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,
For her may some tall vault unfold- Some vault that oft has flung its black And winged pannels 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.
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?
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.
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 journeyed 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.
"She is warmer than Dian: She rolls through an ether of sighsShe 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 till 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 sibylic 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!"
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- 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 dark tarn of Auber, This ghoul-haunted woodland of Weir."
HELEN, thy beauty is to me
Like those Nicean 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.
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!
1 This is the form of the poem which obtained, I presume, the ultimate approval of its author. An earlier version gave an additional last stanza :
Said we then the two, then-" Ah can it Have been that the woodlandish ghouls- The pitiful, the merciful ghouls—
To bar up our way and to ban it
From the secret that lies in these wolds
From the thing that lies hidden in these wolds
Have drawn up the spectre of a planet
From the limbo of lunary souls
This sinfully scintillant planet
From the hell of the planetary souls?"
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