Poems Read Online

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.«

Hymn

At morn – at noon – at twilight dim –

Maria! thou hast heard my hymn!

In joy and woe – in good and ill –

Mother of God, be with me still!

When the Hours flew brightly by,

And not a cloud obscured the sky,

My soul, lest it should truant be,

Thy grace did guide to thine and thee;

Now, when storms of Fate o'ercast

Darkly my Present and my Past,

Let my Future radiant shine

With sweet hopes of thee and thine!

A Valentine

For 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 labor!

And yet there is in this no Gordian knot

Which one might not undo without a sabre,

If one could merely comprehend the plot.

Enwritten upon the leaf where now are peering

Eyes' scintillating soul, there lie perdus

Three eloquent words oft uttered in the hearing

Of poets, by poets – as the name is a poet's too.

Its letters, although naturally lying

Like the knight Pinto – Mendez Ferdinando –

Still form a synonym for Truth. – Cease trying!

You will not read the riddle, though you do the best you can do.

[To translate the address, read the first letter of the first line in connection with the second letter of the second line, the third letter of the third line, the fourth of the fourth, and so on to the end. The name will thus appear.]

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

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 a 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 gray stones – are they all –

All of the famed, and the colossal left

By the corrosive Hours to Fate and me?

»Not all« – the Echoes answer me – »not all!

Prophetic sounds and loud arise forever

From us, and from all Ruin, unto the wise,

As melody from Memnon to the Sun.

We rule the hearts of mightiest men – we rule

With a despotic sway all giant minds.

We are not impotent – we pallid stones.

Not all our power is gone – not all our fame –

Not all the magic of our high renown –

Not all the wonder that encircles us –

Not all the mysteries that in us lie –

Not all the memories that hang upon

And cling around about us as a garment,

Clothing us in a robe of more than glory.«

To Helen1

I saw thee once – once only – years ago;

I must not say how many – but not many.

It was a July midnight; and from out

A full-orbed moon, that, like thine own soul, soaring,

Sought a precipitate pathway up through heaven,

There fell a silvery-silken veil of light,

With quietude, and sultriness, and slumber,

Upon the upturn'd faces of a thousand

Roses that grew in an enchanted garden,

Where no wind dared to stir, unless on tiptoe –

Fell on the upturn'd faces of these roses

That gave out, in return for the love-light,

Their odorous souls in an ecstatic death –

Fell on the upturn'd faces of these roses

That smiled and died in this parterre, enchanted

By thee, and by the poetry of thy presence.

Clad all in white, upon a violet bank

I saw thee half reclining; while the moon

Fell on the upturn'd faces of the roses,

And on thine own, upturn'd – alas, in sorrow!

Was it not Fate that, on this July midnight –

Was it not Fate (whose name is also Sorrow),

That bade me pause before that garden-gate,

To breathe the incense of those slumbering roses?

No footsteps 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!)

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' odors

Died in the arms of the adoring airs.

All – all expired save thee – save less than thou:

Save only the divine light in thine eyes –

Save but the soul in thine uplifted eyes.

I saw but them – they were the world to me.

I saw but them – saw only them for hours –

Saw only them until the moon went down.

What wild heart-histories seemed to lie enwritten

Upon those crystalline, celestial spheres!

How dark a woe! yet how sublime a hope!

How silently serene a sea of pride!

How daring an ambition! yet how deep –

How fathomless a capacity for love!

But now, at length, dear Dian sank from sight,

Into a western couch of thunder-cloud;

And thou, a ghost, amid the entombing trees

Didst glide away. Only thine eyes remained.

They would not go – they never yet have gone.

Lighting my lonely pathway home that night,

They have not left me (as my hopes have) since.

They follow me – they lead me through the years.

They are my ministers – yet I their slave.

Their office is to illumine and enkindle –

My duty, to be saved by their bright light

And purified in their electric fire,

And sanctified in their Elysian fire.

They fill my soul with Beauty (which is Hope),

And are far up in heaven – the stars I kneel to

In the sad, silent watches of my night;

While even in the meridian glare of day

I see them still – two sweetly scintillant

Venuses, unextinguished by the sun!

To ––

Not long ago, the writer of these lines,

In the mad pride of intellectuality,

Maintained ›the power of words‹ – denied that ever

A thought arose within the human brain

Beyond the utterance of the human tongue:

And now, as if in mockery of that boast,

Two words – two foreign soft disyllables –

Italian tones, made only to be murmured

By angels dreaming in the moonlit ›dew

That hangs like chains of pearl on Hermon hill,‹ –

Have stirred from out the abysses of his heart,

Unthought-like thoughts that are the souls of thought,

Richer, far wilder, far diviner visions

Than even the seraph harper, Israfel

(Who has ›the sweetest voice of all God's creatures‹),

Could hope to utter. And I! my spells are broken.

The pen falls powerless from my shivering hand.

With thy dear name as text, though bidden by thee,

I cannot write – I cannot speak or think –

Alas! I cannot feel; for 'tis not feeling,

This standing motionless upon the golden

Threshold of the wide-open gate of dreams,

Gazing, entranced, adown the gorgeous vista,

And thrilling as I see, upon the right,

Upon the left, and all the way along,

Amid unpurpled vapors, far away

To where the prospect terminates – thee only.

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

Of my most immemorial year;

It was hard by the dim lake of Auber,

In the misty mid region of Weir –

It was down by the dank tarn of Auber,

In the ghoul-haunted woodland of Weir.

Here once, through an alley Titanic,

Of cypress, I roamed with my Soul –

Of cypress, with Psyche, my Soul.

These were days when my heart was volcanic

As the scoriac rivers that roll –

As the lavas that restlessly roll

Their sulphurous currents down Yaanek

In the ultimate climes of the pole –

That groan as they roll down Mount Yaanek

In the realms of the boreal pole.

Our talk had been serious and sober,

But our thoughts they were palsied and sere –

Our memories were treacherous and sere, –

For we knew not the month was October,

And we marked not the night of the year

(Ah, night of all nights in the year!) –

We noted not the dim lake of Auber

(Though once we had journey down here) –

Remembered not the dank tarn of Auber,

Nor the ghoul-haunted woodland of Weir.

And now, as the night was senescent

And star-dials pointed to morn –

As the 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 Psyche, uplifting her finger,

Said: »Sadly this star I mistrust –

Her pallor I strangely mistrust: –

Oh, hasten! – oh, let us not linger!

Oh, fly! – let us fly! – for we must.«

In terror she spoke, letting sink her

Wings 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 splendor 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!«

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

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.«

The Bells

I

Hear the sledges with the bells –

Silver bells!

What a world of merriment their melody foretells!

How they tinkle, tinkle, tinkle,

In the icy air of night!

While the stars that oversprinkle

All the heavens seem to twinkle

With a crystalline delight;

Keeping time, time, time,

In a sort of Runic rhyme,

To the tintinnabulation that so musically wells

From the bells, bells, bells, bells,

Bells, bells, bells –

From the jingling and the tinkling of the bells.

II

Hear the mellow wedding bells,

Golden bells!

What a world of happiness their harmony foretells!

Through the balmy air of night

How they ring out their delight!

From the molten-golden notes,

And all in tune,

What a liquid ditty floats

To the turtle-dove that listens, while she gloats

On the moon!

Oh, from out the sounding cells

What a gush of euphony voluminously wells!

How it swells!

How it dwells

On the Future! how it tells

Of the rapture that impels

To the swinging and the ringing

Of the bells, bells, bells,

Of the bells, bells, bells, bells,

Bells, bells, bells –

To the rhyming and the chiming of the bells!

III

Hear the loud alarum bells –

Brazen bells!

What a tale of terror, now, their turbulency tells!

In the startled ear of night

How they scream out their affright!

Too much horrified to speak,

They can only shriek, shriek,

Out of tune,

In a clamorous appealing to the mercy of the fire,

In a mad expostulation with the deaf and frantic fire,

Leaping higher, higher, higher,

With a desperate desire,

And a resolute endeavor

Now – now to sit, or never,

By the side of the pale-faced moon.

Oh, the bells, bells, bells!

What a tale their terror tells

Of despair!

How they clang, and clash, and roar!

What a horror they outpour

On the bosom of the palpitating air!

Yet the ear it fully knows,

By the twanging,

And the clanging,

How the danger ebbs and flows;

Yet the ear distinctly tells,

In the jangling,

And the wrangling,

How the danger sinks and swells,

By the sinking or the swelling in the anger of the bells –

Of the bells –

Of the bells, bells, bells, bells,

Bells, bells, bells –

In the clamor and the clangor of the bells!

IV

Hear the tolling of the bells –

Iron bells!

What a world of solemn thought their melody compels!

In the silence of the night,

How we shiver with affright

At the melancholy menace of their tone!

For every sound that floats

From the rust within their throats

Is a groan.

And the people – ah, the people –

They that dwell up in the steeple,

All alone,

And who tolling, tolling, tolling,

In that muffled monotone,

Feel a glory in so rolling

On the human heart a stone –

They are neither man nor woman –

They are neither brute nor human –

They are Ghouls:

And their king it is who tolls;

And he rolls, rolls, rolls,

Rolls

A pæan from the bells!

And his merry bosom swells

With the pæan of the bells!

And he dances, and he yells;

Keeping time, time, time,

In a sort of Runic rhyme,

To the pæan of the bells –

Of the bells:

Keeping time, time, time,

In a sort of Runic rhyme,

To the throbbing of the bells –

Of the bells, bells, bells –

To the sobbing of the bells;

Keeping time, time, time,

As he knells, knells, knells,

In a happy Runic rhyme,

To the rolling of the bells –

Of the bells, bells, bells –

To the tolling of the bells,

Of the bells, bells, bells, bells –

Bells, bells, bells –

To the moaning and the groaning of the bells.

An Enigma

»Seldom we find,« says Solomon Don Dunce,

»Half an idea in the profoundest sonnet.

Through all the flimsy things we see at once

As easily as through a Naples bonnet –

Trash of all trash! – how can a lady don it?

Yet heavier far than your Petrarchan stuff –

Owl-downy nonsense that the faintest puff

Twirls into trunk-paper the while you con it.«

And, veritably, Sol is right enough.

The general tuckermanities are arrant

Bubbles – ephemeral and so transparent –

But this is, now, – you may depend upon it –

Stable, opaque, immortal – all by dint

Of the dear names that lie concealed within 't.

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.

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.

But our love it was stronger by far than the love

Of those who were older than we –

Of many far wiser than we –

And neither the angels in heaven above,

Nor the demons down under the sea,

Can ever dissever my soul from the soul

Of the beautiful ANNABEL LEE.

For the moon never beams, without bringing me dreams

Of the beautiful ANNABEL LEE;

And the stars never rise, but I feel the bright eyes

Of the beautiful ANNABEL LEE;

And so, all the night-tide, I lie down by the side

Of my darling – my darling – my life and my bride,

In the sepulchre there by the sea,

In her tomb by the soundins sea.

To My Mother

Because I feel that, in the heavens above,

The angels, whispering to one another,

Can find, among their burning terms of love,

None so devotional as that of ›Mother,‹

Therefore by that dear name I long have called you,

You who are more than mother unto me,

And fill my heart of hearts, where Death installed you,

In setting my Virginia's spirit free.

My mother – my own mother, who died early,

Was but the mother of myself; but you

Are mother to the one I loved so dearly,

And thus are dearer than the mother I knew

By that infinity with which my wife

Was dearer to my soul than its soul-life.

The Haunted Palace

In the greenest of our valleys

By good angels tenanted,

Once a fair and stately palace –

Radiant palace – reared its head.

In the monarch Thought's dominion –

It stood there!

Never seraph spread a pinion

Over fabric half so fair!

Banners yellow, glorious, golden,

On its roof did float and flow,

(This – all this – was in the olden

Time long ago,)

And every gentle air that dallied,

In that sweet day,

Along the ramparts plumed and pallid,

A wingèd odor went away.

Wanderers in that happy valley,

Through two luminous windows, saw

Spirits moving musically,

To a lute's well-tunèd law,

Round about a throne where, sitting

(Porphyrogene!)

In state his glory well befitting,

The ruler of the realm was seen.

And all with pearl and ruby glowing

Was the fair palace-door,

Through which came flowing, flowing, flowing,

And sparkling evermore,

A troop of Echoes, whose sweet duty

Was but to sing,

In voices of surpassing beauty,

The wit and wisdom of their king.

But evil things, in robes of sorrow,

Assailed the monarch's high estate.

(Ah, let us mourn! – for never morrow

Shall dawn upon him desolate!)

And round about his home, the glory

That blushed and bloomed

Is but a dim-remembered story

Of the old time entombed.

And travellers now, within that valley,

Through the red-litten windows see

Vast forms, that move fantastically

To a discordant melody,

While, like a ghastly rapid river,

Through the pale door

A hideous throng rush out forever

And laugh – but smile no more.

The Conqueror Worm

Lo! 'tis a gala night

Within the lonesome latter years!

An angel throng, bewinged, bedight

In veils, and drowned in tears,

Sit in a theatre, to see

A play of hopes and fears,

While the orchestra breathes fitfully

The music of the spheres.

Mimes, in the form of God on high,

Mutter and mumble low,

And hither and thither fly –

Mere puppets they, who come and go

At bidding of vast formless things

That shift the scenery to and fro,

Flapping from out their Condor wings

Invisible Woe!

That motley drama – oh, be sure

It shall not be forgot!

With its Phantom chased for evermore,

By a crowd that seize it not,

Through a circle that ever returneth in

To the self-same spot,

And much of Madness, and more of Sin,

And Horror the soul of the plot.

But see, amid the mimic rout

A crawling shape intrude!

A blood-red thing that writhes from out

The scenic solitude!

It writhes! – it writhes! – with mortal pangs

The mimes become its food,

And the angels sob at vermin fangs

In human gore imbued.

Out – out are the lights – out all!

And, over each quivering form,

The curtain, a funeral pall,

Comes down with the rush of a storm,

And the angels, all pallid and wan,

Uprising, unveiling, affirm

That the play is the tragedy »Man,«

And its hero the Conqueror Worm.

To F––s S. O––d

Thou wouldst be loved – then let thy heart

From its present pathway part not!

Being every thing which now thou art,

Be nothing which thou art not.

So with the world thy gentle ways,

Thy grace, thy more than beauty,

Shall be an endless theme of praise

And love – a simple duty.

To One in Paradise

Thou wast that all to me, love,

For which my soul did pine –

A green isle in the sea, love,

A fountain and a shrine,

All wreathed with fairy fruits and flowers.

And all the flowers were mine.

Ah, dream too bright to last!

Ah, starry Hope! that didst arise

But to be overcast!

A voice from out the Future cries,

»On! on!« – but o'er the Past

(Dim gulf!) my spirit hovering lies

Mute, motionless, aghast!

For, alas! alas! with me

The light of Life is o'er!

»No more – no more – no more –«

(Such language holds the solemn sea

To the sands upon the shore)

Shall bloom the thunder-blasted tree,

Or the stricken eagle soar!

And all my days are trances,

And all my nightly dreams

Are where thy dark eye glances,

And where thy footstep gleams –

In what ethereal dances,

By what eternal streams.

The Valley of Unrest

Once it smiled a silent dell

Where the people did not dwell:

They had gone unto the wars,

Trusting to the mild-eyed stars,

Nightly from their azure towers,

To keep watch above the flowers,

In the midst of which all day

The red sunlight lazily lay.

Now each visitor shall confess

The sad valley's restlessness.

Nothing there is motionless –

Nothing save the airs that brood

Over the magic solitude.

Ah, by no wind are stirred those trees

That palpitate like the chill seas

Around the misty Hebrides!

Ah, by no wind those clouds are driven

That rustle through the unquiet Heaven

Uneasily, from morn till even,

Over the violets there that lie

In myriad types of the human eye –

Over the lilies there that wave

And weep above a nameless grave!

They wave: – from out their fragrant tops

Eternal dews come down in drops.

They weep: – from off their delicate stems

Perennial tears descend in gems.

The City in the Sea

Lo! Death has reared himself a throne

In a strange city lying alone

Far down within the dim West

Where the good and the bad and the worst and the best

Have gone to their eternal rest.

There shrines and palaces and towers

(Time-eaten towers that tremble not!)

Resemble nothing that is ours.

Around, by lifting winds forgot,

Resignedly beneath the sky

The melancholy waters lie.

No rays from the holy Heaven come down

On the long night-time of that town;

But light from out the lurid sea

Streams up the turrets silently –

Gleams up the pinnacles far and free –

Up domes – up spires – up kingly halls –

Up fanes – up Babylon-like walls –

Up shadowy long-forgotten bowers

Of sculptured ivy and stone flowers –

Up many and many a marvellous shrine

Whose wreathèd friezes intertwine

The viol, the violet, and the vine.

Resignedly beneath the sky

The melancholy waters lie.

So blend the turrets and shadows there

That all seem pendulous in air,

While from a proud tower in the town

Death looks gigantically down.

There open fanes and gaping graves

Yawn level with the luminous waves;

But not the riches there that lie

In each idol's diamond eye –

Not the gayly-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.

The Sleeper

At midnight, in the month of June,

I stand beneath the mystic moon.

An opiate vapor, 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 carefully –

Above the closed and fringed lid

'Neath which thy slumb'ring soul lies hid,

That, o'er the floor and down the wall,

Like ghosts the shadows rise and fall!

Oh, lady dear, hast thou no fear?

Why and what art thou dreaming here?

Sure thou art come o'er far-off seas,

A wonder to these garden trees!

Strange is thy pallor! strange thy dress!

Strange, above all, thy length of tress,

And this all solemn silentness!

The lady sleeps! Oh, may her sleep,

Which is enduring, so be deep!

Heaven have her in its sacred keep!

This chamber changed for one more holy,

This bed for one more melancholy,

I pray to God that she may lie

Forever with unopened eye,

While the dim sheeted ghosts go by!

My love, she sleeps! Oh, may her sleep,

As it is lasting, so be deep!

Soft may the worms about her creep!

Far in the forest, dim and old,

For her may some tall vault unfold –

Some vault that oft hath flung its black

And winged 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.

Silence

There are some qualities – some incorporate things,

That have a double life, which thus is made

A type of that twin entity which springs

From matter and light, evinced in solid and shade.

There is a twofold 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!

A Dream Within a Dream

Take this kiss upon the brow!

And, in parting from you now,

Thus much let me avow –

You are not wrong, who deem

That my days have been a dream;

Yet if hope has flown away

In a night, or in a day,

In a vision, or in none,

Is it therefore the less gone?

All that we see or seem

Is but a dream within a dream.

I stand amid the roar

Of a surf-tormented shore,

And I hold within my hand

Grains of the golden sand –

How few! yet how they creep

Through my fingers to the deep,

While I weep – while I weep!

O God! can I not grasp

Them with a tighter clasp?

O God! can I not save

One from the pitiless wave?

Is all that we see or seem

But a dream within a dream?

Dream-Land

By a route obscure and lonely,

Haunted by ill angels only,

Where an Eidolon, named NIGHT,

On a black throne reigns upright,

I have reached these lands but newly

From an ultimate dim Thule –

From a wild weird clime that lieth, sublime,

Out of SPACE – out of TIME.

Bottomless vales and boundless floods,

And chasms, and caves, and Titan woods,

With forms that no man can discover

For the dews that drip all over;

Mountains toppling evermore

Into seas without a shore;

Seas that restlessly aspire,

Surging, unto skies of fire;

Lakes that endlessly outspread

Their lone waters – lone and dead, –

Their still waters – still and chilly

With the snows of the lolling lily.

By the lakes that thus outspread

Their lone waters, lone and dead, –

Their sad waters, sad and chilly

With the snows of the lolling lily, –

By the mountains – near the river

Murmuring lowly, murmuring ever, –

By the gray woods, – by the swamp

Where the toad and the newt encamp, –

By the dismal tarns and pools

Where dwell the Ghouls, –

By each spot the most unholy –

In each nook most melancholy, –

There the traveller meets aghast

Sheeted Memories of the Past –

Shrouded forms that start and sigh

As they pass the wanderer by –

White-robed forms of friends long given,

In agony, to the Earth – and Heaven.

For the heart whose woes are legion

'Tis a peaceful, soothing region –

For the spirit that walks in shadow

'Tis – oh, 'tis an Eldorado!

But the traveller, travelling through it,

May not – dare not openly view it;

Never its mysteries are exposed

To the weak human eye unclosed;

So wills its King, who hath forbid

The uplifting of the 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.

To Zante

Fair isle, that from the fairest of all flowers

Thy gentlest of all gentle names dost take!

How many memories of what radiant hours

At sight of thee and thine at once awake!

How many scenes of what departed bliss!

How many thoughts of what 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!«

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.

Ah, less – less bright

The stars of night

Than the eyes of the radiant girl!

And never a flake

That the vapor 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.

Eldorado

Gaily bedight,

A gallant knight,

In sunshine and in shadow.

Had journeyed long,

Singing a song,

In search of Eldorado.

But he grew old –

This knight so bold –

And o'er his heart a shadow

Fell as he found

No spot of ground

That looked like Eldorado.

And, as his strength

Failed him at length,

He met a pilgrim shadow –

»Shadow,« said he,

»Where can it be –

This land of Eldorado?«

»Over the Mountains

Of the Moon,

Down the Valley of the Shadow,

Ride, boldly ride,«

The shade replied, –

»If you seek for Eldorado!«

Israfel2

In Heaven a spirit doth dwell

»Whose heart-strings are a lute«;

None sing so wildly well

As the angel Israfel,

And the giddy stars (so legends tell)

Ceasing their hymns, attend the spell

Of his voice, all mute.

Tottering above

In her highest noon,

The enamored moon

Blushes with love,

While, to listen, the red levin

(With the rapid Pleiads, even,

Which were seven)

Pauses in Heaven.

And they say (the starry choir

And the other listening things)

That Israfeli's fire

Is owing to that lyre

By which he sits and sings –

The trembling living wire

Of those unusual strings.

But the skies that angel trod,

Where deep thoughts are a duty –

Where Love's a grown-up God –

Where the Houri glances are

Imbued with all the beauty

Which we worship in a star.

Therefore, thou art not wrong,

Israfeli, who despisest

An unimpassioned song;

To thee the laurels belong,

Best bard, because the wisest!

Merrily live, and long!

The ecstasies above

With thy burning measures suit –

Thy grief, thy joy, thy hate, thy love,

With the fervor of thy lute –

Well may the stars be mute!

Yes, Heaven is thine; but this

Is a world of sweets and sours;

Our flowers are merely – flowers,

And the shadow of thy perfect bliss

Is the sunshine of ours.

If I could dwell

Where Israfel

Hath dwelt, and he where I,

He might not sing so wildly well

A mortal melody,

While a bolder note than this might swell

From my lyre within the sky.

For Annie

Thank Heaven! the crisis –

The danger is past,

And the lingering illness

Is over at last –

And the fever called »Living«

Is conquered at last.

Sadly I know

I am shorn of my strength,

And no muscle I move

As I lie at full length –

But no matter! – I feel

I am better at length.

And I rest so composed,

Now, in my bed,

That any beholder

Might fancy me dead –

Might start at beholding me,

Thinking me dead.

The moaning and groaning,

The sighing and sobbing,

Are quieted now,

With that horrible throbbing

At heart: – ah, that horrible,

Horrible throbbing!

The sickness – the nausea –

The pitiless pain –

Have ceased, with the fever

That maddened my brain –

With the fever called »Living«

That burned in my brain.

And oh! of all tortures

That torture the worst

Has abated – the terrible

Torture of thirst

For the naphthaline river

Of Passion accurst: –

I have drunk of a water

That quenches all thirst: –

Of a water that flows,

With a lullaby sound,

From a spring but a very few

Feet under ground –

From a cavern not very far

Down under ground.

And ah! let it never

Be foolishly said

That my room it is gloomy

And narrow my bed;

For man never slept

In a different bed –

And, to sleep, you must slumber

In just such a bed.

My tantalized spirit

Here blandly reposes.

Forgetting, or never

Regretting, its roses –

Its old agitations

Of myrtles and roses:

For now, while so quietly

Lying, it fancies

A holier odor

About it, of pansies –

A rosemary odor,

Commingled with pansies –

With rue and the beautiful

Puritan pansies.

And so it lies happily,

Bathing in many

A dream of the truth

And the beauty of Annie –

Drowned in a bath

Of the tresses of Annie.

She tenderly kissed me,

She fondly caressed,

And then I fell gently

To sleep on her breast –

Deeply to sleep

From the heaven of her breast.

When the light was extinguished

She covered me warm,

And she prayed to the angels

To keep me from harm –

To the queen of the angels

To shield me from harm.

And I lie so composedly,

Now in my bed,

(Knowing her love,)

That you fancy me dead –

And I rest so contentedly,

Now in my bed,

(With her love at my breast,)

That you fancy me dead –

That you shudder to look at me.

Thinking me dead: –

But my heart 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.

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.

Bridal Ballad

The ring is on my hand,

And the wreath is on my brow;

Satins and jewels grand

Are all at my command,

And I am happy now.

And my lord he loves me well;

But when first he breathed his vow

I felt my bosom swell –

For the words rang as a knell,

And the voice seemed his who fell

In the battle down the dell,

And who is happy now.

But he spoke to reassure me,

And he kissed my pallid brow.

While a revery 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!«

And thus the words were spoken,

And this 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.

To F––

Beloved! amid the earnest woes

That crowd around my earthly path –

(Drear path, alas! where grows

Not even one lonely rose) –

My soul at least a solace hath

In dreams of thee, and therein knows

An Eden of bland repose.

And thus thy memory is to me

Like some enchanted far-off isle

In some tumultuous sea –

Some ocean throbbing far and free

With storms – but where meanwhile

Serenest skies continually

Just o'er that one bright island smile.

Notes

1 This poem was written for Mrs. Sarah Helen Whitman – Ed.

2 And the angel Israfel, whose heart-strings are a lute, and who has the sweetest voice of all God's creatures. – KORAN.