For he’s sure the Count Castiglione never
Would have given a real diamond to such as you;
And at the best I’m certain, Madam, you cannot
Have use for jewels now. But I might have sworn it. [Exit.
[Lalage bursts into tears, and leans her head upon the
table—after a short pause raises it.
LALAGE.
Poor Lalage!—and is it come to this?
Thy servant maid!—but courage!—’tis but a viper
Whom thou hast cherished to sting thee to the soul!
[Taking up the mirror.
Ha! here at least’s a friend—too much a friend
In earlier days—a friend will not deceive thee.
Fair mirror and true! now tell me (for thou canst)
A tale—a pretty tale—and heed thou not
Though it be rife with woe. It answers me.
It speaks of sunken eyes, and wasted cheeks,
And Beauty long deceased—remembers me
Of Joy departed—Hope, the Seraph Hope, [Pg 109]
Inurned and entombed!—now, in a tone
Low, sad, and solemn, but most audible,
Whispers of early grave untimely yawning
For ruined maid. Fair mirror and true!—thou liest not!
Thou hast no end to gain—no heart to break—
Castiglione lied who said he loved——
Thou true—he false!—false!—false!
[While she speaks, a Monk enters her apartment,
and approaches unobserved.
MONK.
Refuge thou hast,
Sweet daughter! in Heaven. Think of eternal things;
Give up thy soul to penitence, and pray!
LALAGE [arising hurriedly].
I cannot pray!—My soul is at war with God!
The frightful sounds of merriment below
Disturb my senses—go! I cannot pray—
The sweet airs from the garden worry me!
Thy presence grieves me—go!—thy priestly raiment
Fills me with dread—thy ebony crucifix [Pg 110]
With horror and awe!
MONK. [Pg 111]
Think of thy precious soul!
LALAGE.
Think of my early days!—think of my father
And mother in heaven! think of our quiet home,
And the rivulet that ran before the door!
Think of my little sisters!—think of them!
And think of me!—think of my trusting love
And confidence—his vows—my ruin—think—think
Of my unspeakable misery!—begone!
Yet stay! yet stay!—what was it thou saidst of prayer
And penitence? Didst thou not speak of faith
And vows before the Throne?
MONK.
I did.
LALAGE.
’Tis well.
There is a vow were fitting should be made—
A sacred vow, imperative, and urgent,
A solemn vow! [Pg 112]
MONK.
Daughter, this zeal is well!
LALAGE.
Father, this zeal is anything but well!
Hast thou a crucifix fit for this thing?
A crucifix whereon to register
This sacred vow?
[He hands her his own.
Not that—Oh! no!—no!—no!
[Shuddering.
Not that! Not that!—I tell thee, holy man,
Thy raiments and thy ebony cross affright me!
Stand back! I have a crucifix myself,—
I have a crucifix! Methinks ’twere fitting
The deed—the vow—the symbol of the deed—
And the deed’s register should tally, father!
[Draws a cross-handled dagger, and raises it on high.
Behold the cross wherewith a vow like mine
Is written in heaven! [Pg 113]
MONK.
Thy words are madness, daughter,
And speak a purpose unholy—thy lips are livid—
Thine eyes are wild—tempt not the wrath divine!
Pause ere too late!—oh be not—be not rash!
Swear not the oath—oh swear it not!
LALAGE.
’Tis sworn!

[Pg 114]

III.

An Apartment in a Palace. Politian and Baldazzar.

BALDAZZAR.
Arouse thee now, Politian! [Pg 115]
Thou must not—nay indeed, indeed, thou shalt not
Give way unto these humours. Be thyself!
Shake off the idle fancies that beset thee,
And live, for now thou diest!
POLITIAN.
Not so, Baldazzar!
Surely I live.
BALDAZZAR.
Politian, it doth grieve me
To see thee thus.
POLITIAN.
Baldazzar, it doth grieve me
To give thee cause for grief, my honoured friend.
Command me, Sir! what wouldst thou have me do?
At thy behest I will shake off that nature
Which from my forefathers I did inherit, [Pg 116]
Which with my mother’s milk I did imbibe,
And be no more Politian, but some other.
Command me, Sir!
BALDAZZAR.
To the field then—to the field—
To the senate or the field.
POLITIAN.
Alas! alas!
There is an imp would follow me even there!
There is an imp hath followed me even there!
There is——what voice was that?
BALDAZZAR.
I heard it not.
I heard not any voice except thine own, [Pg 117]
And the echo of thine own.
POLITIAN.
Then I but dreamed.
BALDAZZAR.
Give not thy soul to dreams: the camp—the court
Befit thee—Fame awaits thee—Glory calls—
And her the trumpet-tongued thou wilt not hear
In hearkening to imaginary sounds
And phantom voices.
POLITIAN.
It is a phantom voice!
Didst thou not hear it then?
BALDAZZAR. [Pg 118]
I heard it not.
POLITIAN.
Thou heardst it not!——Baldazzar, speak no more
To me, Politian, of thy camps and courts.
Oh! I am sick, sick, sick, even unto death,
Of the hollow and high-sounding vanities
Of the populous Earth! Bear with me yet awhile!
We have been boys together—school-fellows—
And now are friends—yet shall not be so long—
For in the eternal city thou shalt do me
A kind and gentle office, and a Power—
A Power august, benignant and supreme—
Shall then absolve thee of all farther duties
Unto thy friend.
BALDAZZAR.
Thou speakest a fearful riddle;
I will not understand.
POLITIAN.
Yet now as Fate
Approaches, and the Hours are breathing low, [Pg 119]
The sands of Time are changed to golden grains,
And dazzle me, Baldazzar. Alas! alas!
I cannot die, having within my heart
So keen a relish for the beautiful
As hath been kindled within it. Methinks the air
Is balmier now than it was wont to be—
Rich melodies are floating in the winds—
A rarer loveliness bedecks the earth—
And with a holier lustre the quiet moon
Sitteth in heaven.—Hist! hist! thou canst not say
Thou hearest not now, Baldazzar?
BALDAZZAR.
Indeed I hear not.
POLITIAN.
Not hear it!—listen now—listen!—the faintest sound,
And yet the sweetest that ear ever heard!
A lady’s voice!—and sorrow in the tone!
Baldazzar, it oppresses me like a spell!
Again!—again!—how solemnly it falls
Into my heart of hearts! that eloquent voice
Surely I never heard—yet it were well [Pg 120]
Had I but heard it with its thrilling tones
In earlier days!

[Pg 121]

BALDAZZAR.
I myself hear it now.
Be still!—the voice, if I mistake not greatly,
Proceeds from yonder lattice—which you may see
Very plainly through the window—it belongs,
Does it not? unto this palace of the Duke.
The singer is undoubtedly beneath
The roof of his Excellency—and perhaps
Is even that Alessandra of whom he spoke
As the betrothed of Castiglione,
His son and heir.
POLITIAN.
Be still!—it comes again!
Voice [very faintly].
“And is thy heart so strong
As for to leave me thus,
Who hath loved thee so long,
In wealth and woe among? [Pg 122]
And is thy heart so strong
As for to leave me thus?
Say nay—say nay!”
BALDAZZAR.
The song is English, and I oft have heard it
In merry England—never so plaintively—
Hist! hist! it comes again!
Voice [more loudly].
“Is it so strong
As for to leave me thus,
Who hath loved thee so long,
In wealth and woe among?
And is thy heart so strong
As for to leave me thus?
Say nay—say nay!”
BALDAZZAR.
’Tis hushed, and all is still! [Pg 123]
POLITIAN.
All is not still.
BALDAZZAR.
Let us go down.
POLITIAN.
Go down, Baldazzar, go!
BALDAZZAR.
The hour is growing late—the Duke awaits us,—
Thy presence is expected in the hall
Below. What ails thee, Earl Politian?
Voice [distinctly].
“Who hath loved thee so long, [Pg 124]
In wealth and woe among,
And is thy heart so strong?
Say nay—say nay!”
BALDAZZAR.
Let us descend!—’tis time. Politian, give
These fancies to the wind. Remember, pray,
Your bearing lately savoured much of rudeness
Unto the Duke. Arouse thee! and remember!
POLITIAN.
Remember? I do. Lead on! I do remember.
[Going.
Let us descend. Believe me, I would give,
Freely would give, the broad lands of my earldom
To look upon the face hidden by yon lattice—
“To gaze upon that veiled face, and hear
Once more that silent tongue.” [Pg 125]
BALDAZZAR.
Let me beg you, sir,
Descend with me—the Duke may be offended.
Let us go down, I pray you.
Voice [loudly].
“Say nay!—say nay!”
POLITIAN [aside].
’Tis strange!—’tis very strange—methought the voice
Chimed in with my desires and bade me stay!
[Approaching the window.
Sweet voice! I heed thee, and will surely stay.
Now be this Fancy, by Heaven, or be it Fate,
Still will I not descend. Baldazzar, make
Apology unto the Duke for me;
I go not down to-night. [Pg 126]
BALDAZZAR.
Your lordship’s pleasure
Shall be attended to. Good night, Politian.
POLITIAN.
Good night, my friend, good night.

[Pg 127]

IV.

The Gardens of a Palace—Moonlight.
Lalage and Politian.

LALAGE.
And dost thou speak of love
To me, Politian?—dost thou speak of love [Pg 128]
To Lalage?—ah woe—ah woe is me!
This mockery is most cruel—most cruel indeed!
POLITIAN.
Weep not! oh, sob not thus!—thy bitter tears
Will madden me. Oh mourn not, Lalage—
Be comforted! I know—I know it all,
And still I speak of love. Look at me, brightest,
And beautiful Lalage!—turn here thine eyes!
Thou askest me if I could speak of love,
Knowing what I know, and seeing what I have seen.
Thou askest me that—and thus I answer thee—
Thus on my bended knee I answer thee.
[Kneeling.
Sweet Lalage, I love thee—love thee—love thee;
Thro’ good and ill—thro’ weal and woe I love thee.
Not mother, with her first-born on her knee,
Thrills with intenser love than I for thee.
Not on God’s altar, in any time or clime,
Burned there a holier fire than burneth now
Within my spirit for thee. And do I love?
[Arising.
Even for thy woes I love thee—even for thy woes—
Thy beauty and thy woes.
[Pg 129]
LALAGE.
Alas, proud Earl,
Thou dost forget thyself, remembering me!
How, in thy father’s halls, among the maidens
Pure and reproachless of thy princely line,
Could the dishonoured Lalage abide?
Thy wife, and with a tainted memory—
My seared and blighted name, how would it tally
With the ancestral honours of thy house,
And with thy glory?
POLITIAN.
Speak not to me of glory!
I hate—I loathe the name; I do abhor
The unsatisfactory and ideal thing.
Art thou not Lalage, and I Politian?
Do I not love—art thou not beautiful—
What need we more? Ha! glory!—now speak not of it.
By all I hold most sacred and most solemn—
By all my wishes now—my fears hereafter—
By all I scorn on earth and hope in heaven—
There is no deed I would more glory in, [Pg 130]
Than in thy cause to scoff at this same glory
And trample it under foot. What matters it—
What matters it, my fairest, and my best,
That we go down unhonoured and forgotten
Into the dust—so we descend together.
Descend together—and then—and then perchance——
LALAGE.
Why dost thou pause, Politian?
POLITIAN.
And then perchance
Arise together, Lalage, and roam
The starry and quiet dwellings of the blest,
And still——
LALAGE.
Why dost thou pause, Politian?
POLITIAN.
And still together—together. [Pg 131]
LALAGE.
Now, Earl of Leicester!
Thou lovest me, and in my heart of hearts
I feel thou lovest me truly.
POLITIAN.
Oh, Lalage!
[Throwing himself upon his knee.
And lovest thou me?
LALAGE.
Hist! hush! within the gloom
Of yonder trees methought a figure pass’d—
A spectral figure, solemn, and slow, and noiseless—
Like the grim shadow Conscience, solemn and noiseless.
[Walks across and returns.
I was mistaken—’twas but a giant bough
Stirred by the autumn wind, Politian!
POLITIAN.
My Lalage—my love! why art thou moved?
Why dost thou turn so pale? Not Conscience’ self,
Far less a shadow which thou likenest to it, [Pg 132]
Should shake the firm spirit thus. But the night wind
Is chilly—and these melancholy boughs
Throw over all things a gloom.

[Pg 133]

LALAGE.
Politian!
Thou speakest to me of love. Knowest thou the land
With which all tongues are busy—a land new found—
Miraculously found by one of Genoa—
A thousand leagues within the golden west?
A fairy-land of flowers, and fruit, and sunshine,
And crystal lakes, and over-arching forests,
And mountains, around whose towering summits the winds
Of Heaven untrammelled flow—which air to breathe
Is Happiness now, and will be Freedom hereafter
In days that are to come?
POLITIAN.
O, wilt thou—wilt thou
Fly to that Paradise—my Lalage, wilt thou
Fly thither with me? There Care shall be forgotten,
And Sorrow shall be no more, and Eros be all.
And life shall then be mine, for I will live
For thee, and in thine eyes—and thou shalt be
No more a mourner—but the radiant Joys
Shall wait upon thee, and the angel Hope [Pg 134]
Attend thee ever; and I will kneel to thee
And worship thee, and call thee my beloved,
My own, my beautiful, my love, my wife,
My all;—oh, wilt thou—wilt thou, Lalage,
Fly thither with me?
LALAGE.
A deed is to be done—
Castiglione lives!
POLITIAN.
And he shall die!
[Exit.
LALAGE [after a pause].
And—he—shall—die!——alas!
Castiglione die? Who spoke the words?
Where am I?—what was it he said?—Politian!
Thou art not gone—thou art not gone, Politian!
I feel thou art not gone—yet dare not look,
Lest I behold thee not; thou couldst not go
With those words upon thy lips—O, speak to me!
And let me hear thy voice—one word—one word, [Pg 135]
To say thou art not gone,—one little sentence,
To say how thou dost scorn—how thou dost hate
My womanly weakness. Ha! ha! thou art not gone—
O speak to me! I knew thou wouldst not go!
I knew thou wouldst not, couldst not, durst not go.
Villain, thou art not gone—thou mockest me!
And thus I clutch thee—thus!——He is gone, he is gone—
Gone—gone. Where am I?——’tis well—’tis very well!
So that the blade be keen—the blow be sure,
’Tis well, ’tis very well—alas! alas!

[Pg 136]

V.

The Suburbs. Politian alone.

POLITIAN.
This weakness grows upon me. I am faint,
And much I fear me ill—it will not do [Pg 137]
To die ere I have lived!—Stay—stay thy hand,
O Azrael, yet awhile!—Prince of the Powers
Of Darkness and the Tomb, O pity me!
O pity me! let me not perish now,
In the budding of my Paradisal Hope!
Give me to live yet—yet a little while:
’Tis I who pray for life—I who so late
Demanded but to die!—what sayeth the Count?
Enter Baldazzar.
BALDAZZAR.
That, knowing no cause of quarrel or of feud
Between the Earl Politian and himself,
He doth decline your cartel.
POLITIAN.
What didst thou say?
What answer was it you brought me, good Baldazzar?
With what excessive fragrance the zephyr comes
Laden from yonder bowers!—a fairer day,
Or one more worthy Italy, methinks
No mortal eyes have seen!—what said the Count?
[Pg 138]
BALDAZZAR.
That he, Castiglione, not being aware
Of any feud existing, or any cause
Of quarrel between your lordship and himself,
Cannot accept the challenge.
POLITIAN.
It is most true—
All this is very true. When saw you, Sir,
When saw you now, Baldazzar, in the frigid
Ungenial Britain which we left so lately,
A heaven so calm as this—so utterly free
From the evil taint of clouds?—and he did say?
BALDAZZAR.
No more, my Lord, than I have told you, Sir
The Count Castiglione will not fight,
Having no cause for quarrel.
POLITIAN.
Now this is true—
All very true. Thou art my friend, Baldazzar, [Pg 139]
And I have not forgotten it—thou’lt do me
A piece of service; wilt thou go back and say
Unto this man, that I, the Earl of Leicester,
Hold him a villain?—thus much, I pr’ythee, say
Unto the Count—it is exceeding just
He should have cause for quarrel.
BALDAZZAR.
My lord!—my friend!——
POLITIAN [aside].
’Tis he—he comes himself! [aloud] thou reasonest well.
I know what thou wouldst say—not send the message—
Well!—I will think of it—I will not send it.
Now pr’ythee, leave me—hither doth come a person
With whom affairs of a most private nature
I would adjust.
BALDAZZAR.
I go—to-morrow we meet,
Do we not?—at the Vatican. [Pg 140]
POLITIAN.
At the Vatican.
[Exit Baldazzar.
Enter Castiglione.
CASTIGLIONE.
The Earl of Leicester here!
POLITIAN.
I am the Earl of Leicester, and thou seest,
Dost thou not? that I am here.
CASTIGLIONE.
My Lord, some strange,
Some singular mistake—misunderstanding—
Hath without doubt arisen: thou hast been urged
Thereby, in heat of anger, to address
Some words most unaccountable, in writing, [Pg 141]
To me, Castiglione; the bearer being
Baldazzar, Duke of Surrey. I am aware
Of nothing which might warrant thee in this thing,
Having given thee no offence. Ha!—am I right?
’Twas a mistake?—undoubtedly—we all
Do err at times.
POLITIAN.
Draw, villain, and prate no more!
CASTIGLIONE.
Ha!—draw?—and villain? have at thee then at once,
Proud Earl![Draws.
POLITIAN [drawing].
Thus to the expiatory tomb,
Untimely sepulchre, I do devote thee
In the name of Lalage! [Pg 142]
CASTIGLIONE [letting fall his sword and recoiling to the
extremity of the stage].
Of Lalage!
Hold off—thy sacred hand!—avaunt, I say!
Avaunt—I will not fight thee—indeed I dare not.
POLITIAN.
Thou wilt not fight with me didst say, Sir Count?
Shall I be baffled thus?—now this is well;
Didst say thou darest not? Ha!
CASTIGLIONE.
I dare not—dare not—
Hold off thy hand—with that beloved name
So fresh upon thy lips I will not fight thee—
I cannot—dare not.
POLITIAN.
Now by my halidom
I do believe thee!—coward, I do believe thee! [Pg 143]
CASTIGLIONE.
Ha!—coward!—this may not be!
[Clutches his sword, and staggers towards Politian,
but his purpose is changed before reaching him,
and he falls upon his knee at the feet of the Earl.
Alas! my Lord,
It is—it is—most true. In such a cause
I am the veriest coward. O pity me!
POLITIAN [greatly softened].
Alas!—I do—indeed I pity thee.
CASTIGLIONE.
And Lalage——
POLITIAN.
Scoundrel!—arise and die! [Pg 144]
CASTIGLIONE.
It needeth not be—thus—thus—O let me die
Thus on my bended knee. It were most fitting
That in this deep humiliation I perish.
For in the fight I will not raise a hand
Against thee, Earl of Leicester. Strike thou home—
[Baring his bosom.
Here is no let or hindrance to thy weapon—
Strike home. I will not fight thee.
POLITIAN.
Now s’Death and Hell!
Am I not—am I not sorely—grievously tempted
To take thee at thy word? But mark me, Sir,
Think not to fly me thus. Do thou prepare
For public insult in the streets—before
The eyes of the citizens. I’ll follow thee—
Like an avenging spirit I’ll follow thee
Even unto death. Before those whom thou lovest—
Before all Rome I’ll taunt thee, villain,—I’ll taunt thee, [Pg 145]
Dost hear? with cowardice—thou wilt not fight me?
Thou liest! thou shalt![Exit.
CASTIGLIONE.
Now this indeed is just!
Most righteous, and most just, avenging Heaven!

[Pg 146]

## POEMS WRITTEN IN YOUTH.

[Pg 147]

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.

[Pg 148]

[Pg 149]

### AL AARAAF.⁠[2]

#### PART I.

O! nothing earthly save the ray
(Thrown back from flowers) of Beauty’s eye, [Pg 150]
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 splendour o’er th’ unchained soul—
The soul that scares (the billows are so dense)
Can struggle to its destined eminence—
To distant spheres, from time to time, she rode,
And late to ours, the favoured one of God—
But, now, the ruler of an anchored realm, [Pg 151]
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 looked 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 opaled air in colour bound.
All hurriedly she knelt upon a bed
Of flowers: of lilies such as reared the head
On the fair Capo Deucato,⁠[3] and sprang
So eagerly around about to hang
Upon the flying footsteps of——deep pride—
Of her⁠[4] who loved a mortal—and so died.
The Sephalica, budding with young bees,
Upreared its purple stem around her knees: [Pg 152]
And gemmy flower,⁠[5] of Trebizond misnamed—
Inmate of highest stars, where erst it shamed
All other loveliness: its honied dew
(The fabled nectar that the heathen knew),

[Pg 153]

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, chastened, and more fair:
Nyctanthes too, as sacred as the light
She fears to perfume, perfuming the night:
And Clytia⁠[6] pondering between many a sun,
While pettish tears adown her petals run:
And that aspiring flower⁠[7] 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[8] thither flown
From struggling with the waters of the Rhone:
And thy most lovely purple perfume,⁠[9] Zante!
Isola d’oro!—Fior di Levante!
And the Nelumbo bud that floats for ever; [Pg 154]
With Indian Cupid⁠[10] down the holy river—
Fair flowers, and fairy! to whose care is given
To bear⁠[11] the Goddess’ song, in odours, up to heaven:
pirit! 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, [Pg 155]
Thy messenger hath known,
Have dreamed for thy Infinity
A model⁠[12] of their own—
Thy will is done, O 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,⁠[13]
My embassy is given,
Till secrecy shall knowledge be
In the environs of Heaven.”
She ceased—and buried then her burning cheek
Abashed, amid the lilies there, to seek
A shelter from the fervour of His eye;
For the stars trembled at the Deity.
She stirred not—breathed 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 [Pg 156]
“Silence”—which is the merest word of all.
All Nature speaks, and e’en 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[14] cycles run,
Linked 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[15] 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!” [Pg 157]
Up rose the maiden in the yellow night,
The single-mooned eve!—on Earth we plight [Pg 158]
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 Therasæan⁠[16] reign.

[Pg 159]

#### PART II.

High on a mountain of enamelled head—
Such as the drowsy shepherd on his bed
Of giant pasturage lying at his ease, [Pg 160]
Raising his heavy eyelid, starts and sees
With many a muttered “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 danced with the fair stranger light—
Upreared upon such height arose a pile
Of gorgeous columns on th’ unburthened 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[17] 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,
Looked out above into the purple air,
And rays from God shot down that meteor chain
And hallowed all the beauty twice again,
Save when, between th’ Empyrean and that ring,
Some eager spirit flapped his dusky wing.
But on the pillars seraph eyes have seen [Pg 161]
The dimness of this world: that greyish green
That Nature loves the best for Beauty’s grave
Lurked in each cornice, round each architrave—
And every sculptured cherub thereabout,
That from his marble dwelling peerèd out,
Seemed earthly in the shadow of his niche—
Achaian statues in a world so rich?
Friezes from Tadmor and Persepolis⁠[18]—
From Balbec, and the stilly, clear abyss
Of beautiful Gomorrah! O, the wave⁠[19]
Is now upon thee—but too late to save!
Sound loves to revel in a summer night:
Witness the murmur of the grey twilight
That stole upon the ear, in Eyraco,⁠[20]
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?⁠[21]
But what is this?—it cometh—and it brings
A music with it—’tis the rush of wings— [Pg 162]
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;
And zone that clung around her gentle waist
Had burst beneath the heaving of her heart.
Within the centre of that hall to breathe
She paused and panted, Zanthe! all beneath,
The fairy light that kissed her golden hair
And longed to rest, yet could but sparkle there!
Young flowers were whispering in melody⁠[22]
To happy flowers that night—and tree to tree;
Fountains were gushing music as they fell
In many a star-lit grove, or moon-lit 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, [Pg 163]
The moonbeam away⁠[23]—
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
Encumbered 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 lulled ye to rest!
Up!—shake from your wing
Each hindering thing:
The dew of the night—
It would weigh down your flight [Pg 164]
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,
Oh! is it thy will
On the breezes to toss?
Or, capriciously still,
Like the lone Albatross,⁠[24]
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 [Pg 165]
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[25]
From the growing of grass
Are the music of things—
But are modelled, alas!—
Away, then, my dearest,
Oh! 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[26]—
Arouse them, my maiden, [Pg 166]
On moorland and lea—
Go! breathe on their slumber,
All softly in ear,
[Pg 167]
The musical number
They slumbered 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 lulled 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—e’en 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 [Pg 168]
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!⁠[27]
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.”⁠[28]
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 woe)
Upon a mountain crag, young Angelo—
Beetling it bends athwart the solemn sky, [Pg 169]
And scowls on starry worlds that down beneath it lie.
Here sat he with his love—his dark eye bent
With eagle gaze along the firmament:
Now turned 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 sat, 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 slumber’d—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[29]—
More beauty clung around her column’d wall [Pg 170]
Than e’en thy glowing bosom beats withal;”⁠[30]
And when old Time my wing did disenthral,
Thence sprang I—as the eagle from his tower, [Pg 171]
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 pennon’d spirit leapt aloft,⁠[31]
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— [Pg 172]
Dread star! that came, amid a night of mirth,
A red Dædalion 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 grey Time unfurled
Never his fairy wing o’er fairier 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.

[Pg 173]

### SONNET—TO SCIENCE.

cience! 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?

[Pg 174]

### TO THE RIVER ——.

Fair river! in thy bright, clear flow
Of crystal, wandering water, [Pg 175]
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.

[Pg 176]

### TAMERLANE.

I.
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—Oh 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. [Pg 177]
II.
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.
III.
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, [Pg 178]
And a proud spirit which hath striven
Triumphantly with human kind.
IV.
On mountain soil I first drew life:
The mists of the Taglay have shed
Nightly their dews upon my head,
And, I believe, the winged strife
And tumult of the headlong air
Have nestled in my very hair.
V.
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— [Pg 179]
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!
VI.
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.
VII.
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, [Pg 180]
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.
VIII.
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.
IX.
O, she was worthy of all love!
Love as in infancy was mine—
’Twas such as angel minds above [Pg 181]
Might envy; her young heart the shrine
On which my every hope and thought
Were incense—then a goodly gift, [Pg 182]
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?
X.
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.
XI.
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! [Pg 183]
XII.
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.
XIII.
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, [Pg 184]
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.
XIV.
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.
XV.
I spoke to her of power and pride,
But mystically—is 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— [Pg 185]
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.

[Pg 186]

XVI.
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.
XVII.
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 [Pg 187]
Striding o’er empires haughtily
A diademed outlaw!
XVIII.
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.
XIX.
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 [Pg 188]
The glory of the summer sun.
That soul will hate the ev’ning 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.
XX.
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.
XXI.
I reached my home—my home no more—
For all had flown who made it so. [Pg 189]
I passed from out its mossy door,
And, tho’ my tread was soft and low, [Pg 190]
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.
XXII.
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 trelliced rays from Heaven [Pg 191]
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?

[Pg 192]

### TO ——.

The bowers whereat, in dreams, I see
The wantonest singing birds,
Are lips—and all thy melody
Of lip-begotten words— [Pg 193]
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.

[Pg 194]

### A DREAM.

n 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?

[Pg 195]

### ROMANCE.

omance, 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. [Pg 196]
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.

[Pg 197]

### FAIRY-LAND.

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 starlight
With the breath from their pale faces.
About twelve by the moon-dial
One more filmy than the rest [Pg 198]
(A kind which, upon trial,
They have found to be the best)
Comes down—still down—and down
With its centre on the crown [Pg 199]
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, [Pg 200]
Of Earth, who seek the skies,
And so come down again,
(Never-contented things!)
Have brought a specimen
Upon their quivering wings.

[Pg 201]

### THE LAKE.

TO ——.

In spring of youth it was my lot
To haunt of the wide world a spot [Pg 202]
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.

[Pg 203]

### SONG.

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.

[Pg 204]

### TO M. L. S——.

f 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.

[Pg 205]

### TO HELEN.

elen, thy beauty is to me
Like those Nicéan barks of yore
That gently, o’er a perfumed sea,
The weary way-worn 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,
And the grandeur that was Rome. [Pg 206]
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!

[Pg 207]

[Pg 208]

## NOTES TO AL AARAAF.

[Pg 209]

NOTES.

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

[2] page 149. Al Aaraaf.

A star was discovered by Tycho Brahe which appeared suddenly in the heavens—attained, in a few days, a brilliancy surpassing that of Jupiter—then as suddenly disappeared, and has never been seen since.

[3] P. 151. On the fair Capo Deucato.

On Santa Maura—olim Deucadia.

[4] P. 151. Of her who loved a mortal—and so died.}—Sappho.

[5] P. 152. And gemmy flower, of Trebizond misnamed.

This flower is much noticed by Leuwenhoek and Tournefort. The bee, feeding upon its blossom, becomes intoxicated.

[6] P. 153. And Clytia pondering between many a sun.

Clytia—The Chrysanthemum Peruvianum, or, to employ a better-known term, the turnsol—which turns continually towards the sun, covers itself, like Peru, the country from which it comes, with dewy clouds which cool and refresh its flowers during the most violent heat of the day.—B. de St. Pierre.

[Pg 210]

[7] P. 153. And that aspiring flower that sprang on Earth.

There is cultivated in the king’s garden at Paris, a species of serpentine aloes without prickles, whose large and beautiful flower exhales a strong odour of the vanilla, during the time of its expansion, which is very short. It does not blow till towards the month of July—you then perceive it gradually open its petals—expand them—fade and die.—St. Pierre.

[8] P. 153. And Valisnerian lotus thither flown.

There is found, in the Rhone, a beautiful lily of the Valisnerian kind. Its stem will stretch to the length of three or four feet—thus preserving its head above water in the swellings of the river.

[9] P. 153. And thy most lovely purple perfume, Zante!}—The Hyacinth.

[10] P. 154.

And the Nelumbo bud that floats for ever;
With Indian Cupid down the holy river.

It is a fiction of the Indians, that Cupid was first seen floating in one of these down the river Ganges—and that he still loves the cradle of his childhood.

[11] P. 154. To bear the Goddess’ song, in odours, up to heaven.

And golden vials full of odours which are the prayers of the saints.—Rev. St. John.

[12] P. 155. A model of their own.

The Humanitarians held that God was to be understood as having really a human form.—Vide Clarke’s Sermons, vol. i. page 26, fol. edit.

The drift of Milton’s argument leads him to employ language which would appear, at first sight, to verge upon their doctrine; but it will be seen immediately, that he guards himself against the charge of having adopted one of the most ignorant errors of the dark ages of the Church.—Dr. Sumner’s Notes on Milton’s Christian Doctrine.

This opinion, in spite of many testimonies to the contrary, could never have been very general. Andeus, a Syrian of Mesopotamia, was condemned [Pg 211] for the opinion, as heretical. He lived in the beginning of the fourth century. His disciples were called Anthropomorphites.—Vide Du Pin.

Among Milton’s minor poems are these lines:—

“Dicite sacrorum præsides nemorum Deæ, &c.
Quis ille primus cujus ex imagine
Natura solers finxit humanum genus?
Eternus, incorruptus, æquævus polo,
Unusque et universus exemplar Dei.”

And afterwards,—

“Non cui profundum Cæcitas lumen dedit
Dircæus augur vidit hunc alto sinu,” &c.

[13] P. 155. By winged Fantasy.

Seltsamen Tochter Jovis
Seinem Schosskinde
Der Phantasie.—Göthe.

[14] P. 156. What tho’ in worlds which sightless cycles run.

Sightless—too small to be seen.—Legge.

[15] P. 156. Apart—like fire-flies in Sicilian night.

I have often noticed a peculiar movement of the fire-flies;—they will collect in a body and fly off, from a common centre, into innumerable radii.

[16] P. 158. Her way—but left not yet her Therasæan reign.

Therassea, or Therasea, the island mentioned by Seneca, which, in a moment, arose from the sea to the eyes of astonished mariners.

[17] P. 160.

Of molten stars their pavement, such as fall
Thro’ the ebon air.
Some star which, from the ruin’d roof
Of shaked Olympus, by mischance, did fall.—Milton.

[Pg 212]

[18] P. 161. Friezes from Tadmor and Persepolis.

Voltaire, in speaking of Persepolis, says, “Je connois bien l’admiration qu’inspirent ces ruines—mais un palais érigé au pied d’une chaine des rochers sterils—peut-il être un chef-d’œuvre des arts?”

[19] P. 161. Of beautiful Gomorrah! O, the wave.

“Oh! the wave”—Ula Deguisi is the Turkish appellation; but, on its own shores, it is called Bahar Loth, or Almotanah. There were undoubtedly more than two cities engulfed in the “Dead Sea.” In the valley of Siddim were five—Adrah, Zeboin, Zoar, Sodom and Gomorrah. Stephen of Byzantium mentions eight, and Strabo thirteen (engulfed)—but the last is out of all reason.

It is said, [Tacitus, Strabo, Josephus, Daniel of St. Saba, Nau, Maundrell, Troilo, D’Arvieux] that after an excessive drought, the vestiges of columns, walls, &c. are seen above the surface. At any season, such remains may be discovered by looking down into the transparent lake, and at such distances as would argue the existence of many settlements in the space now usurped by the “Asphaltites.”

[20] P. 161. That stole upon the ear, in Eyraco.}—Eyraco—Chaldæa.

[21] P. 161. Is not its form—its voice—most palpable and loud?

I have often thought I could distinctly hear the sound of the darkness as it stole over the horizon.

[22] P. 162. Young flowers were whispering in melody.

Fairies use flowers for their charactery.—Merry Wives of Windsor.

[23] P. 163. The moonbeam away.

In Scripture is this passage—“The sun shall not harm thee by day, nor the moon by night.” It is perhaps not generally known that the moon, in Egypt, has the effect of producing blindness to those who sleep with the face exposed to its rays, to which circumstance the passage evidently alludes.

[Pg 213]

[24] P. 164. Like the lone Albatross.

The Albatross is said to sleep on the wing.

[25] PP. 165. The murmur that springs.

I met with this idea in an old English tale, which I am now unable to obtain, and quote from memory:—“The verie essence and, as it were, springe-heade and origine of all musiche is the verie pleasaunte sounde which the trees of the forest do make when they growe.”

[26] P. 165. Have slept with the bee.

The wild bee will not sleep in the shade if there be moonlight.

The rhyme in this verse, as in one about sixty lines before, has an appearance of affectation. It is, however, imitated from Sir W. Scott, or rather from Claud Halcro—in whose mouth I admired its effect:

O! were there an island,
Tho’ ever so wild,
Where woman might smile, and
No man be beguiled, &c.

[27] P. 168. Apart from Heaven’s Eternity—and yet how far from Hell!

With the Arabians there is a medium between Heaven and Hell, where men suffer no punishment, but yet do not attain that tranquil and even happiness which they suppose to be characteristic of heavenly enjoyment.

Un no rompido sueno—
Un dia puro—allegre—libre
Quiera—
Libre de amor—de zelo—
De odio—de esperanza—de rezelo.—Luis Ponce de Leon.

Sorrow is not excluded from “Al Aaraaf,” but it is that sorrow which the living love to cherish for the dead, and which, in some minds, resembles the delirium of opium. The passionate excitement of Love and the buoyancy of spirit attendant upon intoxication are its less holy pleasures—the price of which, to those souls who make choice of “Al Aaraaf” as their residence after life, is final death and annihilation.

[Pg 214]

[28] P. 168. Unguided Love hath fallen—’mid “tears of perfect moan.”

There be tears of perfect moan
Wept for thee in Helicon.—Milton.

[29] P. 169. Was a proud temple called the Parthenon.

It was entire in 1687—the most elevated spot in Athens.

[30] P. 170. Than e’en thy glowing bosom beats withal.

Shadowing more beauty in their airy brows
Than have the white breasts of the Queen of Love.—Marlowe.

[31] P. 171. Failed, as my pennoned spirit leapt aloft.

Pennon—for pinion.—Milton.

[Pg 215]

[Pg 216]

[Pg 217]

## THE POETIC PRINCIPLE.

In speaking of the Poetic Principle, I have no design to be either thorough or profound. While discussing, very much at random, the essentiality of what we call Poetry, my principal purpose will be to cite for consideration, some few of those minor English or American poems which best suit my own taste, or which, upon my own fancy, have left the most definite impression. By “minor poems” I mean, of course, poems of little length. And here, in the beginning, permit me to say a few words in regard to a somewhat peculiar principle, which, whether rightfully or wrongfully, has always had its influence in my own critical estimate of the poem. I hold that a long poem does not exist. I maintain that the phrase, “a long poem,” is simply a flat contradiction in terms.

I need scarcely observe that a poem deserves its title only inasmuch as it excites, by elevating the soul. The value of the poem is in the ratio [Pg 218] of this elevating excitement. But all excitements are, through a psychal necessity, transient. That degree of excitement which would entitle a poem to be so called at all, cannot be sustained throughout a composition of any great length. After the lapse of half an hour, at the very utmost, it flags—fails—a revulsion ensues—and then the poem is, in effect and in fact, no longer such.

There are, no doubt, many who have found difficulty in reconciling the critical dictum that the “Paradise Lost” is to be devoutly admired throughout, with the absolute impossibility of maintaining for it, during perusal, the amount of enthusiasm which that critical dictum would demand. This great work, in fact, is to be regarded as poetical, only when, losing sight of that vital requisite in all works of Art, Unity, we view it merely as a series of minor poems. If, to preserve its Unity—its totality of effect or impression—we read it (as would be necessary) at a single sitting, the result is but a constant alternation of excitement and depression. After a passage of what we feel to be true poetry, there follows, inevitably, a passage of platitude which no critical pre-judgment can force us to admire; but if, upon completing the work, we read it again, omitting the first book—that is to say, commencing with the second—we shall be surprised at now finding that admirable which we before condemned—that damnable which we had previously so much admired. It follows from all this that the ultimate, aggregate, or absolute effect of even the best epic under the sun, is a nullity:—and this is precisely the fact. [Pg 219]

In regard to the Iliad, we have, if not positive proof, at least very good reason, for believing it intended as a series of lyrics; but, granting the epic intention, I can say only that the work is based in an imperfect sense of Art. The modern epic is of the supposititious ancient model, but an inconsiderate and blindfold imitation. But the day of these artistic anomalies is over. If, at any time, any very long poem were popular in reality—which I doubt—it is at least clear that no very long poem will ever be popular again.

That the extent of a poetical work is, cœteris paribus, the measure of its merit, seems undoubtedly, when we thus state it, a proposition sufficiently absurd—yet we are indebted for it to the Quarterly Reviews. Surely there can be nothing in mere size, abstractly considered—there can be nothing in mere bulk, so far as a volume is concerned, which has so continuously elicited admiration from these saturnine pamphlets! A mountain, to be sure, by the mere sentiment of physical magnitude which it conveys, does impress us with a sense of the sublime—but no man is impressed after this fashion by the material grandeur of even “The Columbiad.” Even the Quarterlies have not instructed us to be so impressed by it. As yet, they have not insisted on our estimating Lamartine by the cubic foot, or Pollok by the pound—but what else are we to infer from their continual prating about “sustained effort?” If, by “sustained effort,” any little gentleman has accomplished an epic, let us frankly commend him for the effort—if this indeed be a thing commendable—but let us forbear praising the epic on the effort’s account. It is to be hoped that common sense, in [Pg 220] the time to come, will prefer deciding upon a work of Art, rather by the impression it makes—by the effect it produces—than by the time it took to impress the effect, or by the amount of “sustained effort” which had been found necessary in effecting the impression. The fact is, that perseverance is one thing and genius quite another—nor can all the Quarterlies in Christendom confound them. By and by, this proposition, with many which I have been just urging, will be received as self-evident. In the meantime, by being generally condemned as falsities, they will not be essentially damaged as truths.

On the other hand, it is clear that a poem may be improperly brief. Undue brevity degenerates into mere epigrammatism. A very short poem, while now and then producing a brilliant or vivid, never produces a profound or enduring effect. There must be the steady pressing down of the stamp upon the wax. De Béranger has wrought innumerable things, pungent and spirit-stirring; but, in general, they have been too imponderous to stamp themselves deeply into the public attention; and thus, as so many feathers of fancy, have been blown aloft only to be whistled down the wind.

A remarkable instance of the effect of undue brevity in depressing a poem—in keeping it out of the popular view—is afforded by the following exquisite little Serenade:

I arise from dreams of thee
In the first sweet sleep of night,
When the winds are breathing low,
And the stars are shining bright. [Pg 221]
I arise from dreams of thee,
And a spirit in my feet
Has led me—who knows how?—
To thy chamber-window, sweet!
The wandering airs they faint
On the dark, the silent stream—
The champak odours fail
Like sweet thoughts in a dream;
The nightingale’s complaint,
It dies upon her heart,
As I must die on thine,
O, beloved as thou art!
O, lift me from the grass!
I die, I faint, I fail!
Let thy love in kisses rain
On my lips and eyelids pale.
My cheek is cold and white, alas!
My heart beats loud and fast:
Oh! press it close to thine again,
Where it will break at last!

Very few, perhaps, are familiar with these lines—yet no less a poet than Shelley is their author. Their warm yet delicate and ethereal imagination will be appreciated by all—but by none so thoroughly as by him who has himself arisen from sweet dreams of one beloved, to bathe in the aromatic air of a southern midsummer night.

One of the finest poems by Willis—the very best, in my opinion, which he has ever written—has, no doubt, through this same defect of undue [Pg 222] brevity, been kept back from its proper position, not less in the than in the popular view.

The shadows lay along Broadway,
’Twas near the twilight-tide—
And slowly there a lady fair
Was walking in her pride.
Alone walk’d she: but, viewlessly,
Walk’d spirits at her side.
Peace charm’d the street beneath her feet,
And Honour charm’d the air;
And all astir look’d kind on her,
And call’d her good as fair—
For all God ever gave to her
She kept with chary care.
She kept with care her beauties rare
From lovers warm and true—
For her heart was cold to all but gold,
And the rich came not to woo—
But honour’d well are charms to sell,
If priests the selling do.
Now walking there was one more fair—
A slight girl, lily-pale;
And she had unseen company
To make the spirit quail—
’Twixt Want and Scorn she walk’d forlorn,
And nothing could avail.
No mercy now can clear her brow
For this world’s peace to pray;
For, as love’s wild prayer dissolved in air, [Pg 223]
Her woman’s heart gave way!—
But the sin forgiven by Christ in heaven
By man is cursed alway!

In this composition we find it difficult to recognise the Willis who has written so many mere “verses of society.” The lines are not only richly ideal, but full of energy; while they breathe an earnestness—an evident sincerity of sentiment—for which we look in vain throughout all the other works of this author.

While the epic mania—while the idea that, to merit in poetry, prolixity is indispensable—has, for some years past, been gradually dying out of the public mind, by mere dint of its own absurdity—we find it succeeded by a heresy too palpably false to be long tolerated, but one which, in the brief period it has already endured, may be said to have accomplished more in the corruption of our Poetical Literature than all its other enemies combined. I allude to the heresy of The Didactic. It has been assumed, tacitly and avowedly, directly and indirectly, that the ultimate object of all Poetry is Truth. Every poem, it is said, should inculcate a moral; and by this moral is the poetical merit of the work to be adjudged. We Americans especially have patronized this happy idea; and we Bostonians, very especially, have developed it in full. We have taken it into our heads that to write a poem simply for the poem’s sake, and to acknowledge such to have been our design, would be to confess ourselves radically wanting in the true Poetic dignity and force:—but the simple fact is, that, would we but [Pg 224] permit ourselves to look into our own souls, we should immediately there discover that under the sun there neither exists nor can exist any work more thoroughly dignified, more supremely noble, than this very poem—this poem per se—this poem which is a poem and nothing more—this poem written solely for the poem’s sake.

With as deep a reverence for the True as ever inspired the bosom of man, I would, nevertheless, limit, in some measure, its modes of inculcation. I would limit to enforce them. I would not enfeeble them by dissipation. The demands of Truth are severe. She has no sympathy with the myrtles. All that which is so indispensable in Song, is precisely all that with which she has nothing whatever to do. It is but making her a flaunting paradox, to wreathe her in gems and flowers. In enforcing a truth, we need severity rather than efflorescence of language. We must be simple, precise, terse. We must be cool, calm, unimpassioned. In a word, we must be in that mood which, as nearly as possible, is the exact converse of the poetical. He must be blind indeed who does not perceive the radical and chasmal differences between the truthful and the poetical modes of inculcation. He must be theory-mad beyond redemption who, in spite of these differences, shall still persist in attempting to reconcile the obstinate oils and waters of Poetry and Truth.

Dividing the world of mind into its three most immediately obvious distinctions, we have the Pure Intellect, Taste, and the Moral Sense. I [Pg 225] place Taste in the middle, because it is just this position which, in the mind, it occupies. It holds intimate relations with either extreme; but from the Moral Sense is separated by so faint a difference that Aristotle has not hesitated to place some of its operations among the virtues themselves. Nevertheless, we find the offices of the trio marked with a sufficient distinction. Just as the Intellect concerns itself with Truth, so Taste informs us of the Beautiful while the Moral Sense is regardful of Duty. Of this latter, while Conscience teaches the obligation, and Reason the expediency, Taste contents herself with displaying the charms:—waging war upon Vice solely on the ground of her deformity—her disproportion—her animosity to the fitting, to the appropriate, to the harmonious—in a word, to Beauty.

An immortal instinct, deep within the spirit of man, is thus, plainly, a sense of the Beautiful. This it is which administers to his delight in the manifold forms, and sounds, and odours, and sentiments amid which he exists. And just as the lily is repeated in the lake, or the eyes of Amaryllis in the mirror, so is the mere oral or written repetition of these forms, and sounds, and colours, and odours, and sentiments, a duplicate source of delight. But this mere repetition is not poetry. He who shall simply sing, with however glowing enthusiasm, or with however vivid a truth of description, of the sights, and sounds, and odours, and colours, and sentiments, which greet him in common with all mankind—he, I say, has yet failed to prove his divine title. There is still a something in the distance which he has been unable to attain. We have still a thirst unquenchable, to allay [Pg 226] which he has not shown us the crystal springs. This thirst belongs to the immortality of Man. It is at once a consequence and an indication of his perennial existence. It is the desire of the moth for the star. It is no mere appreciation of the Beauty before us—but a wild effort to reach the Beauty above. Inspired by an ecstatic prescience of the glories beyond the grave, we struggle, by multiform combinations among the things and thoughts of Time, to attain a portion of that Loveliness whose very elements, perhaps, appertain to eternity alone. And thus when by Poetry—or when by Music, the most entrancing of the Poetic moods—we find ourselves melted into tears—we weep then—not as the Abbaté Gravina supposes—through excess of pleasure, but through a certain, petulant, impatient sorrow at our inability to grasp now, wholly, here on earth, at once and for ever, those divine and rapturous joys, of which through the poem, or through the music, we attain to but brief and indeterminate glimpses.

The struggle to apprehend the supernal Loveliness—this struggle, on the part of souls fittingly constituted—has given to the world all that which it (the world) has ever been enabled at once to understand and to feel as poetic.

The Poetic Sentiment, of course, may develop itself in various modes—in Painting, in Sculpture, in Architecture, in the Dance—very especially in Music—and very peculiarly, and with a wide field, in the composition of the Landscape Garden. Our present theme, however, has regard only to its manifestation in words. And here let me speak [Pg 227] briefly on the topic of rhythm. Contenting myself with the certainty that Music, in its various modes of metre, rhythm, and rhyme, is of so vast a moment in Poetry as never to be wisely rejected—is so vitally important an adjunct, that he is simply silly who declines its assistance, I will not now pause to maintain its absolute essentiality. It is in Music, perhaps, that the soul most nearly attains the great end for which, when inspired by the Poetic Sentiment, it struggles—the creation of supernal Beauty. It may be, indeed, that here this sublime end is, now and then, attained in fact. We are often made to feel, with a shivering delight, that from an earthly harp are stricken notes which cannot have been unfamiliar to the angels. And thus there can be little doubt that in the Union of Poetry with Music in its popular sense, we shall find the widest field for the Poetic development. The old Bards and Minnesingers had advantages which we do not possess—and Thomas Moore, singing his own songs, was, in the most legitimate manner, perfecting them as poems.

To recapitulate, then:—I would define, in brief, the Poetry of words as The Rhythmical Creation of Beauty. Its sole arbiter is Taste. With the Intellect or with the Conscience, it has only collateral relations. Unless incidentally, it has no concern whatever either with Duty or with Truth.

A few words, however, in explanation. That pleasure which is at once the most pure, the most elevating, and the most intense, is derived, I maintain, from the contemplation of the Beautiful. In the contemplation of Beauty we alone find it possible to attain that [Pg 228] pleasurable elevation, or excitement, of the soul, which we recognise as the Poetic Sentiment, and which is so easily distinguished from Truth, which is the satisfaction of the Reason, or from Passion, which is the excitement of the heart. I make Beauty, therefore—using the word as inclusive of the sublime—I make Beauty the province of the poem, simply because it is an obvious rule of Art, that effects should be made to spring as directly as possible from their causes:—no one as yet having been weak enough to deny that the peculiar elevation in question is at least most readily attainable in the poem. It by no means follows, however, that the incitements of Passion, or the precepts of Duty, or even the lessons of Truth, may not be introduced into a poem, and with advantage; for they may subserve, incidentally, in various ways, the general purposes of the work:—but the true artist will always contrive to tone them down in proper subjection to that Beauty which is the atmosphere and the real essence of the poem.

I cannot better introduce the few poems which I shall present for your consideration, than by the citation of the Pröem to Mr. Longfellow’s “Waif.”

The day is done, and the darkness
Falls from the wings of Night,
As a feather is wafted downward
From an Eagle in his flight.
I see the lights of the village
Gleam through the rain and the mist,
And a feeling of sadness comes o’er me,
That my soul cannot resist; [Pg 229]
A feeling of sadness and longing,
That is not akin to pain,
And resembles sorrow only
As the mist resembles the rain.
Come, read to me some poem,
Some simple and heartfelt lay,
That shall soothe this restless feeling,
And banish the thoughts of day.
Not from the grand old masters,
Not from the bards sublime,
Whose distant footsteps echo
Through the corridors of Time.
For, like strains of martial music,
Their mighty thoughts suggest
Life’s endless toil and endeavour;
And to-night I long for rest.
Read from some humbler poet,
Whose songs gushed from his heart,
As showers from the clouds of summer,
Or tears from the eyelids start;
Who through long days of labour,
And nights devoid of ease,
Still heard in his soul the music
Of wonderful melodies.
Such songs have power to quiet
The restless pulse of care,
And come like the benediction
That follows after prayer. [Pg 230]
Then read from the treasured volume
The poem of thy choice,
And lend to the rhyme of the poet
The beauty of thy voice.
And the night shall be filled with music,
And the cares, that infest the day,
Shall fold their tents, like the Arabs,
And as silently steal away.

With no great range of imagination, these lines have been justly admired for their delicacy of expression. Some of the images are very effective. Nothing can be better than—

——The bards sublime,
Whose distant footsteps echo
Down the corridors of Time.

The idea of the last quartrain is also very effective. The poem, on the whole, however, is chiefly to be admired for the graceful insouciance of its metre, so well in accordance with the character of the sentiments, and especially for the ease of the general manner. This “ease,” or naturalness, in a literary style, it has long been the fashion to regard as ease in appearance alone—as a point of really difficult attainment. But not so:—a natural manner is difficult only to him who should never meddle with it—to the unnatural. It is but the result of writing with the understanding, or with the instinct, that the tone, in composition, should always [Pg 231] be that which the mass of mankind would adopt—and must perpetually vary, of course, with the occasion. The author who, after the fashion of “The North American Review,” should be, upon all occasions, merely “quiet,” must necessarily, upon many occasions, be simply silly, or stupid; and has no more right to be considered “easy,” or “natural,” than a Cockney exquisite, or than the sleeping Beauty in the wax-works.

Among the minor poems of Bryant, none has so much impressed me as the one which he entitles “June.” I quote only a portion of it:—

There, through the long, long summer hours,
The golden light should lie,
And thick, young herbs and groups of flowers
Stand in their beauty by.
The oriole should build and tell
His love-tale close beside my cell;
The idle butterfly
Should rest him there, and there be heard
The housewife-bee and humming-bird.
And what, if cheerful shouts, at noon,
Come, from the village sent,
Or songs of maids, beneath the moon,
With fairy laughter blent?
And what if, in the evening light,
Betrothed lovers walk in sight
Of my low monument?
I would the lovely scene around
Might know no sadder sight nor sound. [Pg 232]
I know, I know I should not see
The season’s glorious show,
Nor would its brightness shine for me,
Nor its wild music flow;
But if, around my place of sleep,
The friends I love should come to weep,
They might not haste to go.
Soft airs, and song, and light, and bloom
Should keep them lingering by my tomb.
These to their soften’d hearts should bear
The thought of what has been,
And speak of one who cannot share
The gladness of the scene;
Whose part in all the pomp that fills
The circuit of the summer hills,
Is—that his grave is green;
And deeply would their hearts rejoice
To hear again his living voice.

The rhythmical flow, here, is even voluptuous—nothing could be more melodious. The poem has always affected me in a remarkable manner. The intense melancholy which seems to well up, perforce, to the surface of all the poet’s cheerful sayings about his grave, we find thrilling us to the soul—while there is the truest poetic elevation in the thrill. The impression left is one of a pleasurable sadness. And if, in the remaining compositions which I shall introduce to you, there be more or less of a similar tone always apparent, let me remind you that (how or why we know not) this certain taint of sadness is inseparably connected with all the higher manifestations of true Beauty. It is, nevertheless, [Pg 233]

A feeling of sadness and longing
That is not akin to pain,
And resembles sorrow only
As the mist resembles the rain.

The taint of which I speak is clearly perceptible even in a poem so full of brilliancy and spirit as the “Health” of Edward Coote Pinkney:—

I fill this cup to one made up
Of loveliness alone,
A woman, of her gentle sex
The seeming paragon;
To whom the better elements
And kindly stars have given
A form so fair, that, like the air,
’Tis less of earth than heaven.
Her every tone is Music’s own,
Like those of morning birds,
And something more than melody
Dwells ever in her words;
The coinage of her heart are they,
And from her lips each flows
As one may see the burden’d bee
Forth issue from the rose.
Affections are as thoughts to her,
The measures of her hours;
Her feelings have the fragrancy,
The freshness of young flowers;
And lovely passions, changing oft,
So fill her, she appears
The image of themselves by turns,—
The idol of past years! [Pg 234]
Of her bright face one glance will trace
A picture on the brain,
And of her voice in echoing hearts
A sound must long remain;
But memory, such as mine of her,
So very much endears,
When death is nigh my latest sigh
Will not be life’s, but hers.
I fill’d this cup to one made up
Of loveliness alone,
A woman, of her gentle sex
The seeming paragon—
Her health! and would on earth there stood,
Some more of such a frame,
That life might be all poetry,
And weariness a name.

It was the misfortune of Mr. Pinkney to have been born too far south. Had he been a New Englander, it is probable that he would have been ranked as the first of American lyrists, by that magnanimous cabal which has so long controlled the destinies of American Letters, in conducting the thing called “The North American Review.” The poem just cited is especially beautiful; but the poetic elevation which it induces, we must refer chiefly to our sympathy in the poet’s enthusiasm. We pardon his hyperboles for the evident earnestness with which they are uttered.

It was by no means my design, however, to expatiate upon the merits of what I should read you. These will necessarily speak [Pg 235] for themselves. Boccalini, in his “Advertisements from Parnassus,” tells us that Zoilus once presented Apollo a very caustic criticism upon a very admirable book:—whereupon the god asked him for the beauties of the work. He replied that he only busied himself about the errors. On hearing this, Apollo, handing him a sack of unwinnowed wheat, bade him pick out all the chaff for his reward.

Now this fable answers very well as a hit at the critics—but I am by no means sure that the god was in the right. I am by no means certain that the true limits of the critical duty are not grossly misunderstood. Excellence, in a poem especially, may be considered in the light of an axiom, which need only be properly put, to become self-evident. It is not excellence if it require to be demonstrated as such:—and thus, to point out too particularly the merits of a work of Art, is to admit that they are not merits altogether.

Among the “Melodies” of Thomas Moore, is one whose distinguished character as a poem proper, seems to have been singularly left out of view. I allude to his lines beginning—“Come, rest in this bosom.” The intense energy of their expression is not surpassed by anything in Byron. There are two of the lines in which a sentiment is conveyed that embodies the all in all of the divine passion of Love—a sentiment which, perhaps, has found its echo in more, and in more passionate, human hearts than any other single sentiment ever embodied in words:

Come, rest in this bosom, my own stricken deer,
Though the herd have fled from thee, thy home is still here; [Pg 236]
Here still is the smile, that no cloud can o’ercast,
And a heart and a hand all thy own to the last.
Oh! what was love made for, if ’tis not the same
Through joy and through torment, through glory and shame?
I know not, I ask not, if guilt’s in that heart,
I but know that I love thee, whatever thou art.
Thou hast call’d me thy Angel in moments of bliss,
And thy Angel I’ll be ’mid the horrors of this,—
Through the furnace, unshrinking, thy steps to pursue,
And shield thee, and save thee,—or perish there too!

It has been the fashion, of late days, to deny Moore Imagination, while granting him Fancy—a distinction originating with Coleridge—than whom no man more fully comprehended the great powers of Moore. The fact is, that the fancy of this poet so far predominates over all his other faculties, and over the fancy of all other men, as to have induced, very naturally, the idea that he is fanciful only. But never was there a greater mistake. Never was a grosser wrong done the fame of a true poet. In the compass of the English language I can call to mind no poem more profoundly—more weirdly imaginative, in the best sense, than the lines commencing—“I would I were by that dim lake”—which are the composition of Thomas Moore. I regret that I am unable to remember them.

One of the noblest—and, speaking of Fancy, one of the most singularly fanciful of modern poets, was Thomas Hood. His “Fair Ines” had always, for me, an inexpressible charm: [Pg 237]

O saw ye not fair Ines?
She’s gone into the West,
To dazzle when the sun is down,
And rob the world of rest:
She took our daylight with her,
The smiles that we love best,
With morning blushes on her cheek,
And pearls upon her breast.
O turn again, fair Ines,
Before the fall of night,
For fear the moon should shine alone,
And stars unrivall’d bright;
And blessed will the lover be
That walks beneath their light,
And breathes the love against thy cheek
I dare not even write!
Would I had been, fair Ines,
That gallant cavalier,
Who rode so gaily by thy side,
And whisper’d thee so near!
Were there no bonny dames at home,
Or no true lovers here,
That he should cross the seas to win
The dearest of the dear?
I saw thee, lovely Ines,
Descend along the shore,
With bands of noble gentlemen,
And banners waved before;
And gentle youth and maidens gay,
And snowy plumes they wore
It would have been a beauteous dream,
—If it had been no more! [Pg 238]
Alas, alas, fair Ines!
She went away with song,
With Music waiting on her steps,
And shoutings of the throng;
But some were sad and felt no mirth,
But only Music’s wrong,
In sounds that sang Farewell, Farewell,
To her you’ve loved so long.
Farewell, farewell, fair Ines,
That vessel never bore
So fair a lady on its deck,
Nor danced so light before,—
Alas for pleasure on the sea,
And sorrow on the shore!
The smile that blest one lover’s heart
Has broken many more!

“The Haunted House,” by the same author, is one of the truest poems ever written—one of the truest—one of the most unexceptionable—one of the most thoroughly artistic, both in its theme and in its execution, It is, moreover, powerfully ideal—imaginative. I regret that its length renders it unsuitable for the purposes of this lecture. In place of it, permit me to offer the universally appreciated “Bridge of Sighs.”

One more Unfortunate,
Weary of breath,
Rashly importunate,
Gone to her death! [Pg 239]
Take her up tenderly,
Lift her with care;——
Fashion’d so slenderly,
Young, and so fair!
Look at her garments
Clinging like cerements;
Whilst the wave constantly
Drips from her clothing;
Take her up instantly,
Loving, not loathing.—
Touch her not scornfully;
Think of her mournfully,
Gently and humanly;
Not of the stains of her:
All that remains of her,
Now, is pure womanly.
Make no deep scrutiny
Into her mutiny
Rash and undutiful;
Past all dishonour,
Death has left on her
Only the beautiful.
Still, for all slips of hers,
One of Eve’s family—
Wipe those poor lips of hers
Oozing so clammily;
Loop up her tresses
Escaped from the comb,
Her fair auburn tresses;
Whilst wonderment guesses
Where was her home? [Pg 240]
Who was her father?
Who was her mother?
Had she a sister?
Had she a brother?
Or was there a dearer one
Still, and a nearer one
Yet, than all other?
Alas for the rarity
Of Christian charity
Under the sun!
Oh! it was pitiful!
Near a whole city full,
Home she had none.
Sisterly, brotherly,
Fatherly, motherly,
Feelings had changed:
Love, by harsh evidence,
Thrown from its eminence:
Even God’s providence
Seeming estranged.
Where the lamps quiver
So far in the river,
With many a light
From window and casement,
From garret to basement,
She stood, with amazement,
Houseless by night.
The bleak wind of March
Made her tremble and shiver;
But not the dark arch,
Or the black flowing river: [Pg 241]
Mad from life’s history,
Glad to death’s mystery,
Swift to be hurl’d—
Anywhere, anywhere
Out of the world!
In she plunged boldly,
No matter how coldly
The rough river ran,—
Over the brink of it,
Picture it,—think of it,
Dissolute Man!
Lave in it, drink of it
Then, if you can!
Take her up tenderly,
Lift her with care;
Fashion’d so slenderly,
Young, and so fair!
Ere her limbs frigidly
Stiffen too rigidly,
Decently,—kindly,—
Smooth, and compose them;
And her eyes, close them,
Staring so blindly!
Dreadfully staring
Through muddy impurity,
As when with the daring
Last look of despairing
Fixed on futurity.
Perishing gloomily,
Spurred by contumely, [Pg 242]
Cold inhumanity,
Burning insanity,
Into her rest,—
Cross her hands humbly,
As if praying dumbly,
Over her breast!
Owning her weakness,
Her evil behaviour,
And leaving, with meekness,
Her sins to her Saviour!

The vigour of this poem is no less remarkable than its pathos. The versification, although carrying the fanciful to the very verge of the fantastic, is nevertheless admirably adapted to the wild insanity which is the thesis of the poem.

Among the minor poems of Lord Byron, is one which has never received from the critics the praise which it undoubtedly deserves:—

Though the day of my destiny’s over,
And the star of my fate hath declined,
Thy soft heart refused to discover
The faults which so many could find;
Though thy soul with my grief was acquainted,
It shrunk not to share it with me,
And the love which my spirit hath painted
It never hath found but in thee.
Then when nature around me is smiling,
The last smile which answers to mine,
I do not believe it beguiling,
Because it reminds me of thine; [Pg 243]
And when winds are at war with the ocean,
As the breasts I believed in with me,
If their billows excite an emotion,
It is that they bear me from thee.
Though the rock of my last hope is shivered,
And its fragments are sunk in the wave,
Though I feel that my soul is delivered
To pain—it shall not be its slave.
There is many a pang to pursue me:
They may crush, but they shall not contemn—
They may torture, but shall not subdue me—
’Tis of thee that I think—not of them.
Though human, thou didst not deceive me,
Though woman, thou didst not forsake,
Though loved, thou forborest to grieve me,
Though slandered, thou never couldst shake,—
Though trusted, thou didst not disclaim me,
Though parted, it was not to fly,
Though watchful, ’twas not to defame me,
Nor mute, that the world might belie.
Yet I blame not the world, nor despise it,
Nor the war of the many with one—
If my soul was not fitted to prize it,
’Twas folly not sooner to shun:
And if dearly that error hath cost me,
And more than I once could foresee,
I have found that whatever it lost me,
It could not deprive me of thee.
From the wreck of the past, which hath perished,
Thus much I at least may recall, [Pg 244]
It hath taught me that which I most cherished
Deserved to be dearest of all:
In the desert a fountain is springing,
In the wide waste there still is a tree,
And a bird in the solitude singing,
Which speaks to my spirit of thee.

Although the rhythm, here, is one of the most difficult, the versification could scarcely be improved. No nobler theme ever engaged the pen of poet. It is the soul-elevating idea, that no man can consider himself entitled to complain of Fate while, in his adversity, he still retains the unwavering love of woman.

From Alfred Tennyson—although in perfect sincerity I regard him as the noblest poet that ever lived—I have left myself time to cite only a very brief specimen. I call him, and think him the noblest of poets—not because the impressions he produces are, at all times, the most profound—not because the poetical excitement which he induces is, at all times, the most intense—but because it is, at all times, the most ethereal—in other words, the most elevating and the most pure. No poet is so little of the earth, earthy. What I am about to read is from his last long poem, “The Princess:”

Tears, idle tears, I know not what they mean,
Tears from the depth of some divine despair
Rise in the heart, and gather to the eyes,
In looking on the happy Autumn-fields,
And thinking of the days that are no more. [Pg 245]
Fresh as the first beam glittering on a sail,
That brings our friends up from the underworld,
Sad as the last which reddens over one
That sinks with all we love below the verge;
So sad, so fresh, the days that are no more.
Ah, sad and strange as in dark summer dawns
The earliest pipe of half-awakened birds
To dying ears, when unto dying eyes
The casement slowly grows a glimmering square;
So sad, so strange, the days that are no more.
Dear as remember’d kisses after death,
And sweet as those by hopeless fancy feign’d
On lips that are for others; deep as love,
Deep as first love, and wild with all regret;
O Death in Life, the days that are no more.

Thus, although in a very cursory and imperfect manner, I have endeavoured to convey to you my conception of the Poetic Principle. It has been my purpose to suggest that, while this Principle itself is, strictly and simply, the Human Aspiration for Supernal Beauty, the manifestation of the Principle is always found in an elevating excitement of the Soul—quite independent of that passion which is the intoxication of the Heart—or of that Truth which is the satisfaction of the Reason. For, in regard to Passion, alas! its tendency is to degrade, rather than to elevate the Soul. Love, on the contrary—Love—the true, the divine Eros—the Uranian, as distinguished from the Dionæn Venus—is unquestionably the purest and truest of all poetical themes. And in regard to Truth—if, to be sure, [Pg 246] through the attainment of a truth, we are led to perceive a harmony where none was apparent before, we experience, at once, the true poetical effect—but this effect is referable to the harmony alone, and not in the least degree to the truth which merely served to render the harmony manifest.

We shall reach, however, more immediately a distinct conception of what the true Poetry is, by mere reference to a few of the simple elements which induce in the Poet himself the true poetical effect. He recognises the ambrosia which nourishes his soul, in the bright orbs that shine in Heaven—in the volutes of the flower—in the clustering of low shrubberies—in the waving of the grain-fields—in the slanting of tall, Eastern trees—in the blue distance of mountains—in the grouping of clouds—in the twinkling of half-hidden brooks—in the gleaming of silver rivers—in the repose of sequestered lakes—in the star-mirroring depths of lonely wells. He perceives it in the songs of birds—in the harp of Æolus—in the sighing of the night-wind—in the repining voice of the forest—in the surf that complains to the shore—in the fresh breath of the woods—in the scent of the violet—in the voluptuous perfume of the hyacinth—in the suggestive odour that comes to him, at eventide, from far-distant, undiscovered islands, over dim oceans, illimitable and unexplored. He owns it in all noble thoughts—in all unworldly motives—in all holy impulses—in all chivalrous, generous, and self-sacrificing deeds. He feels it in the beauty of woman—in the grace of her step—in the lustre of her eye—in the melody of her voice—in her soft laughter—in her sigh—in the [Pg 247] harmony of the rustling of her robes. He deeply feels it in her winning endearments—in her burning enthusiasms—in her gentle charities—in her meek and devotional endurances—but above all—ah, far above all—he kneels to it—he worships it in the faith, in the purity, in the strength, in the altogether divine majesty—of her love.

Let me conclude—by the recitation of yet another brief poem—one very different in character from any that I have before quoted. It is by Motherwell, and is called “The Song of the Cavalier.” With our modern and altogether rational ideas of the absurdity and impiety of warfare, we are not precisely in that frame of mind best adapted to sympathise with the sentiments, and thus to appreciate the real excellence of the poem. To do this fully, we must identify ourselves, in fancy, with the soul of the old cavalier.

Then mounte! then mounte, brave gallants, all!
And don your helmes amaine:
Deathe’s couriers, Fame and Honour, call
Us to the field againe.
No shrewish teares shall fill our eyes
When the sword-hilt’s in our hand,—
Heart-whole we’ll part, and no whit sighe
For the fayrest of the land;
Let piping swaine, and craven wight,
Thus weepe and puling crye;
Our business is like men to fight,
And hero-like to die!

LONDON:—PRINTED BY RICHARD CLAY,
BREAD STREET HILL

Transcriber’s Notes:

Deprecated spellings or archaeic words were not corrected.

The illustrations have been moved so that they do not break up stanzas and so that they are near to the stanza they illustrate.

Typographical and punctuation errors have been silently corrected.