A bright-green tinge succeeds the brown Off to the woods! a pleasant scene! Where its long rings uncurls the fern, And smile beneath Spring's wakening skies, Of coming flowers,-what feelings sweet A sudden roar—a shade is cast- Scarce their blue glancing shapes the eye A chirp! and swift the squirrel scours Amid the creeping pine, which spreads The scaurberry's downy spangle sheds The bee-swarm murmurs by, and now Warmer is each successive sky, The dogwood sheds its clusters white, The thresher whistles in the glen, A simultaneous burst of leaves The flowers are spread in varied wreath, EDGAR ALLAN POE. [Born in Baltimore in January 1811; died in the same city on 7th October 1849. The most intense artist among the natives of the American Republic. This most original, fascinating, and admirable inventor in poetry and fiction belonged to a family of very good position. His father married an actress, and became an actor, and both parents died when Edgar, a remarkably beautiful boy, was but two years of age. A wealthy merchant in Richmond, Mr. Allan, adopted him. Poe's life was an intemperate one, in every sense of the word. Getting into scrapes during his University course in Virginia, he started off to fight for the independence of Greece; but, straying away to St. Petersburg instead, he soon returned home destitute in 1829. His conduct to the newly-married second wife of Mr. Allan disgusted that kindly old gentleman. The youth then entered and got expelled from the Military Academy of West Point; and his adopted father, dying soon afterwards, left him wholly unprovided for. Poe next tried literature, in various miscellaneous forms: in 1841, a collection of his romantic fictions, named Tales of the Grotesque and the Arabesque, laid the foundation of his fame. Some years before this, he had married his cousin, Virginia Clemm, who died in 1847. His ex treme love for his wife, and-what is more observable-for his mother-in-law, forms the most amiable trait in his personal history. He was afterwards engaged to a literary widow in Rhode Island: but at last he purposely disgusted her, and the match was broken off. He next courted a lady of fortune in Richmond; and was on his way from that city to New York, to settle some literary arrangements prior to marriage, when, stopping at Baltimore, he met some old acquaintances; spent the night in a debauch; wandered out into the streets; and was found next morning half dead from the excitement and exposure. He was removed to a hospital, and there died. While his bodily remains are mouldering unmarked in the cemetery of Baltimore, his fame has spread apace; and thousands of men and women bask in the beauty or thrill to the terrors of his mind, without either knowing, or much needing to care, what number or what sorts of antics had been crowded into that brief tragicomedy while he yet had to "strut and fret his hour upon the stage"]. THE HAUNTED PALACE, In the greenest of our valleys Never seraph spread a pinion Banners yellow, glorious, golden, And every gentle air that dallied In that sweet day, Along the ramparts plumed and pallid, A winged odour went away. Wanderers in that happy valley, Through two luminous windows, saw 1 It has been stated that this lady was the "Annabel Lee of Poe's poem. But the poem itself seems to be quite inconsistent with such an assumption, and to be more likely to relate to the poet's deceased wife-or indeed it may be wholly imaginary. Spirits moving musically To a lute's well-tunèd law, In state his glory well-befitting, 'The ruler of the realm was seen. And all with pearl and ruby glowing Through which came flowing, flowing, flowing, A troop of Echoes, whose sweet duty In voices of surpassing beauty, The wit and wisdom of their king. And travellers, now, within that valley, While, like a ghastly rapid river, A hideous throng rush out for ever, ANNABEL LEE. It was many and many a year ago, 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 which was more than love- With a love that the wingèd seraphs of heaven And this was the reason that, long ago, To shut her up in a sepulchre In this kingdom by the sea. The angels, not half so happy in heaven, Yes! that was the reason (as all men know That the wind came out of the cloud by night, But our love it was stronger by far than the love And neither the angels in heaven above, Nor the demons down under the sea, Can ever dissever my soul from the soul For the moon never beams without bringing me dreams And the stars never rise but I feel the bright eyes 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. |