Edgar A. Poe. 
 
POEMS OF EDGAI 
 ALLAN POE^Wm 
 
 MEMOIR 
 
 NEW YORK, THOMAS Y. 
 CROWELL & COMPANY, K 
 PUBLISHERS _ _ - - . 
 
 s 
 
POEMS 
 
 OF 
 
 EDGAR ALLAN POE 
 
 WITH BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH BY 
 
 N. H. DOLE. 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 THOMAS Y. CROWELL & CO. 
 PUBLISHERS 
 
GIFT OF 
 
 rt /J 
 
 COPYRIGHT, 1892, 
 
 >Y ; 
 T. Y. CROWELL & C6. , 
 
A 
 
 PREFACE TO THE POEMS. 
 
 These trifles are collected and republished chiefly 
 with a view to their redemption from the many im 
 provements 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 de 
 fence 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 com 
 pensations, or the more paltry commendations of 
 
 mankind. 
 
 E. A. P. 
 
 3 
 
 M103284 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 PREFACE TO THE POEMS 3 
 
 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH 7 
 
 THE POETIC PRINCIPLE -jr 
 
 THE RAVEN . -. ^ 
 
 LENORE 74 
 
 THE BELLS 7 6 
 
 ANNABEL LEE 80 
 
 ULALUME 81 
 
 THE COLISEUM 85 
 
 To HELEN 86 
 
 To 89 
 
 A VALENTINE 90 
 
 To MY MOTHER 9I 
 
 HYMN g l 
 
 AN ENIGMA 92 
 
 THE HAUNTED PALACE 92 
 
 THE CONQUEROR WORM 94 
 
 To ONE IN PARADISE 96 
 
 To F s S. O D 97 
 
 THE CITY IN THE SEA 
 
 97 
 
 SILENCE 99 
 
 THE SLEEPER loo 
 
 THE VALLEY OF UNREST 102 
 
 5 
 
6 CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 A DREAM WITHIN A DREAM . . . .103 
 
 DREAM-LAND 104 
 
 To ZANTE 106 
 
 EULALIE. . 1 06 
 
 ELDORADO 107 
 
 ISRAFEL IDS 
 
 FOR ANNIE .no 
 
 To F 114 
 
 BRIDAL BALLAD 114 
 
 To 116 
 
 SCENES FROM " POLITIAN " 116 
 
 POEMS WRITTEN IN YOUTH: 
 
 SONNET To SCIENCE 138 
 
 AL AARAAF .... . 139 
 
 To THE RIVER 156 
 
 TAMERLANE 156 
 
 FAIRY-LAND 165 
 
 To L. M. S 1 66 
 
 ROMANCE . . . . . . . 167 
 
 SPIRITS OF THE DEAD 168 
 
 To 169 
 
 A DREAM 169 
 
 THE LAKE. To 170 
 
 SONG 171 
 
 To HELEN 172 
 
 ALONE 172 
 
 THE PHILOSOPHY OF COMPOSITION ... 175 
 
 THE POWER OF WORDS 193 
 
BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 
 
BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. .: 
 
 About the middle of the last century John Poe 
 emigrated from the North of Ireland to Pennsylvania. 
 His son, David Poe, was a wheelwright, who, through 
 his natural leadership, became Assistant Quarter 
 master-General for Baltimore during the Revolu 
 tionary War. His oldest son, also David Poe, was 
 tempted from the dry study of law by the glamour of 
 the footlights. He made " his second appearance on 
 any stage 11 at Charleston, South Carolina, early in 
 December, 1803. The next year he joined a strolling 
 company of players, and finally married the widow 
 of Mr. C. D. Hopkins, who had been one of the 
 most popular of the " stars." 
 
 The young couple drifted to Boston, where Mrs. 
 Poe as a girl had made her American debut in June, 
 1796. Her mother was Mrs. Arnold, an English 
 actress from Covent Garden. 
 
 For three years they lived in Boston, where the 
 wife in the course of time became " the leading 
 lady," playing ** Cordelia," or "Ophelia, 11 or "Pal 
 myra" to John Howard Payne^ "Zaphna," and 
 similar parts, though the current praise of her 
 "moral qualities and domestic virtues" did not 
 altogether disarm the severer criticism of her acting. 
 
10 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 
 
 Of these Thespian parents Edgar Allan Poe was 
 the second son, and he was born on January 19, 1809. 
 
 Shortly afterwards they removed to New York, 
 where they remained through the next winter, " act 
 ing the romantic t afrd: sentimental drama and light 
 cdwledy f the p\3tio(V" 
 
 * Joth\Rgi -further is known of David Poe : he is 
 Glipp-osed to; ;hay;e/died of consumption. Mrs. Poe 
 went South, and acted with approbation in the cities 
 of the southern circuit. But she fell into a decline. 
 Being in utter destitution, she appealed to the charity 
 of the humane to attend her benefit night. On 
 December 8, 1811, she died, and her children were 
 taken by sympathetic friends. 
 
 Edgar was adopted by Mr. John Allan of Rich 
 mond, a wealthy tobacco-dealer, of Scotch descent 
 and origin. The black-eyed, curly-haired boy, at the 
 age of six, could read, draw, and dance : one of his 
 accomplishments was to declaim pieces. He was 
 sent to a private school. During the summer months 
 for several years he went with Mr. and Mrs. Allan to 
 White Sulphur Springs, where he had his dogs and 
 pony. 
 
 In 1815 he was taken to England and placed at the 
 Manor House School, Stoke Newington, where he 
 remained till he was twelve years old, learning to 
 construe Latin, speak French, write verses, run, 
 jump, and swim. 
 
 On his return to Richmond he was put into 
 Clarke s, afterward Burke s, Classical School, where, 
 it is said, he " cut a considerable figure," coming to 
 stand next the head of his class, and excelling all his 
 
BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. II 
 
 fellows in athletic sports, and in the literary feats of 
 debate and poetry. 
 
 At home he had been petted and spoiled. At 
 school he was haughty and overbearing, this fault 
 jeing intensified by the treatment to which his aristo 
 cratic Virginian classmates subjected one known as 
 the son of " play-actors." He made no intimate 
 friends, but lived mainly by himself in a world of 
 dreams. 
 
 Once, according to his own story, the mother of 
 one of his younger schoolmates, a lovely, gracious 
 lady, spoke kindly to him The tones of her voice 
 thrilled him and kindled within him " the first purely 
 ideal love of his soul." 1 
 
 She died when she was only thirty-one years old, 
 and for a long time the lonely lad of fifteen haunted 
 her grave by night, and the experience of her loss 
 and his desolation tinged his verse all his life long. 
 During his school-days he paid some attention to 
 iMiss Sarah Elmira Royster, a neighbor s daughter. 
 But her father intercepted his letters, and the romance 
 ended at the time in her early marriage. 
 
 On February 14, 1826, having finished his prepara 
 tions under a private tutor employed in Mr. Allan s 
 newly purchased mansion-house, Poe entered the 
 University of Virginia, where he studied the ancient 
 and modern languages, and gave his leisure time to 
 athletic sports or mingled with the faster set around 
 the card-table and the punch-bowl. 
 
 He was short, thick-set, compactly built, bow- 
 -egged, with a quick, jerky gait ; his face was habitu 
 ally grave and melancholy, though it kindled into 
 
12 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 
 
 animation if he grew excited in debate ; his hair was 
 dark and curly Even at that time he had a notori 
 ous passion for strong drink. At play he was bold 
 and reckless : thus he not only lost caste among the 
 aristocratic students of the college, but ended the 
 year with gambling-debts amounting to twenty-five 
 hundred dollars. 
 
 In these circumstances Mr. Allan removed him 
 from college and put him into his own counting- 
 room. Poe soon revolted, and in the spring of 1827 
 ran away to Boston, where he published his first vol 
 ume, entitled " Tamerlane and Other Poems by a 
 Bostonian." The " other poems " were nine in num 
 ber and easily showed the influence of Byron. 
 
 It is supposed that Poe lived in his native city 
 under an assumed name. 
 
 Toward the last of May one Edgar A. Perry was 
 enrolled as a private soldier in the United States 
 Army. He gave his age as twenty-two ; his occupa 
 tion as that of a clerk. He was entered in the record 
 as having gray eyes, brown hair, a fair complexion, 
 and a height of five feet, eight inches. 
 
 This was Edgar Allan Poe. 
 
 During the summer he was on duty at Fort Inde 
 pendence. In October, he was transferred with 
 Battery H of the First Artillery, to Charleston, S. C, 
 and a year later to Fortress Monroe, Va. He was 
 company clerk and assistant in the commissariat 
 department, and on the first day of January, 1829, 
 he was appointed sergeant-major, having earned the 
 promotion by his faithfulness and good conduct. 
 
 Mrs. Allan died in the following February. Early 
 
BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 13 
 
 in March Poe returned to Richmond on leave of 
 absence, and was honorably discharged April I5th 
 by substitute. His taste of army life had caused him 
 to think of arms as his profession, and after a delay 
 of nearly a year he received his appointment as Cadet 
 at West Point. Mr Allan gave his formal consent, 
 and Poe entered the Military Academy July I, 1830, 
 his age being recorded (through his false informa 
 tion) as nineteen years and five months, 
 
 Meantime he had published in Baltimore a second 
 volume, entitled " Al Aaraaf, Tamerlane, and Minor 
 Poems. 11 It was a thin volume of only seventy-one 
 pages The "minor poems 11 were nine in number, 
 several being the same as appeared in his maiden 
 volume, but revised. The volume was largely dis 
 tributed among his acquaintances, but caused more 
 merriment than interest. 
 
 It took less than six months of life at West Point 
 to convince him that he had made a mistake. He 
 was proficient in French, and stood high in mathe 
 matics, but the routine of drill, roll-call and guard 
 duty was utterly irksome to him. 
 
 He urged his patron to let him resign, but as Mr. 
 Allan refused to sanction such a step, Poe systemati 
 cally neglected all his duties as a cadet, was called 
 before a court-martial, found guilty, and sentenced to 
 dismissal. 
 
 On March 7, 1831, he was again free and with just 
 twelve cents to his credit ! His classmates subscribed 
 enough to pay his fare to New York. He proposed 
 to reimburse them by a new volume of poems which 
 was soon published by Elam Bliss, with a dedication 
 
14 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 
 
 to the United States Corps of Cadets. The half 
 dozen new poems which it contained seem to give a 
 slight presage of his genius. 
 
 It is not known whether he returned to Mr. Allan s 
 house. His patron was married for the second time, 
 and was expecting a lineal heir. He himself declared 
 that in the indulgence of his Quixotic sense of the 
 honorable, of the chivalrous, which he regarded as 
 the " true voluptuousness of his life," he deliberately 
 in his early youth threw from him a large fortune, 
 rather than endure a trivial wrong ! The probability 
 is that Mr. Allan, whether rightly or wrongly, con 
 sidered his adopted son as untrustworthy. He did 
 not take into account how far he himself was respon 
 sible by his foolishly lavish indulgence for the habits 
 into which the youth had fallen. Even in England 
 the boy was spoiled " by an extravagant amount of 
 pocket money." 
 
 Poe was now thrown on his own resources. First 
 he applied for a position on the Federal Gazette and 
 Baltimore Daily Advertiser, edited by William 
 Glynn. Disappointed in this, he offered his services 
 as assistant in a school at Reisterstown, near Balti 
 more. Nothing came of it. For eighteen months 
 he struggled on in the direst poverty. Then in the 
 summer of 1833 the Baltimore Saturday Visitor of 
 fered a prize of one hundred dollars for the best tale 
 in prose, and one of fifty dollars for the best poem. 
 
 Poe competed for both and would have won both 
 had not that been against the rules. Poe s story, 
 " A Manuscript Found in a Bottle," was accepted 
 and published. 
 
BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 15 
 
 John P. Kennedy, author of " Swallow Barn," one 
 of the judges, went to look up the author, and found 
 him, he said, " in a state of starvation." He gave 
 him clothing, free access to his table, and the use of 
 a horse for exercise whenever he chose ; in fact, 
 brought him up from the very verge of despair. 
 
 During the next six months Poe contributed to the 
 Saturday Visitor, and earned small sums from other 
 literary work. His home was in the family of his 
 aunt, Mrs. Clemm, who with her daughter, Virginia, 
 then a child of eleven, had recently returned to 
 Baltimore to live. 
 
 In March, 1834, Mr. Allan died. Shortly before 
 his death Poe forced his way to his presence. Mr. 
 Allan threatened him with his cane, and ordered him 
 out. This was but the prelude to the total ignoring 
 of the young man in Mr. Allan s will. 
 
 His last hopes of inheriting a fortune being thus 
 disappointed, he collected his tales and sent them to 
 a Philadelphia publisher. During the summer he 
 composed his blank verse tragedy, " Politian," and 
 in the autumn worked on " Hans Pfaal." 
 
 Mr. T. W. White of Richmond, editor of the 
 Southern Literary Messenger, was struck by some 
 stories that Poe sent to him, and printed " Berenice 1 
 in the following March. After that, Poe became a 
 frequent contributor, and in June, 1835, he left Balti 
 more to become Mr. White s assistant, at a salary of 
 ten dollars a week. 
 
 Before his departure he became engaged to his 
 cousin Virginia. Neilson Poe, a relation of both, 
 objected with reason because the girl was not yet 
 
1 6 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 
 
 thirteen years old. He offered to take her into his 
 own family and care for her till she should be 
 eighteen. 
 
 This f roposal destroyed for Poe all the glamour of 
 his bright prospects in Richmond. He hastened back 
 to Baltimore, and, evidently with the approval of Mrs. 
 Clemm, took out a marriage licence (September 22d), 
 and was probably married at Old Christ Church. 
 
 Neilson Poe s kindly offer was rejected, and 
 the Clemms soon removed to Richmond, where the 
 young husband was diligently working in his editorial 
 position. 
 
 His brilliant tales attracted attention, but it was by 
 a slashing editorial criticism of T. S. Fay s " Norman 
 Leslie " that the magazine was instantly brought into 
 universal notice. It was an advantage for the peri 
 odical, but it naturally brought odium upon the writer, 
 who went on in this vein, pointing out the faults in 
 the favorites of the day. 
 
 What strikes one now is, that he was correct in his 
 judgments. He undoubtedly was in search of truth, 
 but the sensitive authors whom he criticised never 
 forgave him. 
 
 Of poetry he contributed little to the Messenger, 
 and that little reached no high level. It has been 
 pointed out that he was under the influence of Cole 
 ridge, both in his critical and poetical effusions. He 
 always made a great show of knowledge, but his 
 learned notes were taken at second hand, and he 
 often made odd blunders. 
 
 On May 16, 1836, Poe was publicly married to 
 Virginia E. Clemm. His surety, Thomas W. Cle- 
 
BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 17 
 
 took oath that she was " of the full age of 
 twenty-one years." The minister who performed the 
 ceremony afterwards remembered the bride as seem 
 ing very young: she lacked four months of being 
 fourteen years old. 
 
 Mrs. Clemm proposed to keep a boarding-house. 
 Poe had incurred a debt of two hundred dollars for 
 furniture. But it was discovered that the house was 
 too small for more than one family, and the scheme 
 was abandoned. Poe borrowed one hundred dollars 
 on the strength of his increasing salary (it was to be 
 twenty dollars a week after November) and the pros 
 pects of the Messenger, which he declared was * thriv 
 ing beyond all expectation. 11 
 
 Suddenly, in January, 1837, Poe s connection with 
 the magazine ceased. A serial story, " Arthur Gor 
 don Pym, 11 which had been begun in its columns was 
 broken off. 
 
 There can be no doubt as to what was the cause of 
 this abrupt change. 
 
 He was subject to more or less frequent fits of 
 intoxication, which, when they had passed, left him 
 weak and unfit for work. 
 
 Poe took his family to New York, where Mrs. 
 Clemm took boarders. He finished " The Narration 
 of Arther Gordon Pym of Nantucket, 11 and it was 
 published by the Harpers ; but, though tales of the 
 sea were then popular, he made no profit from it. 
 Nor, in the face of the financial panic of that time, 
 did he succeed in finding remunerative work. 
 
 He borrowed money and went to Philadelphia, 
 where he was engaged to prepare a text-book on 
 
1 8 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 
 
 Conchology. It was a palpable plagiarism in spite 
 of his defence of his methods. 
 
 During the same year he earned small sums by 
 stories contributed to the American Museum of Lit 
 erature and Arts of Baltimore, and later to the local 
 press of Philadelphia. 
 
 In July, 1839, ne became associate editor of Bur 
 ton s Gentleman s Magazine and American Monthly 
 Review, and the next year published a collection of 
 twenty-four tales in two volumes. ("Tales of the 
 Grotesque and Arabesque.") Three of these stories 
 are declared by Woodbury * to mark the highest 
 reach of the romantic element in Poe s genius ; " but 
 the world had not yet awakened to an appreciation 
 of his greatness. 
 
 He was soon involved in a bitter quarrel with 
 William E. Burton, the proprietor and editor of the 
 magazine. Burton charged Poe with habits of intox 
 ication and with employing underhand measures 
 toward the establishment of a magazine of his own. 
 
 Poe declared that he had "abandoned every kind of 
 alcoholic drink," and that in four years he had allowed 
 himself only one deviation from habits of strict tem 
 perance. He called Burton "a blackguard and a 
 villain," and claimed that if he issued the prospectus 
 of the rival monthly, The Penn Magazine, it was 
 because Burton had advertised his magazine for sale 
 without giving Poe notice. 
 
 It is not known whether Griswold s charge that Poe 
 clandestinely availed himself of Burton s list of sub 
 scribers is correct. 
 
 Poe proposed to furnish in his Penn Magazine the 
 
BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 19 
 
 impress of his own individuality, such severity in 
 criticism as was consistent "with the calmest yet 
 strictest sense of justice," honest and fearless opin 
 ions, versatility, originality, and pungency of literary 
 pabulum without any "tincture of the buffoonery, 
 scurrility, or profanity, which are the blemish of some 
 of the most vigorous of the European prints," and 
 finally, perfection of mechanical execution. 
 
 An illness from which Poe suffered postponed the 
 issue of the magazine, and the Saturday Evening 
 Post of January 20, 1841, announced that the scheme 
 was abandoned and that Poe would take the editorial 
 chair of Graharis Magazine! 
 
 To this, during the months from April, 1841, till 
 June, 1842, he contributed "The Murders of the Rue 
 Morgue," " The Descent into the Maelstrom," and 
 many other stories, besides a succession of reviews 
 of American and foreign authors. The magazine, 
 which opened with a circulation of eight thousand, 
 acquired in a year and a quarter a circulation of forty 
 thousand ; but Poe still dreamed of his own venture, 
 and in spite of Graham s " unceasing civility and 
 real kindness," felt more and more disgusted with his 
 situation. He even hoped that on the strength of 
 having been at West Point he might obtain a govern 
 ment situation. 
 
 " I would be glad," he wrote, "to get almost any 
 appointment, even a five hundred dollar one, so that 
 I have something independent of letters for a sub 
 sistence. To coin one s brain into silver, at the nod 
 
 1 This was a new venture, due to the union of Burton s former 
 monthly with the Casket 
 
20 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 
 
 of a master, is, to my thinking, the hardest task 
 in the world." 
 
 He lived with his girl wife and her mother " in a 
 pretty little rose-covered cottage on the outskirts of 
 Philadelphia." Mrs. Clemm, * a masculine matron" 
 of fifty, received and spent Poe s wages, and was the 
 head of the household. 
 
 Virginia Poe, still under twenty-one, had a voice 
 of wonderful sweetness, and sang exquisitely to the 
 accompaniment of her harp or piano. One evening 
 she ruptured a blood vessel, and for six years her life 
 was a constant struggle with weakness. 
 
 The year after her death Poe wrote one of his most 
 pathetic letters, explaining how, during the protracted 
 agony of this terrible illness, undergoing again and 
 again the sorrow of leave-taking, while at each acces 
 sion of her disorder he ** loved her more dearly and 
 clung to her life with more desperate pertinacity," 
 he became " insane with long intervals of horrible 
 sanity." 
 
 " During these fits of absolute unconsciousness," 
 he says, " I drank God only knows how often or 
 how much. As a matter of course, my enemies 
 referred the insanity to the drink, rather than the 
 drink to the insanity." 
 
 He had doubtless at this time begun to use opium. 
 
 In the spring of 1842 he lost his editorship of 
 Graham s Magazine, his position being taken by 
 Griswold, who afterwards wrote a libellous biography 
 of him. 
 
 A period of wretched poverty followed. Poe won 
 a prize of one hundred dollars for his famous story, 
 
BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 21 
 
 the " Gold Bug," but for most of his tales written 
 at this time he was poorly paid. Nor did he make 
 much money from his lectures, though he was favor 
 ably received both in Baltimore and Philadelphia. 
 
 It is interesting to know that as early as 1844 Poe 
 wrote to Lowell, advocating an International Copy- 
 Right Law. In the same letter he proposed that 
 " the elite of our men of letters" should each sub 
 scribe two hundred dollars to establish a monthly 
 journal, the chief aims of which should be " Inde 
 pendence, Truth, Originality." He could see no 
 reason why one hundred thousand copies should not 
 be circulated in one or two years. But all such 
 schemes fell through. 
 
 In April, 1844, Poe suddenly went to New York 
 with his sick wife. A letter to his mother-in-law 
 gives a pathetic picture of their journey and arrival 
 in the rain. " Sissy coughed none at all," he says. 
 He found a cheap boarding-house "the cheapest 
 board he ever knew." And he adds, " I wish Kate 
 meaning Catterina, the cat could see it. She 
 would faint." 
 
 On getting settled, he tried to find profitable em 
 ployment, and soon published in The Sun his famous 
 " Balloon Hoax." He also occupied himself collect 
 ing and arranging materials for a Critical History of 
 American Literature, a work which he never finished. 
 
 In October, he obtained an editorial position on 
 N. P. Willis s Evening Mirror, and on the twenty- 
 ninth day of the January following, this paper pub 
 lished from advance sheets, Poe s " Raven." 
 
 Woodbury says : " The Raven became, in some 
 
22 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 
 
 sort, a national bird, and the author, the most noto 
 rious American of the hour." 
 
 He soon appeared in New York as a lecturer, and 
 was highly commended by Willis. But his lecture, 
 largely made up of his old book reviews, was full of 
 savage criticisms, and " gained him a dozen or two 
 of waspish foes," as one said who heard him. 
 
 Within two months he quitted the Mirror and 
 joined Charles F. Briggs and John Bisco in the man 
 agement of the Broadway Journal. His hobby at 
 this time was plagiarism. Briggs thought it was best 
 to let him ride it to death, and gave him free rein. 
 His bitterest attack was upon Longfellow. He 
 charged that he had left out of " The Waif" all the 
 Americans who might be supposed to interfere with 
 the claims of the editor himself. He declared that 
 Longfellow had stolen some scenes of " The Spanish 
 Student" from " Politian." Longfellow charitably 
 attributed " the harshness of his criticisms" to " the 
 irritation of a sensitive nature, chafed by some indefi 
 nite sense of wrong." 
 
 During the first months of Poe s residence in New 
 York he conducted himself soberly, but gradually fell 
 back into his bad habits. Briggs discovered that he 
 was showy, superficial, and untrustworthy in his 
 learning, selfish and conceited in his behavior, 
 " utterly deficient of high motive." 
 
 Owing to business complications, Briggs withdrew 
 from the Journal. Poe, remaining in full charge 
 of it for a few months, with his third interest as pay, 
 took advantage of his position to make an "un 
 handsome allusion" to Briggs, who had not only 
 
BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 23 
 
 loaned him money " to pay his board and keep him 
 from being turned into the street, 1 but, out of pure 
 compassion had tried to hide his ill habits from 
 observation. 
 
 During the summer he visited Boston, and in 
 October, through Lowell s influence, he was nvited 
 to give a poem before the Boston Lyceum. Instead 
 of furnishing an original production, he palmed off 
 on the disappointed audience, the feeble effort of his 
 youth, " El Aaraaf." On the twenty-sixth day of the 
 same month he bought out Bisco s rights for a pro 
 missory note for fifty dollars indorsed by Horace 
 Greely, who subsequently was called upon to pay it 
 with the cost of its protest. 
 
 Lack of capital and inability to borrow caused the 
 suspension of the monthly in December. A few days 
 later, Wiley and Putnam, who had already issued a 
 collection of his best stories edited by Duyckinck, 
 brought out a volume of his verse under the title 
 " The Raven and Other Poems." 
 
 Poe occasionally mingled in the literary society of 
 New York, and there met Mrs. Elizabeth F. Ellet 
 and Mrs. Francis S. Osgood, both of whom conceived 
 a mild Platonic love for the romantic poet. Through 
 the interference of Mrs. Ellet, a scandal arose in con 
 sequence of Mrs. Osgood s letters to Poe, and the 
 acquaintance between the three poets was brought to 
 a sudden close. 
 
 In the mean time, Poe was publishing in Godey s 
 Lady s Book a series of papers, entitled " The Literati 
 of New York," made up of scraps of his projected 
 work on American literature. He distributed severe 
 
24 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 
 
 criticism and generous praise, and while many of his 
 judgments have been sustained by posterity, the thin- 
 skinned " mediocrities," now forgotten, who then re 
 garded themselves as lights of the earth, were greatly 
 disturbed. Thomas Dunn English retorted in the 
 -tlumns of the Mirror, and was so scurrilous in his 
 abuse of Poe that the latter was not satisfied with a 
 disclaimer in the Philadelphia Saturday Gazette, but 
 sued the Mirror for libel, and obtained an award of 
 two hundred and twenty-five dollars. 
 
 Woodbury 1 gives a remarkably fair estimate of 
 Foe s critical service, claiming that his claim to im 
 partiality, sincerity and integrity, if spoken at all, is 
 invalidated only by the praise that he gave to his 
 feminine friends. 
 
 He was, he says, " prejudiced here and partial there ; foolish 
 or interested or wrong-headed; carping, or flattering, or con 
 temptuous. Yet he was the first of his time to mark the limita 
 tions of the pioneer writers, such as Irving, Bryant, and Cooper, 
 and to foresee the future of the younger men who have been 
 mentioned ; he was, too, though he originated no criterion, the 
 first to take criticism from mere advertising, puffery and friend 
 ship, and submit it to the laws of literary art." 
 
 Poe removed to the village of Fordham in the 
 spring of 1846, where he lived in a little one-and-a- 
 half story house with only four rooms, perched on the 
 very top of Fordham Hill, and giving beautiful views 
 in every direction. Poe s own health was fatally 
 broken from overwork, disappointments, and poverty, 
 and from his indulgence in strong drink and opium. 
 
 1 In his admirable life of Poe, pp. 266-271. 
 
BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 25 
 
 Once when Mrs. Mary Gove, whom Poe called "a 
 mesmerist, a Swedenborgian, a phrenologist, a 
 homceopathist, and a disciple of Priessnitz," went to 
 call upon them, she found Mrs. Poe suffering from 
 " the dreadful chills that accompany the hectic fever 
 of consumption." Wrapped in her husband s mili 
 tary overcoat, she lay on a straw bed with a snow- 
 white counterpane and sheets for its only clothing. 
 A large tortoise-shell cat snuggled to her bosom, to 
 keep her warm, while Poe held her hands and Mrs. 
 Clemm her feet. 
 
 Mrs. Gove, on returning to New York, bestirred 
 herself to bring aid. A subscription of sixty dollars 
 was sent to the sufferers. In December a public 
 appeal was made in the Express and in Willis s Home 
 Journal a publicity which was extremely galling to 
 his sensitive pride. 
 
 Mrs. Poe died on January 3oth, 1847. 
 
 Poe himself was taken sick with brain fever, and 
 while half delirious he dictated the strange story of 
 his voyage to France, his duel, and his French novel. 
 Needless to say the details are wholly untrue. 
 
 On his recovery he published among other things 
 his remarkable poem, Ulalume," in the American 
 Review. This poem, says Woodbury, "marks the 
 extreme development of Poe s original genius." 
 
 Still living at Fordham, and trying to re-establish 
 his shattered health by early rising, moderate eating, 
 absolute temperance, and out-of-door exercise, he 
 wrote his prose poem, Eureka," 1 which he thought 
 
 1 George P. Putnam published the work in a volume of one hundred 
 and forty-three pages. 
 
26 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 
 
 contained truths of more consequence than the dis 
 covery of gravitation. He had been interested in 
 astronomical subjects from his early youth in Rich 
 mond, where his guardian had a fine telescope. In 
 the hope of raising enough money to establish his 
 long projected magazine The Stylus, he read an essay 
 entitled " The Cosmogony of the Universe," as a 
 lecture in the Society Library. It was an abstract of 
 the book. But the weather was stormy, and only 
 about sixty people heard it. These were entranced. 
 
 In a journey made to Richmond in the summer of 
 1848 Poe met his old flame, Miss Royster, then a 
 well-to-do widow not averse to his attentions. He 
 was on the point of proposing to her, when he 
 received from Mrs. Sarah Helen Whitman of Provi 
 dence a communication which altered all his plans. 
 
 He had for several years indulged an ideal passion 
 for this brilliant but eccentric poet, whose affinity, he 
 felt, corresponded with his own. 
 
 He returned to the North, sought a personal intro 
 duction to her, and after two days acquaintance 
 offered himself to her. She was moved to pity for 
 him, and felt that she was called to save him ; but 
 Poe s habits, related to her by friends, caused her to 
 hesitate. 
 
 At Lowell, where he went to lecture, he made the 
 acquaintance of a charming family, and apparently 
 went almost as far as he could with decency, in his 
 acquaintance with the lady known as " Annie," in his 
 correspondence. 
 
 Believing that Mrs. Whitman would not accept him, 
 he bought two ounces of laudanum at Boston, and 
 
BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 27 
 
 attempted suicide. In November he was in Provi 
 dence again, and urged Mrs. Whitman to marry him 
 at once and return to New York with him. 
 
 In spite of his extraordinary behavior she consented 
 to a conditional engagement. 
 
 In December he went again to Providence to give 
 a lecture before the Franklin Lyceum, where he had 
 a large audience. Again he pleaded with Mrs. 
 Whitman, but even with this happiness at stake, he 
 drank at the public bar and called at her house while 
 intoxicated. 
 
 Mrs. Whitman decided to break off the match, and 
 after she had returned to him certain of his papers, 
 " utterly worn out and exhausted by the mental con 
 flicts and responsibilities " she had undergone, she 
 drenched her handkerchief with ether and threw herself 
 on a sofa, hoping to lose herself in utter unconscious 
 ness. 
 
 Her last words spoken to him at his passionate 
 appeal were, " I love you." 
 
 He returned to Fordham " so, so happy," by reason 
 of his rupture with Mrs. Whitman and devoted 
 himself to literary work. His prospects in this 
 respect were flattering. All the American magazines 
 were open to him, and, if he had known it, his fame 
 in France was already wide spread. 
 
 On February 6, 1849, ne finished his second most 
 famous poem, " The Bells, 1 which had probably been 
 in his mind for some time. 
 
 He also wrote a nun.ber of his most characteristic 
 pieces, but several of the journals in which they were 
 published either failed or stopped payment, and again 
 
28 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 
 
 he was overwhelmed with disappointment. A deep 
 melancholy settled upon him. In May he visited his 
 Lowell friends, and then returned to New York on 
 his way to the South, where he still hoped to establish 
 his Stylus. 
 
 Mrs. Clemm, whose devotion to him was more than 
 motherly, accompanied him to the steamboat, and he 
 promised her to be " good " while he was away. 
 
 Nevertheless, he had an attack of delirium tremens 
 at Philadelphia ! At Richmond, where he was idol 
 ized, he spent three of the happiest months of his life. 
 
 He was described as erect in stature, cold, impas 
 sive, almost haughty, with broad brow, black, curly 
 hair, pallid, care-worn, haggard features, large steel- 
 gray eyes, expanding and contracting, and with most 
 exquisite manners. 
 
 Twice during these months he suffered from illness 
 due to his intoxication, and was told that if he yielded 
 again it would prove fatal. 
 
 He also offered himself to Mrs. Shelton, who 
 undoubtedly accepted him. He started north to make 
 arrangements for the wedding, and to bring Mrs. 
 Clemm back to Richmond. 
 
 All that is definitely known of his further move 
 ments is that he was found on Wednesday, October 
 3d, 1849, at one of the voting precincts of Baltimore 
 Ryan s rum-shop " rather the worse for wear. 11 
 
 His old friend Dr. J. E. Snodgrass, to whom he 
 referred, was called, and had him taken to the Wash 
 ington Hospital. He was then unconscious. In 
 the only few moments of tranquillity, he was unable 
 to give coherent answers to questions. But he 
 
BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 29 
 
 declared that he had a wife in Richmond, and that 
 the " best thing his best friend could do would be 
 to blow his brains out with a pistol," that when he 
 beheld his degradation, he was ready to sink into 
 the earth. 
 
 He then relapsed into delirium, and his last words 
 were, " Lord help my poor soul." 
 
 On Sunday at five o clock he died. 
 
 A few friends followed his body to the grave. It 
 was not till long after his death that the world awoke 
 to the greatness of the genius which it had lost. 
 
 N. H. D. 
 
THE POETIC PRINCIPLE. 
 
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 Eng 
 lish 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 right 
 fully 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. 
 
 1 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 of this elevating 
 excitement. But all excitements are, through a 
 psychal necessity, transient. That degree of excite 
 ment which would entitle a poem to be so called at 
 all cannot be sustained throughout a composition of 
 
 33 
 
34 THE POETIC PRINCIPLE. 
 
 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 diffi 
 culty in reconciling the critical dictum that the 
 " Paradise Lost " is to be devoutly admired through 
 out 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 alterna 
 tion 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 
 prejudgment 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 damna 
 ble 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. 
 
 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 only say that the work is based in an 
 
THE POETIC PRINCIPLE. 35 
 
 imperfect sense of art. The modern epic is of the 
 supposititious ancient model ; but an inconsiderate 
 and blindfold imitation. But the days of these 
 artistic anomalies are 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, ceteris part- 
 bits, 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 esti 
 mating Lamartine by the cubic foot, or Pollok by 
 the pound ; but what else are we to infer from their 
 continually prating about " sustained effort"? If by 
 "sustained effort "any little gentleman has accom 
 plished 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 the time to 
 come, will prefer deciding upon a work of art rather 
 
36 THE POETIC PRINCIPLE. 
 
 by the impression it makes, by the effect it produces, 
 than by the time it took to produce the effect, or by 
 the amount of "sustained effort 1 which had been 
 found necessary in effecting the impression. The 
 fact is, that perseverance is one thing and genius 
 quite another, nor ran all the quarterlies in Christen 
 dom confound them. By and by this proposition, 
 with many which I have been just urging, will be 
 received as self-evident. In the mean time, 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 Beranger 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. 
 
THE POETIC PRINCIPLE. 37 
 
 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 odors fail 
 
 Like sweet thoughts in a dream ; 
 The nightingale s complaint, 
 
 It dies upon her heart, 
 As I must die on thine, 
 
 Oh, beloved, as thou art! 
 
 Oh, 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 
 
38 THE POETIC PRINCIPLE. 
 
 doubt through this same defect of undue brevity, 
 been kept back from its proper position, not less in 
 the critical 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 walked she, but viewlessly 
 
 Walked spirits at her side. 
 
 Peace charmed the street beneath her feet, 
 
 And Honor charmed the air, 
 And all astir looked kind on her, 
 
 And called 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 honored 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 walked forlorn, 
 
 And nothing could avail. 
 
THE POETIC PRINCIPLE. 39 
 
 No mercy now can clear her brow 
 
 For this world s peace to pray ; 
 For, as love s wild prayer dissolved in air, 
 
 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 recognize 
 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 accom 
 plished more in the corruption of our poetical litera 
 ture 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 devel 
 oped 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 
 
40 THE POETIC PRINCIPLE. 
 
 to confess ourselves radically wanting in the true 
 poetic dignity and force ; but the simple fact is, that, 
 would we but 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 in 
 spired 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 attempt 
 ing 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 
 
THE POETIC PRINCIPLE. 4. 
 
 Intellect, Taste, and the Moral Sense. I 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 sep 
 arated 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 odors 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 colors and odors 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 odors and 
 colors 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 
 
42 THE POETIC PRINCIPLE. 
 
 distance which he has been unable to attain. We 
 have still a thirst unquenchable, to allay which he has 
 not shown us the crystal springs. This thirst belongs 
 to the immortality of man. It is at once a conse 
 quence 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, apper 
 tain 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 Abbate 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 forever, 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 consti 
 tuted, 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 
 
THE POETIC PRINCIPLE. 43 
 
 theme, however, has regard only to its manifestation 
 in words. And here let me speak 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 ad 
 junct that he is simply silly who declines its assist 
 ance, 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 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 main 
 tain, from the contemplation of the Beautiful. In 
 the contemplation of Beauty, we alone find it possible 
 to attain this pleasurable elevation or excitement of 
 the soul which we recognize 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 
 
44 THE POETIC PRINCIPLE. 
 
 poem, simply because it is an obvious rule of Art that 
 effects should be made to spring as directly as possi 
 ble 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 in 
 citements 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 cita 
 tion of the proem 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 conies o er me 
 That my soul can not resist, 
 
 A feeling of sadness and longing, 
 
 That is not akin to pain, 
 And resembles sorrow only 
 
 As the mist resembles rain. 
 
THE POETIC PRINCIPLE. 45 
 
 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 endeavor ; 
 
 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 labor 
 
 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. 
 
 Then read from the treasured volume 
 
 The poem of thy choice, 
 And lend to the rhyme of the poet 
 
 The beauty of thy voice. 
 
46 THE POETIC PRINCIPLE. 
 
 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 expres 
 sion. Some of the images are very effective. Noth 
 ing 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 senti 
 ments, and especially for the ease of the general 
 manner. This " ease, 1 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 diffi 
 cult 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 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 
 
THE POETIC PRINCIPLE. 47 
 
 stupid ; and has no more right to be considered 
 "easy 11 or " natural, 11 than a cockney exquisite, or 
 than the sleeping Beauty in the waxworks. 
 
 Among the minor poems of Bryant, none has so 
 much impressed me as the one which he entitles 
 " June. 11 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. 
 
 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; 
 
48 THE POETIC PRINCIPLE. 
 
 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 softened 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 intro 
 duce 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 insepara 
 bly connected with all the higher manifestations of 
 true beauty. It is, nevertheless, 
 
THE POETIC PRINCIPLE. 49 
 
 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 Coate Pinckney : 
 
 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 musics 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 ; 
 
50 THE POETIC PRINCIPLE. 
 
 And lovely passions, changing oft, 
 
 So fill her, she appears 
 The image of themselves by turns, 
 
 The idol of past years ! 
 
 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 fiird 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. Pinckney 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 
 
THE POETIC PRINCIPLE. 51 
 
 enthusiasm. We pardon his hyperboles for the 
 evident earnestness with which they are uttered. 
 
 It was by no means my design, however, to expa 
 tiate upon the merits of what I should read you. 
 These will necessarily speak for themselves. Boc- 
 calini, 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 mis 
 understood. 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, 
 
52 THE POETIC PRINCIPLE. 
 
 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 ; 
 
 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 Til 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 distinc 
 tion 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 predom 
 inates 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 
 
THE POETIC PRINCIPLE. 53 
 
 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 : 
 
 Oh, 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. 
 
 Oh, turn again, fair Ines, 
 
 Before the fall of night, 
 For fear the moon should shine alone, 
 
 And stars unrivalPd 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 gayly by thy side, 
 
 And whispered thee so near ! 
 
54 THE POETIC PRINCIPLE. 
 
 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 a band of noble gentlemen, 
 
 And banners wav d 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 ! 
 
 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 P 
 
 To her you ve lov d 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 POETIC PRINCIPLE. 55 
 
 "The Haunted House," by the same author, is 
 one of the truest poems ever written, one of the 
 truest i 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 ! 
 
 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. 
 
$6 THE POETIC PRINCIPLE. 
 
 Make no deep scrutiny 
 Into her mutiny, 
 
 Rash and undutiful ; 
 Past all dishonor, 
 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 ? 
 
 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. 
 
THE POETIC PRINCIPLE. 57 
 
 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 net the dark arch, 
 
 Or the black flowing river: 
 Mad from life s history, 
 Glad to death s mystery 
 
 Swift to be hurl d, 
 Any where, any where 
 
 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, 
 
 Ther>, if you can ! 
 
5 8 THE POETIC PRINCIPLE. 
 
 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, 
 Cold inhumanity 
 Burning insanity 
 
 Into her rest. 
 Cross her hands humbly, 
 As if praying dumbly, 
 
 Over her breast ! 
 Owning her weakness, 
 
 Her evil behavior, 
 And leaving, with meekness, 
 
 Her sins to her Saviour ! 
 
 The vigor of this poem is no less remarkable than 
 its pathos. The versification, although carrying the 
 
THE POETIC PRINCIPLE. 59 
 
 fanciful to the very verge of the fantastic, is never 
 theless 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 in beguiling, 
 
 Because it reminds me of thine ; 
 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. 
 
60 THE POETIC PRINCIPLE. 
 
 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, 
 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 
 
THE POETIC PRINCIPLE. 6 1 
 
 adveisity he still retains the unwavering love oi 
 woman. 
 
 From Alfred Tennyson although in perfect sin 
 cerity 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. 
 
 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. 
 
62 THE POETIC PRINCIPLE. 
 
 Dear as remembered 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. 
 Oh, Death in Life ! the days that are no more. 
 
 Thus, although in a very cursory and imperfect 
 manner, I have endeavored 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 Dionaean Venus, is unquestionably the purest 
 and truest of all poetical themes. And in regard to 
 Truth, if, to be sure, 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 referrible 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 dis 
 tinct 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. 
 
THE POETIC PRINCIPLE. 63 
 
 He recognizes 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 yolus, 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 
 odor 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 chival 
 rous, 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 harmony of 
 the rustling of her robe.i. 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, 
 
64 THE POETIC PRINCIPLE. 
 
 and is called " The Song of the Cavalier." With 
 our modern and altogether rational ideas of the ab 
 surdity and impiety of warfare, we are not precisely 
 in that frame of mind best adapted to sympathize 
 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 eye 
 
 When the sword-hilt s in our hand ; 
 Heart-whole well 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. 
 
POEMS, 
 
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, 
 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. 
 67 
 
68 THE RAVEN. 
 
 And the silken sad uncertain rustling of each purple 
 
 curtain 
 Thrilled me rilled 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 mortal ever dared to 
 
 dream before. 
 But the silence was unbroken, and the stillness gave 
 
 no token, 
 And the only word there spoken was the whispered 
 
 word, "Lenore!" 
 
THE RAVEN. 69 
 
 This I whispered, and an echo murmured back the 
 word, " Lenore !" 
 
 Merely this, and nothing more. 
 
 Back into the chamber turning, all my soul within 
 
 me burning, 
 Soon again 1 heard a tapping, something louder than 
 
 before. 
 "Surely, 11 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 ebon bird beguiling my sad fancy into 
 
 smiling, 
 By the grave and stern decorum of the countenance 
 
 it wore, 
 
70 THE RAVEN. 
 
 " 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 marvelled this ungainly fowl to hear discourse 
 
 so plainly, 
 Though its answer little meaning little relevancy 
 
 bore; 
 For we can not 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, 
 
 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 further 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. 1 
 
THE RAVEN. 71 
 
 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 omin 
 ous 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 lamplight 
 
 gloated o er, 
 
72 THE RAVEN. 
 
 But whose velvet violet lining, with the lamplight 
 gloating o er, 
 
 She shall press, ah, nevermore ! 
 
 Then, methought, the air grew denser, perfumed 
 
 from an unseen censer 
 Swung by Seraphim whose footfalls 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 the 
 
 lost Lenore ! " 
 
 Quoth the Raven, " Nevermore. 1 
 
 " Prophet ! " cried 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 ! " cried I, " thing of evil ! prophet still, 
 
 if bird or devil ! 
 By that Heaven that bends above us by that God 
 
 we both adore! 
 
THE RAVEN. 73 
 
 Tell this soul with sorrow laden, if, within the dis 
 tant 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 NightV 
 
 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. 11 
 
 And the Raven, never flitting, still is sitting, still is 
 
 sitting 
 On the pallid bust of Pallas, just above my chamber 
 
 do->r ; 
 And his eyes have all the seeming of a demon s that 
 
 is dreaming, 
 And the lamplight 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! 
 
74 LENORE. 
 
 LENORE. 
 
 AH, broken is the golden bowl ! the spirit flown 
 
 forever ! 
 Let the bell toll ! a saintly soul floats on the 
 
 Stygian river ; 
 And, Guy De Vere, hast thou no tear ? weep now, 
 
 or never more ! 
 
 See, on yon drear and rigid bier low lies thy love, 
 
 Lenore ! 
 Come, let the burial rite be read, the funeral song 
 
 be sung ! 
 An anthem for the queenliest dead that ever died so 
 
 young, 
 A dirge for her the doubly dead in that she died so 
 
 young. 
 
 "Wretches! ye loved her for her wealth and 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 ? (he 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 ? " 
 
LENORE. 75 
 
 Peccavimusl 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 debonair, that now so lowly 
 
 lies, 
 The life upon her yellow hair, but not within her 
 
 eyes, 
 The life still there, upon her hair, the death upon 
 
 her eyes. 
 
 " Avaunt ! To-night my heart is light ! No dirge 
 
 will I upraise, 
 But waft the angel on her flight with a paean of old 
 
 days ! 
 
 Let no bell toll! lest her sweet soul, amid its hal 
 lowed mirth, 
 Should catch the note, as it doth float up from the 
 
 damned 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." 
 
7 6 THE BELLS. 
 
 THE BELLS. 
 
 I. 
 
 HEAR the sledges with the bells, 
 
 Silver bellsX 
 
 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 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 gloais 
 On the moon ! 
 
THE BELLS. 77 
 
 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, 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! 
 
78 THE BELLS. 
 
 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 monody com 
 
 pels! 
 
 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, 
 
THE BELLS. 79 
 
 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 pa?an from the bells ! 
 And his merry bosom swells 
 With the paean of the bells, 
 And he dances, and he yells ; 
 Keeping time, time, time, 
 In a sort of Runic rhyme, 
 To the paean 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. 
 
8o ANNABEL LEE. 
 
 ANNABEL LEE. 
 ^ vx / __ l ^ i ^ 1 
 IT was manv T and many a year ago, 
 
 In a kingdom by *he sea, ^ * 
 
 atadaide^i there liv.ecl w$6m you may know, 
 
 ** *t / */*/ T r 
 Bjf the naYne of ANNABEL LEE ; / 
 
 And this madden sTTe lived wfth r^o other thought 
 Th^n to love a*nd be love^ by me. 
 
 by 
 ^ ^ J 
 
 t, w / - / - ^ / 
 /was a child and ^ was a child, 
 
 In this kingdom 6y tKe sea : ^ f 
 
 But ye lovejd with a lovg tHat was jp ore {Kan love, 
 
 I and my ANNABEL J.EE ; ^ 
 
 With "a love tliat t Ke winged seraphs of heaven 
 
 dovetecl her and nie. 
 
 * * . v^ ** / / / / v_ 
 
 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 highborn 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 m heaven, 
 Went envying her and me, 
 
ULALUME. 8 1 
 
 Yes ! that was tne 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. 
 
 Bat our love it was stronger by far than the love 
 
 Of those who were olcter than we, 
 
 Of many far wisej^iban we ; 
 And neither the angels in heaven above, 
 
 Nor the demons down under the sea, 
 Can .ever dUseverrny 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 sounding sea. 
 
 ULALUME. 
 
 THE skies they were ashen and sober; 
 The leaves they were crisped and 
 The leaves they were withering and sere, 
 
 It was night in the lonesome October 
 Of my most immemorial year ; 
 
82 ULALUME. 
 
 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 scoriae 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 the 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, 
 
ULALUME. 83 
 
 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 : 
 
84 ULALUME. 
 
 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. 1 
 
 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 COLISEUM. 85 
 
 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 
 Oh, spells more sure than e er Judean king 
 Taught in the gardens of Gethsemane ! 
 Oh, 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 horned moon, 
 
86 TO HELEN. 
 
 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 
 
 all 
 
 All of the famed and the colossal left 
 By the corrosive Hours to Fate and me ? 
 
 " Not all ! " the echoes answered me. " Not all i 
 
 Prophetic sounds and loud, arise forever 
 
 From us, and from all Ruin, unto the wise, 
 
 As melody from Memnon to the Sun. 
 
 vVe 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 HELEN. 
 
 \ 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, 
 
TO HELEN. 87 
 
 Sought a precipitate pathway up through heaven, 
 There fell a silvery silken veil of light, 
 With quietude, and sultriness, and slumber, 
 Upon the upturned faces of a thousand 
 Roses that grew in an enchanted garden, 
 Where no wind dared to stir, unless on tiptoe, 
 Fell on the upturned faces of these roses 
 That gave out, in return for the love-light, 
 Their odorous souls in an ecstatic death, 
 Fell on the upturned 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 upturned faces of the roses, 
 
 And on thine own, upturned, 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 !) 
 
 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 air. 
 
88 TO HELEN. 
 
 All all expired save thee save Jess 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 . 89 
 
 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 dissyllables 
 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 wider, 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. 
 
90 A VALENTINE. 
 
 A VALENTINE. 
 
 FOR her this rhyme is penned, whose luminous eyes. 
 
 Brightly expressive of the twins of Loeda, 
 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 meas 
 ure 
 
 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 lies 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, rend 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.] 
 
HYMN. 
 
 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 ihe 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 own soul-life. 
 
 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, 
 
92 THE HAUNTED PALACE. 
 
 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 ! 
 
 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. 
 
 THE HAUNTED PALACE. 
 
 IN the greenest of our valleys 
 
 By good angels tenanted, 
 Once a fair and stately palace 
 
 Radiant palace reared its head. 
 
THE HAUNTED PALACE. 93 
 
 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 winged odor went away. 
 
 Wanderers in that happy valley, 
 
 Through two luminous windows, saw 
 Spirits moving musically, 
 
 To a lute s well-tuned 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 ever more, 
 A troop of Echoes, whose sweet duty 
 
 Was but to sing, 
 In voices of surpassing beauty, 
 
 The wit and wisdom of their king. 
 
94 THE CONQUEROR WORM. 
 
 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, 
 IF 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 
 
THE CONQUEROR WORM. 95 
 
 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. 
 
 .Jut 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 imbrued. 
 
 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. 
 
96 TO ONE IN PARADISE. 
 
 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 CITY IN THE SEA. 97 
 
 TO F S S. O D. 
 
 THOU 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. 
 
 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 eterna/ 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; 
 
THE CITY IN THE SEA. 
 
 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 wreathed 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 scenes less hideously serene. 
 
SILENCE. 99 
 
 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. 
 
 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 ! 
 
100 THE SLEEPER. 
 
 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 fearfully 
 
THE SLEE&Efc *!*> >/ , 
 
 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, 
 
PAL&EY OF UNREST. 
 
 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. 
 
 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 ! 
 
A DREAM WITHIN A DREAM. 103 
 
 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. 
 
 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 ! 
 Oh, God ! can I not grasp 
 Them with a tighter clasp? 
 Oh, God ! can I not save 
 One from the pitiless wave ? 
 Is all that we see or seem 
 But a dream within a dream? 
 
104 DREAM-LAND. 
 
 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, into 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 dread, 
 Their sad waters, sad and chilly 
 With the snows of the lolling lily, 
 
DREAM-LAND. 105 
 
 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. 
 
106 EULALIE. 
 
 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 entombed hopes ! 
 How many visions of a maiden that is 
 
 No more no more upon thy verdant slopes ! 
 No morel Alas, that magical sad sound 
 
 Transforming all! Thy charms shall please no 
 
 more, 
 Thy memory no more ! Accursed ground 
 
 Henceforth I hold thy flower-enamelled shore, 
 Oh, hyacinthine isle ! Oh, 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. 
 
ELDORADO. 107 
 
 Ah, less less bright 
 The stars of the 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^ 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, 
 Astarte within the sky, 
 While ever to her dear Eulalie upturns her matron 
 
 eye, 
 
 While ever to her young Eulalie upturns her violet 
 eye. 
 
 ELDORADO. 
 
 GAYLY bedight, 
 
 A gallant knight, 
 In sunshine and in shadow, 
 
 Had journeyed long, 
 
 Singing a song, 
 In search of Eldorado. 
 
ISKAFEL. 
 
 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 !" 
 
 ISRAFEL* 
 
 IN Heaven a spirit doth dwell, 
 "Whose heartstrings 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. 
 
 1 And the angel Israfel, whose heartstrings are a lute, and who has 
 the sweetest voice of all God s creatures. KOKAN. 
 
ISRA PEL. 109 
 
 Tottering above, 
 
 In her highest noon, 
 
 The enamoured moon 
 Blushes with love, 
 
 While, to listen, the red leven 
 
 (With the rapid Pleiades, 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 
 
HO FOR ANNIE, 
 
 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 biiss 
 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. 
 
FOR ANNIE. 
 
 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 napthaline river 
 
 Of Passion accurst : 
 I have drank of a water 
 
 That quenches all thirst : 
 
 Of a water that flows, 
 
 With a lullaby sound, 
 From a spring but a very few 
 
112 FOR ANNIE. 
 
 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 
 
FOR ANNIE. 
 
 And the beauty of Annie, 
 Drowned in a bath 
 
 Of the tresses of Annie. 
 
 She tenderly kissed me, 
 
 She fondly caressed, 
 And then 1 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 9 
 
 Thinking me dead. 
 
 But my heart it is brighter 
 
 Than all of the many 
 Stars in the sky, 
 
 For it sparkles with Annie, 
 
114 BRIDAL BALLAD. 
 
 It glows with the light 
 
 Of the love of my Annie, 
 
 With the thought of the light 
 Of the eyes of my Annie. 
 
 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 my 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. 
 
 BRIDAL BALLAD. 
 
 THE ring/is on my hand, 
 
 And the wreatry is on my brow ; 
 
 Satins and jewelsf grand 
 
 Are all at my command, 
 And I am happy now. 
 
 N 
 
BRIDAL BALLAD. 
 
 And my lord he loves me well ; 
 
 But, when first he breathed his vow, 
 I felt my bosom swell, 
 For the words j;ang 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 churchyard bore me, 
 And I sighed to him before me, 
 Thinking him dead D Elormie, 
 " Oh, I am jiappy now ! " 
 
 And thus the words were spoken, 
 And this the plighted vow, 
 
 And, though my faith be broken, 
 
 And, though my heart he broken, 
 
 Behold the golden token 
 That p roues me happy now! 
 
 Would to 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 Jbe happy now. 
 
Il6 SCENES FROM " POLITIAN? 
 
 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 but a passer-by. 
 
 SCENES FROM " POLITIAN? 
 
 AN UNPUBLISHED DRAMA. 
 
 I. 
 
 ROME. A Hall in a Palace. Alessandra and Castiglione 
 
 Alessandra. Thou art sad, Castiglione. 
 
 Castiglione. Sad ! not I. 
 Oh, Pm the happiest, happiest man in Rome! 
 A few days more, thou knowest, my Alessandra, 
 Will make thee mine. Oh, I am very happy! 
 
 Aless. Methinks thou hast a singular way of 
 
 showing 
 
 Thy happiness ! What ails thee, cousin of mine? 
 Why didst thou sigh so deeply? 
 
 Cas. Did I sigh? 
 
SCENES FROM " POLITIAN? 117 
 
 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. ) 
 
 Aless. Thou didst. Thou art not well. Thou 
 
 hast indulged 
 
 Too much of late, and I am vexed to see it. 
 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. 
 
 Cas. (musing). Nothing, fair cousin, nothing, 
 
 even deep sorrow, 
 Wears it away like evil hours and wine. 
 I will amend. 
 
 Aless. Do it ! I would have thee drop 
 Thy riotous company, too. Fellows low born 
 111 suit the like with old Di Broglio s heir 
 And Alessandra s husband. 
 
 Cas. I will drop them. 
 
 Aless. 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. 
 
 Cas. I ll see to it. 
 
 Aless. Then see to it ! Pay more attention, sir, 
 To a becoming carriage. Much thou wantest 
 In dignity. 
 
 Cas. Much, much : oh, much I want 
 In proper dignity. 
 
 Aless. (haughtily}. Thou mockest me, sir! 
 
 Cas. (abstractedly). Sweet, gentle Lalage ! 
 
Ii8 SCENES FROM " POLITIAN." 
 
 Aless. 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? 
 
 Cas. (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.) 
 P the pouts? Kiss her, Castiglione ! Kiss her, 
 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. 
 
 Aless. What ! Politian 
 Of Britain, Earl of Leicester? 
 
 Di Brog. The same, my love. 
 
 We ll have him at the wedding. A man quite young 
 In years, but gray in fame. I have not seen him, 
 But Rumor 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. 
 
 Aless. I have heard much of this Politian. 
 Gay, volatile, and giddy, is he not? 
 And little given to thinking. 
 
 Di Brog. Far from it, love. 
 No branch, they say, of all philosophy 
 So deep abstruse he has not mastered it. 
 Learned as few are learned. 
 
SCENES FROM " POLITIAN." 119 
 
 Aless. Tis very strange ! 
 I have known men who 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. 
 
 Cas. Ridiculous ! Now / have seen Politian, 
 And know him well. Nor learned nor mirthful he : 
 He is a dreamer, and a man shut out 
 From common passions. 
 
 Di Brog. 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? 
 
 II. 
 
 ROME. A Lady s apartment, with a window open and look 
 ing 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? 
 Jacinta {pertly). Yes, ma am; I m here. 
 Lai. 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. 
 Jac. (aside}. Tis time. 
 
 (jfacinta seats herself in a sidelong manner upon 
 the chair, resting her elbows upon the back, and 
 regarding her mistress with a contemptuous 
 look. Lalage continues to read.} 
 Lai. " It in another climate, so he said, 
 Bore a bright golden flower, but not i this soil ! " 
 
120 SCENES FROM " POLITIAN." 
 
 (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 ! 
 Oh, happy land ! (pauses.} She died ! the maiden 
 
 died! 
 
 Oh, still more happy maiden, who couldst die 
 Jacinta ! 
 
 (Jacinta returns no answer, and Lalage pres 
 ently 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 
 To 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 ! 
 
 Jac. (pettishly}. Madam, what is it? 
 
 Lai. Wilt thou, my good Jacinta, be so kind 
 As go down in the library and bring me 
 The Holy Evangelists? 
 
SCENES FROM " POLITIAN" 12 1 
 
 Jac. Pshaw ! (Exit.) 
 
 Lai. 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.) 
 
 Jac. There, ma am, s the book! (Aside.) In 
 deed, she^ very troublesome. 
 
 Lai. (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.) 
 
 Jac. (aside) . I can t believe 
 
 She has any more jewels ! No, no ! She gave me 
 all! 
 
 Lai. What didst thou say, Jacinta? Now I be 
 think 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 further aid 
 Thou needest, Jacinta? 
 
 Jac. (aside). Is there no further aid ! 
 That s meant for me. I m sure, madam, you need 
 
 not 
 Be always throwing those jewels in my teeth. 
 
 Lai. Jewels, Jacinta ! Now, indeed, Jacinta, 
 I thought not of the jewels. 
 
 Jac. Oh, perhaps not! 
 but then I might have sworn it. After all, 
 There s Ugo says the ring is only paste, 
 
122 SCENES FROM " POLITIAN." 
 
 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.} 
 Lai. 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 me. 
 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, 
 Inurned and intombed ! 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! 
 
SCENES FROM "POL1TIAN." 123 
 
 Lai. (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 
 With horror and awe ! 
 
 Monk. Think of thy precious soul ! 
 
 Lai. 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 wast thou saidst of prayer 
 And penitence ? Didst tLou not speak of faith, 
 And vows before the throne? 
 
 Monk. I did. 
 
 Lai. Tis well. 
 
 There is a vow were fitting should be made, 
 A sacred vow, imperative and urgent, 
 A solemn vow ! 
 
 Monk. Daughter, this zeal is well ! 
 
 Lai. 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, 
 
124 SCENES FROM "POLITIAN." 
 
 Thy raiment and thy ebony cross affright me ! 
 Stand back ! I have a crucifix myself! 
 / 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 ! 
 
 Monk. Thy \vords 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 ! 
 
 Lai. Tis sworn ! 
 
 III. 
 
 An apartment in a Palace. Politian and Baldazzar. 
 
 Baldazzar. Arouse thee now, Politian ! 
 Thou must not nay indeed, indeed, thou shalt not 
 Give way unto these humors. Be thyself! 
 Shake off the idle fancies that beset thee, 
 And live, for now thou diest ! 
 
 Politian. Not so, Baldazzar! 
 Surely I live. 
 
 BaL Politian, it doth grieve me 
 To see thee thus. 
 
 Pol. Baldazzar, it doth grieve me 
 To give thee cause for grief, my honored 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, 
 
SCEA T ES FROM " POLITIAN? 125 
 
 Which with my mother s milk I did imbibe, 
 And be no more Politian, but some other. 
 Command me, sir! 
 
 Bal. To the field, then ! to the field ! 
 To the senate or the field. 
 
 Pol. 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? 
 
 Bal. I heard it not. 
 I heard not any voice except thine own, 
 And the echo of thine own. 
 
 Pol. Then I but dreamed. 
 
 Bal. 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. 
 
 Pol. It is a phantom voice ! 
 Didst thou not hear it then f 
 
 Bal. I heard it not. 
 
 Pol. Thoujieardst 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 
 
126 SCENES FROM " POLITIAN." 
 
 A Power august, benignant, and supreme 
 Shall then absolve thee of all further duties 
 Unto thy friend. 
 
 BaL Thou speakest a fearful riddle 
 I will not understand. 
 
 Pol. Yet now as Fate 
 
 Approaches, and the Hours are breathing low, 
 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 nearest not now, Baldazzar ! 
 
 BaL Indeed, I hear not. 
 
 Pol. 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 
 Had I but heard it, with its thrilling tones, 
 In earlier days? 
 
 Bal. I myself hear it now. 
 Be still ! The voice, if I mistake not greatly, 
 Proceeds from yonder lattice, which you may see 
 
SCENES FROM " POLITIA N." 12J 
 
 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 spake 
 As the betrothed of Castiglione, 
 His son and heir. 
 Pol. Be still ! It comes again ! 
 
 Voice " And is thy heart so strong 
 (very faintly) . 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 ! " 
 
 Bal. The song is English, and I oft have heard it 
 In merry England, never so plaintively : 
 Hist ! hist ! it conies again ! 
 Voice "Is it so strong 
 (niore loudly) . 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 ! " 
 Bal. Tis hushed, and all is still ! 
 Pol. All is not still. 
 Bal. Let us go down. 
 Pol. Go down, Baldazzar, go ! 
 Bal. The hour is growing late. The Duke awaits 
 
 us : 
 
 Thy presence is expected in the hall 
 Below. What ails thee, Earl Politian? 
 
128 SCENES FROM " POLITIA N." 
 
 Voice " Who hath loved thee so long, 
 (distinctly}. In wealth and woe among 
 And is thy heart so strong? 
 Say nay ! say nay ! " 
 
 Bal. Let us descend ! tis time ! Politian, give 
 These fancies to the wind. Remember, pray, 
 Your bearing lately savored much of rudeness 
 Unto the Duke. Arouse thee ! and remember ! 
 
 Pol. Remember? I do. Lead on! I do re 
 member. (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." 
 
 Bal. 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 ! 
 
 Pol. (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. 
 
 Bal. Your lordship s pleasure 
 Shall be attended to. Good-night, Politian. 
 
 Pol. Good-night, my friend, good-night. 
 
SCENES FROM "POLITIAN." 129 
 
 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 
 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, / love thee love thee love thee ; 
 Through good and ill through weal and woe I 
 
 love thee. 
 
 Not mother, with her first-born on her knee, 
 Thrills with intenser love than 1 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. 
 
 Lai. Alas, proud Earl, 
 And dost forget thyself, remembering mei 
 
130 SCEA ES FROM " POLITIA N? 
 
 How, in thy father s halls, among the maidens 
 
 Pure and reproachless of thy princely line, 
 
 Could the dishonored Lalage abide ? 
 
 Thy wife, and with a tainted memory? 
 
 My seared and blighted name, how wou-d it tally 
 
 With the ancestral honors of thy house, 
 
 And with thy glory? 
 
 Pol. Speak not to me of glory ! 
 I hate I loathe the nam ! I do abhor 
 The unsatisfactory and ideal thing. 
 Art thou not Lalag 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 1 would more glory in 
 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 unhonored and forgotten 
 Into the dust, so we descend together ? 
 Descend together, and then and then, perchanca, 
 
 Lai. Why dost thou pause, Politian? 
 
 Pol. And then, perchance, 
 Arise together, Lalage, and roam 
 The starry and quiet dwellings of the blest, 
 And still 
 
 Lai. Why dost thou pause, Politian? 
 
 Pol. And still together together 
 
 Lai. Now, Earl of Leicester, 
 
SCENES FROM "POLITIAN." 131 
 
 Thoi> lovest me ! And in my heart of hearts 
 I feel thou lovest me truly. 
 
 Pol. Oh, Lalage ! (Throwing himself upon his 
 knee.} And lovest thou me? 
 
 LaL Hist ! hush ! Within the gloom 
 Of yonder trees methought a figure passed, 
 A spectral figure, solemn, and slow, and noiseless, 
 Like the grim shadow Conscience, solemn and noise 
 less. (Walks across and returns.) 
 I was mistaken : twas but a giant bough 
 Stirred by the autumn wind. Politian ! 
 
 Pol. My Lalage my love ! why art thou moved? 
 Why dost thou turn so pale ? Not Conscience self, 
 Far less a shadow, which thou ikenest to it, 
 Should shake the firm spirit thus. But the night 
 
 wind 
 
 Is chilly, and these melancholy boughs 
 Throw over all things a gloom. 
 
 Lai. 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 untramelled flow, which air to breathe 
 Is Happiness now, and will be Freedom hereafter, 
 In days that are to come? 
 
 PoL Oh, wilt thou wilt thou 
 
132 SCENES FROM " POLITIA N. n 
 
 Fly to that Paradise ? My Lalage, wilt thou 
 
 Fly thither with me ? Ther? 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 
 
 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? 
 
 Lai. A deed is to be done : 
 Castiglione lives ! 
 
 Pol. And he shall die ! (Exit. ) 
 
 Lai. (after a paitse) . 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 ! Oh, speak to me, 
 And let me hear thy voice ! one word one word 
 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! 
 
 Oh, 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 ! 
 
SCENES FROM POLITIAN." 133 
 
 Gone, gone ! Where am I ? Tis well ! tis very 
 
 well ! 
 
 So that the blade be keen the blow be sure! 
 Tis well ! His very well ! Alas ! alas ! 
 
 V. 
 
 The suburbs. Politian alone. 
 
 Politian. This weakness grows upon me. I am 
 
 faint. 
 
 And much I fear me ill. It will not do 
 To die ere I have lived ! Stay stay thy hand, 
 Oh, Azrael, yet a while ! Prince of the Powers 
 Of Darkness and the Tomb, oh pity me ! 
 Oh, 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 
 
 feud 
 
 Between the Earl Politian and himself, 
 He doth decline your cartel. 
 
 Pol. What didst thou say? 
 
 What answer was it you brought me, good Baldaz 
 zar? 
 
 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? 
 
 Bal. That he, Castiglione, not being aware 
 Of any feud existing, or any cause 
 
134 SCENES FROM "POLITIAN." 
 
 Of quarrel between your lordship and himself, 
 Cannot accept the challenge. 
 
 Pol. 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 f 
 
 BaL No more, my lord, than I have told you, 
 
 sir. 
 
 The Count Castiglione will not fight, 
 Having no cause for quarrel. 
 
 Pol. Now this is true : 
 
 All very true. Thou art my friend, Baldazzar, 
 And I have not forgotten it. ThouPt 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 prythee, say 
 Unto the Count. It is exceeding just 
 He should have cause for quarrel. 
 
 BaL My lord ! My friend ! 
 
 Pol. (aside). Tis he! He comes himself! 
 
 (Aloud). Thou reasonest well. 
 
 I know what thou wouldst say, not send the mes 
 sage. 
 
 Well, I will think of it ; I will not send it ! 
 Now, prithee, leave me. Hither doth come a person 
 With whom affairs of a most private nature 
 I would adjust. 
 
 Bal. I go. To-morrow we meet, 
 Do we not, at the Vatican? 
 
 Pol. At the Vatican. (Exit Bal}. 
 
SCENES FROM " POLITIAN. 135 
 
 (Enter Castiglione .) 
 
 Castiglione. The Earl of Leicester here ? 
 
 Pol. I am the Earl of Leicester, and thou seest, 
 Dost thou not, that I am here. 
 
 Cas. 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, 
 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. 
 
 Pol. Draw, villain, and prate no more ! 
 
 Cas. Ha ! draw ! and villain ! 
 Have at thee, then, at once, proud Earl ! (Draws. 
 
 Pol. (drawing). Thus to the expiatory tomb, 
 Untimely sepulchre, I do devote thee, 
 In the name of Lalage ! 
 
 Cas. (letting fall his sword, and recoiling to the ex 
 tremity of the stage.) 
 Of Lalage ! 
 
 Hold off thy sacred hand ! Avaunt, I say ! 
 A vaunt ! I will not fight thee! Indeed, I dare not. 
 
 Pol. Thou wilt not fight with me, didst say, Sir 
 
 Count? 
 
 Shall I be bafHed thus? Now, this is well ! 
 Didst say thou darest not ? Ha ! 
 
 Cas. I dare not ! dare not ! 
 Hold off thy hand ! With that beloved name 
 
136 SCENES FROM " POLITIAN? 
 
 So fresh upon thy lips I will not fight thee ! 
 I cannot ! dare not ! 
 
 Pol. Now, by my halidom, 
 I do believe thee ! Coward, I do believe thee ! 
 
 Cas. Ha ! coward ! This may not be ! 
 
 (Clutches his sword, and staggers toward Politian, 
 but his purpose is changed before reaching him, 
 and he falls upon his knee at the feet of the 
 Earl.) 
 
 Alas ! alas ! my lord, it is it is most true ! 
 In such a cause I am the veriest coward. Oh, pity me ! 
 
 Pol. (greatly softened}. Alas! I do! Indeed, I 
 pity thee ! 
 
 Cas. And Lalage * 
 
 Pol. Scoundrel ! Arise, and die ! 
 
 Cas. It needeth not be thus thus oh, 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 hinderance to thy weapon ! 
 Strike home ! I will not fight thee ! 
 
 Pol. 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 Til follow thee 
 Even unto death. Before those whom thou lovest 
 
SCENES FROM " POLITIAN." 137 
 
 Before all Rome Til taunt thee, villain ! I ll taunt 
 
 thee, 
 Dost hear? with cowardice ! Thou wilt not fight 
 
 me? 
 Thou liest ! Thou shall ! (Exit.) 
 
 Cas. Now, this indeed is just ! 
 Most righteous, and most just, avenging Heaven. 
 
138 SONNET. TO SCIENCE. 
 
 POEMS WRITTEN IN YOUTH. 1 
 
 SONNET. TO SCIENCE. 
 
 SCIENCE ! 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 jeweled 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? 
 
 1 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 compo 
 sitions 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. 
 
AL AAKAAF. 139 
 
 AL AARAAF1 
 
 PART I. 
 
 OH, nothing earthly save the ray 
 
 (Thrown back from flowers) of Beauty s eye, 
 
 As in those gardens where the day 
 
 Springs from the gems of Circassy 
 
 Oh, 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. 
 
 1 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. 
 
140 AL AARAAF. 
 
 Away away mid seas of rays that roll 
 
 Empyrean splendor o er the unchained soul 
 
 The soul that scarce (the billows are so dense) 
 
 Can struggle to its destinM eminence 
 
 To distant spheres, from time to time, she rode, 
 
 And late to ours, the favor d one of God, 
 
 But now the ruler of an anchor d realm, 
 
 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 1 many a startled star, 
 Like woman s hair mid pearls, until, afar, 
 It lit on hills Achaian, and there dwelt) 
 She look d 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 1 the light 
 A wreath that twined each starry form around, 
 And all the opaPd air in color bound. 
 
 All hurriedly she knelt upon a bed 
 Of flowers : of lilies such as rear d the head 
 On the fair Capo Deucato, 1 and sprang 
 So eagerly around about to hang 
 Upon the flying footsteps of deep pride 
 Of her who lov d a mortal and so died. 2 
 The Sephalica, budding with young bees, 
 Uprear d its purple stem around her knees : 
 
 1 On Santa Maura olim Deucadia. 2 Sappho. 
 
AL AARAAF. 141 
 
 And gemmy flower, of Trebizond misnamed 1 
 Inmate of highest stars, where erst it sham d 
 All other loveliness : its honied dew 
 (The fabled nectar that the heathen knew) 
 Deliriously sweet, was dropped 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 2 pondering between many a sun, 
 While pettish tears adown her petals run : 
 And that aspiring flower that sprang on Earth 
 And died, ere scarce exalted into birth, 8 
 
 1 This flower is much noticed by Lewenhoeck and Tournefort. 
 The bee, feeding upon its blossom, becomes intoxicated. 
 
 2 Clytia, the Chrysanthemum Peruvianum, or, to employ a better 
 known term, the Turnsol, which turns continually toward 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. 
 
 3 There is cultivated in the king s garden at Paris, a species of ser 
 pentine aloes without prickles, whose large and beautiful flower exhales 
 a strong odor of the vanilla, during the time of its expansion, which is 
 very short. It does not blow till toward the month of July You 
 then perceive it gradually open its petals, expand them, fade, and die. 
 
 ST. PlERRK. 
 
142 AL AARAAF. 
 
 Bursting its odorous heart in spirit to wing 
 Its way to Heaven, from garden of a king : 
 And Valesnerian lotus 1 thither flown 
 From struggling with the waters of the Rhone : 
 And thy most lovely purple perfume, Zante ! 2 
 Isola d oro ! Fior di Levante ! 
 And the Nelumbo bud 8 that floats forever 
 With Indian Cupid down the holy river 
 Fair flowers, and fairy ! to whose care is given 
 To bear the Goddess 1 song in odors up to Heaven : 4 
 " Spirit! 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 
 
 1 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, thua 
 preserving its head above water in the swellings of the river. 
 
 2 The hyacinth. 
 
 8 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. 
 
 4 And golden vials, full of odors, which are the prayers of the 
 saints. REV. ST. JOHN. 
 
AL AARAAF. 143 
 
 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? 
 Thro 1 the beings whom thy Nesace, 
 
 Thy messenger hath known 
 Have dreanrfd for thy Infinity 
 
 A model of their own. 1 
 Thy will is done, oh 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 
 
 1 The Humanitarians held that God was to be understood as having 
 really a human form. Vide Clarke s Sermons, vol. i. p. 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 hav 
 ing 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 for the opinion, as heretical. He lived in the begin 
 ning of the fourth century. His disciples were called Anthropo- 
 morphites. Vide Du Pin* 
 
 Among Milton s minor poems are these lines : 
 
 Dicite sacrorum praesides nemorum Deae, 
 
 Quis ille primus cujus ex imagir.e 
 
 Natura solers finxit humanum genus? 
 
 Eternus, incorruptus, aequaevus polo, 
 
 Unusque et universus exemplar Dei. 
 And afterwards : 
 
 Non cui profundum Caecitas lumen dedit 
 
 Dircasus augur vidit hunc alto sum, etc. 
 
144 AL AARAAF. 
 
 A partner of thy throne 
 By winged Fantasy, 1 
 
 My embassy is given, 
 Till secrecy shall knowledge be 
 
 In the environs of Heaven." 
 She ceased : and buried then her burning cheek 
 AbasrTd amid the lilies there, to seek 
 A shelter from the fervor of His eye ; 
 For the stars trembled at the Deity. 
 She stirrM not breath d 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. 11 
 Ours is a world of words : Quiet we call 
 " Silence, " which is the merest word of all. 
 All Nature speaks, and ev n ideal things 
 Flap shadowy sounds from visionary wings : 
 But ah ! why 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 1 in worlds which sightless 2 cycles run, 
 LinkM 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?^ 
 
 1 Seltsamen Tochter Jovis 
 Seinem Schosskinde 
 Dcr Phantasie. GOETHE. 
 8 Sightless too small to be seen. LEGGB. 
 
AL AARAAF. 145 
 
 What tho 1 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 1 the upper Heaven, 
 
 Leave tenantless thy crystal home, and fly, 
 
 With all thy train, athwart the moony sky 
 
 Apart like fireflies 1 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 evry heart a barrier and a ban 
 
 Lest the stars totter in the guilt of man ! " 
 
 Up rose the maiden in the yellow night, 
 The single-mooned eve ! on Earth we plight 
 Our faith to one love and one moon adore 
 The birthplace 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 Therasaean 2 reign. 
 
 PART II. 
 
 High on a mountain of enamel d head 
 Such as the drowsy shepherd on his bed 
 Of giant pasturage lying at his ease, 
 Raising his heavy eyelid, starts and sees 
 
 1 I have often noticed a peculiar movement of the fireflies. They 
 will collect in a body and fly off, from a common centre, into in 
 numerable radii. 
 
 2 Therasjea, or Therasea, the island mentioned by Seneca, which in 
 : moment arose from the sea to the eyes of astonished mariners. 
 
146 AL AARAAF. 
 
 With many a mutter d " hope to be forgiven" 
 
 What time the moon is quadrated in Heaven 
 
 Of rosy herd, that towering far away 
 
 Into the sunlit ether, caught the ray 
 
 Of sunken suns at eve at noon of night, 
 
 While the moon danc d with the fair stranger 
 
 light 
 
 Uprear d upon such height arose a pile 
 Of gorgeous columns on th unburthen d 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 1 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, 
 Look d out above into the purple air, 
 And rays from God shot down that meteor chain 
 And hallow d all the beauty twice again, 
 Save when, between th Empyrean and that ring, 
 Some eager spirit flapp d his dusky wing. 
 But on the pillars seraph eyes have seen 
 The dimness of this world : that grayish green 
 That Nature loves the best for Beauty s grave 
 Lurk d in each cornice, round each architrave 
 And every sculptur d cherub thereabout 
 That from his marble dwelling peered out, 
 
 1 Some star, which, from the ruin d roof 
 Of shak d Olympus, by mischance did fall. MILTON. 
 
AL AARAAF. 14? 
 
 Seem d earthly in the shadow of his niche 
 Achaian statues in a world so rich? 
 Friezes from Tadmor and Persepolis, 1 
 From Balbec, and the stilly, clear abyss 
 Of beautiful Gomorrah ! 2 Oh, the wave 
 Is now upon thee Dut too late to save ! 
 
 Sound loves to revel in a summer night : 
 Witness the murmur of the gray twilight 
 That stole upon the ear, in Eyraco, 8 
 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 ? 4 
 
 But what is this? It cometh, and it brings 
 A music with it : tis the rush of wings. 
 
 1 Voltaire, in speaking of Persepolis, says : " Je connois bien 
 1 admiration qu inspirent ces mines mais un palais erige au pied d une 
 chaine des rochers sterils peut-il etre un chef-d oeuvre des arts! " 
 
 2 " Oh the wave " Ula Deguisi is the Turkish appellation ; but on 
 its shores, it is called Bahar Loth, or Almotanah. There were un 
 doubtedly more than two cities ingulfed in the " Dead Sea." In the 
 valley of Siddam were five Adrah, Zeboin, Zoar, Sodom, and Go 
 morrah. Stephen of Byzantium mentions eight, and Strabo thirteen 
 (ingulfed) 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, etc., 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." 
 
 3 Eyraco Chaldea. 
 
 4 I have often thought I could .distinctly hear the sound of the dark 
 ness as it stole over the horizon. 
 
148 AL AARAAF. 
 
 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 paus d and panted, Zanthe ! all beneath, 
 The fairy light that kiss d her golden hair, 
 And long d to rest, yet could but sparkle there ! 
 
 Young flowers l were whispering in melody 
 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 bluebell or streamer, 
 
 Or tufted wild spray, 
 That keeps from the dreamer 
 
 The moonbeam away : 2 
 Bright beings that ponder, 
 
 With half-closing eyes, 
 On the stars which your wonder 
 
 Hath drawn from the skies, 
 
 1 Fairies use flowers for their charactery. Merry Wives of 
 Windsor. 
 
 2 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 
 
AL AARAAF. 149 
 
 Till they glance thro 1 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 
 
 Encumber d with dew 
 The breath of those kisses 
 
 That cumber them too 
 (Oh, how, without you, Love, 
 
 Could angels be blest ?) 
 Those kisses of true love 
 
 That lull d ye to rest ! 
 Up ! shake from your wing 
 
 Each hindering thing : 
 The dew of the night 
 
 It would weigh down your flight ; 
 And true love caresses 
 
 Oh, 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, 1 
 
 1 The albatross is said to sleep on the wing. 
 
150 AL AARAAF. 
 
 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 
 
 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 1 
 
 From the growing of grass 
 Are the music of things 
 
 But are modeled, 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, 
 
 1 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, spnnge-heade and origine of all musich^ is the verie pleasaunte 
 sounde which the trees of the forest do make whsn they growe." 
 
AL AARAAF. 151 
 
 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, 1 
 Arouse them, my maiden, 
 
 On moorland and lea, 
 Go, breathe on their slumber, 
 
 All softly in ear, 
 The musical number 
 
 They slumber d 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 lull d him to rest ? " 
 
 Spirits in wing, and angels to the view, 
 A thousand seraphs burst th Empyrean through, 
 Young dreams still hovering on their drowsy flight, 
 Seraphs in all but " Knowledge," the keen light 
 
 1 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 Walter 
 Scott, or rather from Claud Halcro, in whose mouth I admired its 
 effect : 
 
 " Oh, were there an island, 
 
 Though ever so wild, 
 Where woman might smile, and 
 No man be beguil d." 
 
I5 2 AL AARAAF. 
 
 That fell, refracted, through thy bounds, afar 
 
 Oh, Death ! from eye of God upon that star: 
 
 Sweet was that error sweeter still that death, 
 
 Sweet was that error ev n with us the breath 
 
 Of Science dims the mirror of our joy, 
 
 To them twere the Simoon, 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 
 
 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 ! 1 
 
 With 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. 
 
 1 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 
 
 Deodio 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 the residence after life, is final death and 
 annihilation. 
 
AL AARAAF. 153 
 
 A maiden-angel and her seraph lover 
 Oh, 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." 1 
 
 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 eyelike there, 
 And looks so sweetly down on Beauty s hair ; 
 And they, and every 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, 
 And scowls on starry worlds that down beneath it lie. 
 Here sate he with his love, his dark eye bent 
 With eagle gaze along the firmament : 
 Now turn d it upon her, but ever then 
 It trembled to the orb of EARTH again. 
 
 " lanthe, dearest, see, how dim that ray! 
 
 How lovely tis to look so far away ! 
 
 She seem d not thus upon that autumn eve 
 
 1 left her gorgeous halk, nor mourned to leave. 
 
 That eve that eve I should remember well 
 
 The sun-ray dropp d, in Lemnos, with a spell 
 
 On th Arabesque carving of a gilded hall 
 
 Wherein 1 sate, and on the draperied wall 
 
 1 There he tears of perfect moan 
 Wept for thee in Helicon. MILTON. 
 
154 AL AARAAF. 
 
 And on my eyelids oh, the heavy light! 
 
 How drowsily it weigh d them into night ! 
 
 On flowers, before, and mist, and love they ran 
 
 With Persian Saadi in his Gulistan : 
 
 But oh, 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 calPd the Parthenon. 1 
 More beauty clung around her column d wall 
 Than ev n thy glowing bosom beats withal, 2 
 And when old Time my wing did disenthrall, 
 Thence sprang I, as the eagle from his tower, 
 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 ! 
 lanthe, beauty crowded on me, then, 
 And half I wish d 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, lanthe ! when the air so soft 
 
 1 It was entire in 1687, the most elevated spot in Athens. 
 
 2 Shadowing more beauty in their airy brows 
 
 Than have the white breasts of the Queen of Love. MARLOWE. 
 
AL AARAAF. 155 
 
 Fail d, as my pennorfd spirit leapt aloft, 1 
 Perhaps my brain grew dizzy ; but the world 
 I left so late was into chaos hurl d, 
 Sprang from her station, on the winds apart, 
 And rolPd, 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, through 
 Light, brazen rays, this golden star unto ! 
 Nor long the measure of my falling hours : 
 For nearest of all stars was thine to ours, 
 Dread star ! that came, amid a night of mirth, 
 A red Daedalion 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 firefly 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 gray Time unfurl d 
 
 Never his fairy wing o er fairer 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 ! " 
 
 1 Pennon for pinion. MILTON- 
 
156 TAMERLANE. 
 
 Thus, in discourse, the lovers whiPd 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. 
 
 TO THE RIVER . 
 
 FAIR river ! in thy bright, clear flow 
 
 Of crystal, wandering water, 
 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. 
 
 TAMERLANE. 
 
 KIND solace in a dying hour ! 
 
 Such, father, is not (now) my theme: 
 I will not madly deem that power 
 
TAMERLANE. 157 
 
 Of Earth may shrive me of the sin 
 Unearthly pride hath revel d 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. 
 
 Know thou the secret of a spirit 
 
 Bo\v 1 d from its wild pride into shame. 
 
 Oh, 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 ! 
 
 Oh, 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. 
 
 I have not always been as now : 
 The fever d diadem on my brow 
 I claim d and won usurpingly. 
 Hath not the same fierce heirdom given 
 Rome to the Caesar this to me ? 
 The heritage of a kingly mind, 
 And a proud spirit which hath striven 
 Triumphantly with human kind. 
 
158 TAMERLANE. 
 
 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. 
 
 So late from Heaven that dew it fell 
 
 ( Mid dreams of an unholy night) 
 Upon me with a 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 
 
 My own voice, silly child ! was swelling 
 (Oh, how my spirit would rejoice, 
 
 And leap within me at the cry) 
 
 The battle-cry of Victory ! 
 
 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. 
 
TAMERLANE. 159 
 
 My passions, from that hapless hour, 
 
 Usurped a tyranny which men 
 Have deem d, since I have reach d to power, 
 My innate nature : be it so. 
 
 But, father, there lived one who, then, 
 Then in my boyhood when their fire 
 
 Burn d 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. 
 
 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 1 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. 
 
 Oh, she was worthy of all love ! 
 
 Love, as in infancy was mine ! 
 Twas such as angel minds above 
 
 Might envy ; her young heart the shrine 
 On which my every hope and thought 
 
 Were incense, then a goodly gift, 
 
 For they were childish and upright, 
 Pure, as her young example taught : 
 
 Why did I leave it, and, adrift, 
 Trust to the fiVe within for light? 
 
160 TAMERLANE. 
 
 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 smiTd, 
 
 And she would mark the opening skies, 
 
 I saw no Heaven but in her eyes. 
 
 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, 
 Td 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 ask d no reason why, 
 But turn d on me her quiet eye ! 
 
 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! 
 Two separate yet most intimate things. 
 
TAMERLANE. lOi 
 
 I was ambitious. Have you known 
 
 The passion, father ? You have not! 
 A cottager, I mark d a throne 
 Of half the world as all my own, 
 
 And murmurd at such lowly lot. 
 But, just like any other dream, 
 
 Upon the vapor of the dew 
 My own had past, did not the beam 
 
 Of beauty which did while it through 
 The minute the hour the day oppress 
 My mind with double loveliness. 
 
 We walk d 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 spouting with a thousand rills. 
 
 I spoke to her of power and pride, 
 
 But mystically, in 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. 
 The flush on her bright cheek, to me 
 
 Seem d to become a queenly throne 
 Too well that I should let it be 
 
 Light in the wilderness alone. 
 
 I wrapped myse/f in grandeur then, 
 And donn d a visionary crown : 
 
1 62 TAMERLANE. 
 
 Yet it was not that Fantasy 
 Had thrown her mantle over me ; 
 But that, among the rabble men, 
 
 Lion ambition is chain d 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. 
 
 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 
 Striding o er empires haughtily, 
 
 A diadem d outlaw ! 
 
 Oh, human love ! Thou spirit given, 
 On Earth, of all we hope in Heaven! 
 Which fall s t into the soul like rain 
 Upon the Siroc-wither d 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 ! 
 
TAMERLANE. 163 
 
 When Hope, the eagle that tower d, could see 
 
 No cliff beyond him in the sky, 
 His pinions were bent droopingly, 
 
 And homeward turn d his soften d eye. 
 Twas sunset : when the sun will part 
 There comes a sullenness of heart 
 To him who still would look upon 
 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. 
 
 What though the moon the white moon 
 
 Shed all the splendor 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 noonday beauty, which is all. 
 
 I reached my home my home no more ! 
 
 For all had flown who made it so. 
 I pass d from out its mossy door, 
 
1 64 TAMERLANE. 
 
 And, though my tread was soft and low s 
 A voice came from the threshold stone 
 Of one whom I had earlier known : 
 Oh, I defy thee, Hell, to show 
 On beds of fire that burn below, 
 A humbler heart a deeper woe, 
 
 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 through 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 trellis d rays from Heaven, 
 No more 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? 
 
FAIRY-LAND. 165 
 
 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, 
 
 Forever 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 
 
 Comes down still down and down 
 
 With its centre on the crown 
 
 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 Juries them up quite 
 
 In a labyrinth of light ; 
 
 And then, how deep! oh, deep 
 
 Is the passion of their sleep. 
 
1 66 TO L. M. S . 
 
 In the morning they arise, 
 
 And their moony covering 
 
 Is soaring in the skies, 
 
 With the tempests as they toss, 
 
 Like almost anything 
 
 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 
 
 Of Earth who seek the skies, 
 
 And so come down again 
 
 (Never-contented things !) 
 
 Have brought a specimen 
 
 Upon their quivering wings. 
 
 TO L. M, S . 
 
 OF 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 unhallow d bed 
 
 Lying down to die, have suddenly arisen 
 
 At thy soft-murmured words, " Let there be light ! " 
 
ROMANCE. 167 
 
 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. 
 
 ROMANCE. 
 
 ROMANCE, 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. 
 
 And when an hour with calmer wings 
 
 Its down upon my spirit flings 
 That little time with lyre and rhyme 
 
1 68 SPIRITS OF THE DEAD 
 
 To while away forbidden things ! 
 
 My heart would feel to be a crime, 
 Unless it trembled with the strings. 
 
 SPIRITS OF THE DEAD. 
 
 THY soul shall find itself alone 
 
 Mid dark thoughts of the gray tombstone : 
 
 Not one, of all the crowd, to pry 
 
 Into thine hour of secrecy. 
 
 Be silent in that solitude 
 
 Which is not loneliness, for then 
 The spirits of the dead who stood 
 
 In life before thee are again 
 In death around thee, and their will 
 Shall overshadow thee : be still. 
 
 The night, though clear, shall frown, 
 
 And the stars shall not look down 
 
 From their high thrones in Heaven, 
 
 With light like Hope to mortals given : 
 
 But their red orbs, without beam, 
 
 To thy weariness shall seem 
 
 As a burning and a fever 
 
 Which would cling to thee forever. 
 
 Now are thoughts thou shalt not banish, 
 
 Now are visions ne er to vanish : 
 
 From thy spirit shall they pass 
 
 No more like dewdrops from the grass. 
 
A DREAM. 169 
 
 The breeze the breath of God is still ; 
 
 And the mist upon the hill 
 
 Shadowy shadowy yet unbroken, 
 
 Is a symbol and a token, 
 
 How it hangs upon the trees, 
 
 A mystery of mysteries ! 
 
 TO 
 
 THE bowers whereat, in dreams, I see 
 
 The wantonest singing birds, 
 Are lips and all thy melody 
 
 Of lip-begotten words. 
 
 Thine eyes, in Heaven of heart enshrin d, 
 
 Then desolately fall, 
 Oh, 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. 
 
 A DREAM. 
 
 IN visions of the dark night 
 
 I have dreanVd of joy departed ; 
 
 But a waking dream of life and light 
 Hath left me broken-hearted. 
 
170 THE LAKE. TO 
 
 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 tho that light, thro 1 storm and niglrt 
 
 So trembled from afar, 
 What could there be more purely bright 
 
 In Truth s day star? 
 
 THE LAKE. TO 
 
 IN spring of youth it was my lot 
 
 To haunt of the wide world a spot 
 
 The which I could not love the less, 
 
 So lovely was the loveliness 
 
 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, 
 
SONG. 
 
 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 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. 
 
 SONG. 
 
 I SAW thee on the 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. 
 
*7 2 ALONE. 
 
 TO HELEN. 
 
 HELEN, thy beauty is to me 
 
 Like those Nicean barks of yore, 
 
 That gently, o er a perfumed sea, 
 The weary, wayworn 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 ! 
 
 ALONE. 
 
 FROM childhood s hour I have not been 
 As others were, I have not seen 
 As others saw, I could not bring 
 My passions from a common spring. 
 From the same source I have not taken 
 
ALONE. 173 
 
 My sorrow ; I could not awaken 
 My heart to joy at the same tone ; 
 And all I loved, /loved alone. 
 Then in my childhood in the dawn 
 Of a most stormy life was drawn 
 From every depth of good and ill 
 The mystery which binds me still : 
 From the torrent, or the fountain, 
 From the red cliff of the mountain, 
 From the sun that round me rolled 
 In its autumn tint of gold, 
 From the lightning in the sky 
 As it passM me flying by, 
 From the thunder and the storm, 
 And the cloud that took the form 
 (When the rest of Heaven was blue) 
 Of a demon in my view. 
 
THE PHILOSOPHY OF COMPOSITION. 
 
 CHARLES DICKENS, in a note now lying before me, 
 alluding to an examination I once made of the mechan 
 ism of " Barnaby Rudge," says: "By the way, are 
 you aware that Godwin wrote his Caleb Williams 
 backwards? He first involved his hero in a web of 
 difficulties, forming the second volume, and then, for 
 the first, cast about him for some mode of accounting 
 for what had been done." 
 
 I cannot think this the precise mode of procedure 
 on the part of Godwin, and indeed what he ac 
 knowledges, is not altogether in accordance with Mr. 
 Dickens s idea, but the author of " Caleb Williams " 
 was too good an artist not to perceive the advantage 
 derivable from at least a somewhat similar process. 
 Nothing is more clear than that every plot, worth the 
 name, must be elaborated to its denouement before 
 anything be attempted with the pen. It is only with 
 the denouement constantly in view that we can give a 
 plot its indispensable air of consequence, or causation, 
 by making the incidents, and especially the tone at all 
 points, tend to the development of the intention. 
 
 There is a radical error, I think, in the usual mode 
 of constructing a story. Either history affords a thesis, 
 
 175 
 
176 THE PHILOSOPHY OF COMPOSITION. 
 
 or one is suggested by an incident of the day, or. 
 at best, the author sets himself to work in the com 
 bination of striking events to form merely the basi" 
 of his narrative, designing, generally, to fill in witft 
 description, dialogue, or autorial comment, whatever 
 crevices of fact, or action, may, from page to page, 
 render themselves apparent. 
 
 I prefer commencing with the consideration of an 
 effect. Keeping originality always in view, for he 
 is false to himself who ventures to dispense with so 
 obvious and so easily attainable a source of interest, 
 
 I say to myself, in the first place, "Of the innu 
 merable effects, or impressions, of which the heart, 
 the intellect, or (more generally) the soul is suscep" 
 tible, what one shall I, ,on the present occasion., 
 select?" Having chosen a novel, first, and secondly 
 a vivid effect, I consider whether it can be best 
 wrought by incident or tone, whether by ordinary 
 incidents and peculiar tone, or the converse, or by 
 peculiarity both of incident and tone, afterward 
 looking about me (or rather within) for such combi 
 nations of event, or tone, as shall best aid me in the 
 construction of the effect. 
 
 I have often thought how interesting a magazine 
 paper might be written by any author who would 
 
 that is to say, who could detail, step by step, 
 the processes by which any one of his compositions 
 attained its ultimate point of completion. Why such 
 a paper has never been given to the world, I am 
 much at a loss to say; but, perhaps, the autorial 
 vanity has had more to do with the omission than 
 any one other cause. Most writers poets in espe- 
 
THE PHILOSOPHY OF COMPOSITION. 177 
 
 cial prefer having it understood that they compose 
 by a species of fine frenzy an ecstatic intuition 
 and would positively shudder at letting the public take 
 a peep behind the scenes, at the elaborate and vacil 
 lating crudities of thought at the true purposes 
 seized only at the last moment at the innumerable 
 glimpses of idea that arrived not at the maturity of 
 full view at the fully matured fancies discarded in 
 despair as unmanageable at the cautious selections 
 and rejections at the painful erasures and interpo 
 lations in a word, at the wheels and pinions the 
 tackle for scene-shifting the step-ladders and demon- 
 traps the cock s feathers, the red paint and the black 
 patches, which, in ninety-nine cases out of the hun 
 dred, constitute the properties of the literary histrio. 
 
 I am aware, on the other hand, that the case is by 
 no means common, in which an author is at all in 
 condition to retrace the steps by which his conclu 
 sions have been attained. In general, suggestions, 
 having arisen pell-mell, are pursued and forgotten in 
 a similar manner. 
 
 For my own part, I have neither sympathy with 
 the repugnance alluded to, nor at any time the least 
 difficulty in recalling to mind the progressive steps 
 of any of my compositions ; and, since the interest 
 of an analysis, or reconstruction, such as I have con 
 sidered a desideratum, is quite independent of any 
 real or fancied interest in the thing analyzed, it will 
 not be regarded as a breach of decorum on my part 
 to show the modus operandi by which some of my 
 own works were put together. I select " The Raven, 11 
 as most generally known. It is my design to render 
 
178 THE PHILOSOPHY OF COMPOSITION. 
 
 it manifest that no one point in its composition is 
 referrible either to accident or intuition, that the 
 work proceeded, step by step, to its completion, with 
 the precision and rigid consequence of a mathemati 
 cal problem. 
 
 Let us dismiss, as irrelevant to the poem, per se, 
 ;he circumstance or say the necessity which, in 
 the first place, gave rise to the intention of composing 
 a poem that should suit at once the popular and the 
 critical taste. 
 
 We commence, then, with this intention. 
 
 The initial consideration was that of extent. If 
 any literary work is too long to be read at one sit 
 ting, we must be content to dispense with the im 
 mensely important effect derivable from unity of 
 repression ; for if two sittings be required, the 
 affairs of the world interfere, and everything like 
 totality is at once destroyed. But since, ceteris part- 
 bus^ no poet can afford to dispense with anything 
 that may advance his design, it but remains to be 
 seen whether there is, in extent, any advantage to 
 counterbalance the loss of unity which attends it. 
 Here I say no, at once. What we term a long poem 
 is, in fact, merely a succession of brief ones, that 
 is to say, of brief poetical effects. It is needless to 
 demonstrate that a poem is such, only inasmuch as 
 it intensely excites, by elevating, the soul ; and all 
 intense excitements are, through a psychal necessity, 
 brief. For this reason, at least one half of the "Para 
 dise Lost" is essentially prose, a succession of 
 poetical excitements interspersed, inevitably, with 
 corresponding depressions, the whole being de- 
 
THE PHILOSOPHY OF COMPOSITION. 179 
 
 prived, through the extremeness of its length, of the 
 vastly important artistic element, totality, or unity, 
 of effect. 
 
 It appears evident, then, that there is a distinct 
 limit, as regards length, to all works of literary art, 
 the limit of a single sitting, and that, although 
 in certain classes of prose composition, such as 
 " Robinson Crusoe," (demanding no unity,) this limit 
 may be advantageously overpassed, it can never 
 properly be overpassed in a poem. Within this 
 limit, the extent of a poem may be made to bear 
 mathematical relation to its merit, in other words, 
 to the excitement or elevation, again, in other 
 words, to the degree of the true poetical effect which 
 it is capable of inducing; for it is clear that the 
 brevity must be in direct ratio of the intensity of the 
 intended effect: this, with one proviso that a cer 
 tain degree of duration is absolutely requisite for the 
 production of any effect at all. 
 
 Holding in view these considerations, as well as 
 that degree of excitement which I deemed not above 
 the popular, while not below the critical, taste, I 
 reached at once what I conceived the proper length 
 for my intended poem, a length of about one 
 hundred lines. It is, in fact, a hundred and eight. 
 
 My next thought concerned the choice of an 
 impression, or effect, to be conveyed : and here I 
 may as well observe that, throughout the construction, 
 I kept steadily in view the design of rendering the 
 work universally appreciable. I should be carried 
 too far out of my immediate topic were I to demon 
 strate a point upon which I have repeatedly insisted, 
 
I So THE PHILOSOPHY OF COMPOSITION. 
 
 and which, with the poetical, stands not in the slight 
 est need of demonstration, the point, I mean, that 
 Beauty is the sole legitimate province of the poem. 
 A few words, however, in elucidation of my real 
 meaning, which some of my friends have evinced a 
 disposition to misrepresent. That pleasure which 
 is at once the most intense, the most elevating, and 
 the most pure, is, I believe, found in the contempla 
 tion of the beautiful. When, indeed, men speak of 
 Beauty, they mean, precisely, not a quality, as is 
 supposed, but an effect, they refer, in short, just 
 to that intense and pure elevation of soul not 
 of intellect, or of heart upon which I have com 
 mented, and which is experienced in consequence of 
 contemp/ating "the beautiful." Now I designate 
 Beauty as the province of the poem, merely because 
 it is an obvious rule of Art that effects should be 
 made to spring from direct causes, that objects 
 should be attained through means best adapted for 
 their attainment, no one as yet having been weak 
 enough to deny that the peculiar elevation alluded 
 to is most readily attained in the poem. Now the 
 object, Truth, or the satisfaction of the intellect, and 
 the object Passion, or the excitement of the heart, 
 are, although attainable, to a certain extent, in poetry, 
 far more readily attainable in prose. Truth, in fact, 
 demands a precision, and Passion a homeliness (the 
 truly passionate will comprehend me) which are 
 absolutely antagonistic to that Beauty which, I main 
 tain, is the excitement, or pleasurable elevation, of 
 the soul. It by no means follows from anything here 
 said, that passion, or even truth, may not be intro- 
 
THE PHILOSOPHY OP COMPOSITION. 181 
 
 duced, and even profitably introduced, into a poem, 
 for they may serve in elucidation, or aid the gen 
 eral effect, as do discords in music, by contrast, 
 but the true artist will always contrive, first, to tone 
 them into proper subservience to the predominant 
 aim, and, secondly, to enveil them, as far as possible, 
 in that Beauty which is the atmosphere and the 
 essence of the poem. 
 
 Regarding, then, Beauty as my province, my next 
 question referred to the tone of its highest manifes 
 tation, and all experience has shown that this tone 
 is one of sadness. Beauty of whatever kind, in its 
 supreme development, invariably excites the sensitive 
 soul to tears. Melancholy is thus the most legitimate 
 of all the poetical tones. 
 
 The length, the province, and the tone, being thus 
 determined, I betook myself to ordinary induction, 
 with the view of obtaining some artistic piquancy 
 which might serve me as a keynote in the construc 
 tion of the poem, some pivot upon which the 
 whole structure might turn. In carefully thinking 
 over all the usual artistic effects, or more properly 
 points, in the theatrical sense, I did not fail to per 
 ceive immediately that no one had been so universally 
 employed as that of the refrain. The universality 
 of its employment sufficed to assure me of its intrin 
 sic value, and spared me the necessity of submitting 
 it to analysis. I considered it, however, with regard 
 to its susceptibility of improvement, and soon saw it 
 to be in a primitive condition. As commonly used, 
 the refrain, or burden, not only is limited to lyric 
 verse, but depends for its impression upon the force 
 
1 82 THE PHILOSOPHY OF COMPOSITION. 
 
 of monotone both in sound and thought. The 
 pleasure is deduced solely from the sense of identity 
 of repetition. I resolved to diversify, and so 
 heighten, the effect, by adhering, in general, to the 
 monotone of sound, while I continually varied that 
 of thought : that is to say, I determined to produce 
 continuously novel effects, by the variation of the 
 application of the refrain, the refrain itself 
 remaining, for the most part, unvaried. 
 
 These points being settled, I next bethought me 
 of the nature of my refrain. Since its application 
 was to be repeatedly varied, it was clear that the 
 refrain itself must be brief, for there would have 
 been an insurmountable difficulty in frequent varia 
 tions of application in any sentence of length. In 
 proportion to the brevity of the sentence, would, of 
 course, be the facility of the variation. This led me 
 at once to a single word as the best refrain. 
 
 The question now arose as to the character of the 
 word. Having made up my mind to a refrain, the 
 division of the poem into stanzas was, of course, a 
 corollary, the refrain forming the close to each 
 stanza. That such a close, to have force, must be 
 sonorous and susceptible of protracted emphasis, 
 admitted no doubt : and these considerations inev 
 itably led me to the long o as the most sonorous 
 vowel, in connection with r as the most producible 
 consonant. 
 
 The sound of the refrain being thus determined* 
 it became necessary to select a word embodying this 
 sound, and at the same time in the fullest possible 
 keeping with that melancholy which I had predeter- 
 
THE PHILOSOPHY OF COMPOSITION. 183 
 
 mined as the tone of the poem. In such a search it 
 would have been absolutely impossible to overlook 
 the word " Nevermore." In fact, it was the very first 
 which presented itself. 
 
 The next desideratum was a pretext for the con 
 tinuous use of the one word " Nevermore." In 
 observing the difficulty which I at once found in 
 inventing a sufficiently plausible reason for its contin 
 uous repetition, I did not fail to perceive that this 
 difficulty arose solely from the pre-assumption that 
 the word was to be so continuously or monotonously 
 spoken by a human being, I did not fail to per 
 ceive, in short, that the difficulty lay in the reconcil 
 iation of this monotony with the exercise of reason 
 on the part of the creature repeating the word. 
 Here, then, immediately arose the idea of a non- 
 reasoning creature capable of speech ; and, very 
 naturally, a parrot, in the first instance, suggested 
 itself, but was superseded forthwith by a Raven, as 
 equally capable of speech, and infinitely more in 
 keeping with the intended tone. 
 
 I had now gone so far as the conception of a 
 Raven the bird of ill omen monotonously repeat 
 ing the one word, " Nevermore," at the conclusion 
 of each stanza, in a poem of melancholy tone, and 
 in length about one hundred lines. Now, never 
 losing sight of the object supremeness, or perfection, 
 at all points, I asked myself, "Of all melancholy 
 topics, what, according to the universal understand 
 ing of mankind, is the most melancholy? 1 Death 
 was the obvious reply. "And when," I said, "is 
 this most melancholy of topics most poetical ? " 
 
1 84 THE PHILOSOPHY OF COMPOSITION. 
 
 From what I have already explained at some length, 
 the answer here also is obvious, " When it most 
 closely allies itself to Beauty : the death, then, of a 
 beautiful woman is, unquestionably, the most poetical 
 topic in the world ; and equally is it beyond doubt 
 that the lips best suited for such topics are those of 
 a bereaved lover." 
 
 I had now to combine the two ideas of a lover 
 lamenting his deceased mistress and a Raven con 
 tinuously repeating the word " Nevermore. 11 I had 
 to combine these, bearing in mind my design of 
 varying, at every turn, the application of the word 
 repeated ; but the only intelligible mode of such 
 combination is that of imagining the Raven employ 
 ing the word in answer to the queries of the lover. 
 And here it was that I saw at once the opportunity 
 afforded for the effect on which I had been depend 
 ing, that is to say, the effect of the variation of 
 application. I saw that I could make the first query 
 propounded by the lover the first query to which 
 the Raven should reply " Nevermore 11 that I could 
 make this first query a commonplace one the 
 second less so the third still less, and so on 
 until at length the lover, startled from his original 
 nonchalance by the melancholy character of the word 
 itself by its frequent repetition and by a con 
 sideration of the ominous reputation of the fowl that 
 uttered it is at length excited to superstition, and 
 wildly propounds queries of a far different character 
 
 queries whose solution he has passionately at heart 
 
 propounds them half in superstition and half in 
 that species of despair which delights in self-torture 
 
THE PHILOSOPHY OF COMPOSITION, 185 
 
 propounds them not altogether because he believes 
 in the prophetic or demoniac character of the bird 
 (which, reason assures him, is merely repeating a 
 lesson learned by rote), but because he experiences 
 a frenzied pleasure in so modelling his questions as to 
 receive from the expected "Nevermore" the most 
 delicious because the most intolerable of sorrow. 
 Perceiving the opportunity thus afforded me, or, 
 more strictly, thus forced upon me in the progress 
 of the construction, I first established in mind the 
 climax, or concluding query, that query in reply 
 to which this word " Nevermore " should involve the 
 utmost conceivable amount of sorrow and despair. 
 
 Here, then, the poem may be said to have its be 
 ginning at the end, where all works of art should 
 begin, for it was here, at this point of my precon- 
 siderations, that I first put pen to paper in the com 
 position of the stanza, 
 
 " Prophet ! " cried I, " thing of evil ! prophet still, 
 
 if bird or devil ! 
 By that Heaven that bends above us by that God 
 
 we both ador.; I 
 Tell this soul with sorrow laden, if, within the distant 
 
 Aiden, 
 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. 1 
 
 I composed this stanza, at this point, first, that, 
 by establishing the climax, I might the better vary 
 
1 86 THE PHILOSOPHY OF COMPOSITION. 
 
 and graduate, as regards seriousness and importance, 
 the preceding queries of the lover; and, secondly, 
 that I might definitely settle the rhythm, the metre, 
 and the length and general arrangement of the 
 stanza, as well as graduate the stanzas which were 
 to precede, so that none of them might surpass this 
 in rhythmical effect. Had I been able, in the sub 
 sequent composition, to construct more vigorous 
 stanzas, I should, without scruple, have purposely 
 enfeebled them, so as not to interfere with the cli 
 macteric effect. 
 
 And here I may as well say a few words of the 
 versification. My first object (as usual) was origi 
 nality. The extent to which this has been neglected, 
 in versification, is one of the most unaccountable 
 things in the world. Admitting that there is little 
 possibility of variety in mere rhythm, it is still clear 
 that the possible varieties of metre and stanza are 
 absolutely infinite ; and yet, for centuries, no man, 
 in verse, has ever done, or ever seemed to think of 
 doing, an original thing. The fact is, that original 
 ity (unless in minds of very unusual force) is by no 
 means a matter, as some suppose, of impulse or in 
 tuition. In general, to be found, it must be elabor 
 ately sought, and although a positive merit of the 
 highest class, demands in its attainment less of in 
 vention than negation. 
 
 Of course, I pretend to no originality in either the 
 rhythm or metre of " The Raven." The former is 
 trochaic, the latter is octameter acatalectic, alter 
 nating with heptameter catalectic repeated in the 
 refrain of the fifth verse, and terminating with 
 
THE PHILOSOPHY OF COMPOSITION. 187 
 
 tetrameter catalectic. Less pedantically, the feet 
 employed throughout (trochees) consist of a long 
 syllable followed by a short : the first line of the 
 stanza consists of eight of these feet, the second of 
 seven and a half (in effect two thirds), the third of 
 eight, the fourth of seven and a half, the fifth the 
 same, the sixth three and a half. Now, each of these 
 lines, taken individually, has been employed before, 
 and what originality "The Raven" has, is in their 
 combination into stanza ; nothing even remotely ap 
 proaching this combination has ever been attempted. 
 The effect of this originality of combination is aided 
 by other unusual, and some altogether novel effects, 
 arising from an extension of the application of the 
 principles of rhyme and alliteration. 
 
 The next point to be considered was the mode of 
 bringing together the lover and the Raven, and 
 the first branch of this consideration was the locale. 
 For this the most natural suggestion might seem to 
 be a forest, or the fields ; but it has always appeared 
 to me that a close circumscription of space is abso 
 lutely necessary to the effect of insulated incident : 
 it has the force of a frame to a picture. It has an 
 indisputable moral power in keeping concentrated the 
 attention, and, of course, must not be confounded with 
 mere unity of place. 
 
 I determined, then, to place the lover in his cham 
 ber, in a chamber rendered sacred to him by mem 
 ories of her who had frequented it. The room is 
 represented as richly furnished, this in mere pur 
 suance of the ideas I have already explained on the 
 subject of Beauty, as the sole true poetical thesis. 
 
1 88 THE PHILOSOPHY OF COMPOSITION. 
 
 The locale being thus determined, I had now to 
 introduce the bird, and the thought of introducing 
 him through the window was inevitable. The idea 
 of making the lover suppose, in the first instance, 
 that the flapping of the wings of the bird against the 
 shutter is a "tapping "at the door, originated in a 
 wish to increase, by prolonging, the reader s curi 
 osity, and in a desire to admit the incidental effect 
 arising from the lover s throwing open the door, find 
 ing all dark, and thence adopting the half-fancy that 
 it was the spirit of his mistress that knocked. 
 
 I made the night tempestuous, first, to account for 
 the Raven seeking admission ; and secondly, for the 
 effect of contrast with the (physical) serenity within 
 the chamber. 
 
 I made the bird alight on the bust of Pallas, also 
 for the effect of contrast between the marble and the 
 plumage, it being understood that the bust was 
 absolutely suggested by the bird, the bust of Pallas 
 being chosen, first, as most in keeping with the schol 
 arship of the lover ; and, secondly, for the sonorous 
 ness of the word Pallas, itself. 
 
 About the middle of the poem, also, I have availed 
 myself of the force of contrast, with the view of 
 deepening the ultimate impression. For example, an 
 air of the fantastic approaching as nearly to the 
 ludicrous as was admissible is given to the Raven s 
 entrance. He comes in " with many a flirt and flutter." 
 Not the least obeisance made he, not a moment 
 
 stopped or stayed he, 
 
 But with mien of lord or lady, perched above my 
 chamber-door. 
 
THE PHILOSOPHY OF COMPOSITION. 189 
 
 In the two stanzas which follow, the design is more 
 obviously carried out : 
 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 marvelled this ungainly fowl to hear dis 
 course 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, 
 
 With such name as " Nevermore." 
 
 The effect of the denouement being thus provided 
 for, I immediately drop the fantastic for a tone of the 
 most profound seriousness, this tone commencing 
 in the stanza directly following the one last quoted, 
 with the line, 
 
 But the Raven, sitting lonely on that placid bust, 
 spoke onlv. etc. 
 
190 THE PHILOSOPHY OF COMPOSITION. 
 
 From this epoch the lover no longer jests, no 
 longer sees anything even of the fantastic in the 
 Raven s demeanor. He speaks of him as a "grim, 
 ungainly, ghastly, gaunt, and ominous bird of yore," 
 and feels the " fiery eyes " burning into his " bosonVs 
 core. 11 This revolution of thought, or fancy, on the 
 lover s part, is intended to induce a similar one on 
 the part of the reader, to bring the mind into a 
 proper frame for the denouement, which is now 
 brought about as rapidly and as directly as possible. 
 
 With the denouement proper with the Raven s 
 reply, " Nevermore, 11 to the lover s final demand if 
 he shall meet his mistress in another world the 
 poem, in its obvious phase, that of a simple narra 
 tive, may be said to have its completion. So far, 
 everything is within the limits of the accountable, 
 of the real. A raven, having learned by rote the 
 single word " Nevermore, 11 and having escaped from 
 the custody of its owner, is driven at midnight, 
 through the violence of a storm, to seek admission 
 at a window from which a light still gleams, the 
 chamber-window of a student, occupied half in por 
 ing over a volume, half in dreaming of a beloved 
 mistress deceased. The casement being thrown 
 open at the fluttering of the bird 1 s wings, the bird 
 itself perches on the most convenient seat out of the 
 immediate reach of the student, who, amused by the 
 incident and the oddity of the visitors demeanor, 
 demands of it, in jest and without looking for a 
 reply, its name. The raven addressed, answers with 
 its customary word, "Nevermore, 11 a word which 
 finds immediate echo in the melancholy heart of the 
 
THE PHILOSOPHY OF COMPOSITION. 191 
 
 student, who, giving utterance aloud to certain 
 thoughts suggested by the occasion, is again startled 
 by the fowl s repetition of " Nevermore." The stu 
 dent now guesses the state of the case, but is im 
 pelled, as I have before explained, by the human 
 thirst for self-torture, and in part by superstition, to 
 propound such queries to the bird as will bring him, 
 the lover, the most of the luxury of sorrow, through 
 the anticipated answer, " Nevermore." With the 
 indulgence, to the extreme, of this self-torture, the 
 narration, in what I have termed its first or obvious 
 phase, has a natural termination; and so far there 
 has been no overstepping of the limits of the real. 
 
 But in subjects so handled, however skilfully, or 
 with however vivid an array of incident, there is 
 always a certain hardness of nakedness, which repels 
 the artistical eye. Two things are invariably re 
 quired : first, some amount of complexity, or, more 
 properly, adaptation ; and, secondly, some amount 
 of suggestiveness some undercurrent, however 
 indefinite, of meaning. It is this latter, in especial, 
 which imparts to a work of art so much of that 
 richness (to borrow from colloquy a forcible term) 
 which we are too fond of confounding with the ideal. 
 It is the excess of the suggested meaning it is the 
 rendering this the upper instead of the under current 
 of the theme which turns into prose (and that of 
 the very flattest kind) the so-called poetry of the 
 so-called transcendentalists. 
 
 Holding these opinions, I added the two conclud 
 ing stanzas of the poem, their suggestiveness being 
 thus made to pervade all the narrative which has 
 
192 THE PHILOSOPHY OF COMPOSITION. 
 
 preceded them. The undercurrent of meaning is 
 rendered first apparent in the lines 
 
 " Take thy beak from out my heart, and take thy 
 form from off my door ! " 
 
 Quoth the Raven, " Nevermore !" 
 
 It will be observed that the words " from out my 
 heart" involve the first metaphorical expression in 
 the poem. They, with the answer, "Nevermore," 
 dispose the mind to seek a moral in all that has 
 been previously narrated. The reader begins now 
 to regard the Raven as emblematical ; but it is not 
 until the very last line of the very last stanza that 
 the intention of making him emblematical of Mourn 
 ful and Never-ending Remembrance is permitted 
 distinctly to be Seen : 
 
 And the Raven, never flitting, still is sitting, still is 
 
 sitting, 
 On the pallid bust of Pallas just above my chamber 
 
 door; 
 And his eyes have all the seeming of a demon s that 
 
 is dreaming. 
 And the lamplight 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. 
 
THE POWER OF WORDS. 193 
 
 THE POWER OF WORDS. 
 
 Oinos, Pardon, Agathos, the weakness of a 
 spirit new-fledged with immortality! 
 
 Agathos. You have spoken nothing, my Oinos, 
 for which pardon is to be demanded. Not even here 
 is knowledge a thing of intuition. For wisdom, ask 
 of the angels freely, that it may be given. 
 
 Oinos. But in this existence, I dreamed that I 
 should be at once cognizant of all things, and thus 
 at once happy in being cognizant of all. 
 
 Agathos. Ah, not in knowledge is happiness, 
 but in the acquisition of knowledge ! In forever 
 knowing, we are forever blessed ; but to know all, 
 were the curse of a fiend. 
 
 Oinos. But does not The Most High know all? 
 
 Agathos. That (since He is the Most High) 
 must be still the one thing unknown even to HIM. 
 
 Oinos. But, since we grow hourly in knowledge, 
 must not at last all things be known? 
 
 Agathos. Look down into the abysmal distances ! 
 attempt to force the gaze down the multitudinous 
 vistas of the stars, as we sweep slowly through them 
 thus and thus and thus ! Even the spiritual 
 vision, is it not at all points arrested by the continu 
 
194 THE POWER OF WORDS. 
 
 ous golden walls of the universe ? the walls of the 
 myriads of the shining bodies that mere number has 
 appeared to blend into unity? 
 
 Oinos. I clearly perceive that the infinity of mat 
 ter is no dream. 
 
 Agathos. There are no dreams in Aidenn ; but it 
 is here whispered that, of this infinity of matter, the 
 sole purpose is to afford infinite springs, at which 
 the soul may allay the thirst to know which is forever 
 unquenchable within it, since to quench it would be 
 to extinguish the soul s self. Question me, then, my 
 Oinos, freely and without fear. Come, we will leave 
 to the left the loud harmony of the Pleiades, and 
 swoop outward from the throne into the starry mead 
 ows beyond Orion, where, for pansies and violets, 
 and hearts-ease, are the beds of the triplicate and 
 triple-tinted suns. 
 
 Oinos. And now, Agathos, as we proceed, in 
 struct me ! Speak to me in the earth s familiar 
 tones! I understood not what you hinted to me, 
 just now, of the modes or of the methods of what, dur 
 ing mortality, we were accustomed to call Creation. 
 Do you mean to say that the Creator is not God? 
 
 Agathos. I mean to say that the Deity does not 
 create. 
 
 Oinos. Explain ! 
 
 Agathos. In the beginning only, He created. 
 The seeming creatures which are now, throughout 
 the universe, so perpetually springing into being, can 
 only be considered as the mediate or indirect, not as 
 the direct or immediate results of the Divine creative 
 power. 
 
THE POWER OF WORDS. 195 
 
 Oinos. Among men, my Agathos, this idea would 
 be considered heretical in the extreme. 
 
 Agathos. Among angels, my Oinos, it is seen to 
 be simply true. 
 
 Oinos. I can comprehend you thus far, that 
 certain operations of what we term Nature, or the 
 natural laws, will, under certain conditions, give rise 
 to that which has all the appearance of creation. 
 Shortly before the final overthrow of the earth, there 
 were, I well remember, many very successful experi 
 ments in what some philosophers were weak enough 
 to denominate the creation of animalcule. 
 
 Agathos. The cases of which you speak were, 
 in fact, instances of the secondary creation, and of 
 the only species of creation which has ever been, 
 since the first word spoke into existence the first 
 law. 
 
 Oinos. Are not the starry worlds that, from the 
 abyss of nonentity, burst hourly forth into the heav 
 ens, are not these stars, Agathos, the immediate 
 handiwork of the King? 
 
 Agathos. Let me endeavor, my Oinos, to lead 
 you, step by step, to the conception I intend. You 
 are well aware that, as no thought can perish, so no 
 act is without infinite result. We moved our hands, 
 for example, when we were dwellers on the earth, 
 and, in so doing, we gave vibration to the atmos 
 phere which engirdled it. This vibration was indefin 
 itely extended, till it gave impulse to every particle 
 of the earth s air, which thenceforward, and forever, 
 was actuated by the one movement of the hand. 
 This fact the mathematicians of our globe well knew. 
 
196 THE POWER OF WO&DS. 
 
 They made the special effects, indeedjlwrought In the 
 fluid by special impulses, the subject of exact calcu 
 lation ; so that it became easy to determine in what 
 precise period an impulse of given extent would 
 engirdle the orb, and impress (forever) every atom 
 of the atmosphere circumambient. Retrograding, 
 they found no difficulty, from &-. given effect, under 
 given conditions, in determining the value of the 
 original impulse. Now the mathematicians who saw 
 that the results of any given impulse were absolutely 
 endless, and who saw that a portion of these results 
 were accurately traceable through the agency of 
 algebraic analysis, who saw, too, the facility of the 
 retrogradation, these men saw, at the same time, 
 that this species of analysis itself had within itself a 
 capacity for indefinite progress, that there were no 
 bounds conceivable to its advancement and applica 
 bility, except within the intellect of him who advanced 
 or applied it. But at this point our mathematicians 
 paused. 
 
 Oinos. And why, Agathos, should they have 
 proceeded? 
 
 Agathos. Because there were some considera 
 tions of deep interest beyond. It was deducible 
 from what they knew, that, to a being of infinite 
 understanding one to whom the perfection of the 
 algebraic analysis lay unfolded there could be no 
 difficulty in tracing every impulse given the air 
 and the ether through the air to the remotest con 
 sequences at any even infinitely remote epoch of 
 time. It is, indeed, demonstrable that every such 
 impulse given the air, must, in the end, impress every 
 
T T E POWER OF WORDS. 197 
 
 individual th ng that exists within the universe ; and 
 the being of infinite understanding the being 
 whom we have imagined might trace the remote 
 undulations of the impulse trace them upward 
 and onward in their influences upon all particles of 
 all matter upward and onward forever in their 
 modifications of o d forms ; or, in other words, in 
 their creation of new, until he found them reflected 
 unimpressive at last back from the throne of the 
 Godhead. And not only could such a being do this, 
 but at any epoch, should a given result be afforded 
 him should one of these numberless comets, for 
 example, be presented to his inspection he could 
 have no difficulty in determining, by the analytic 
 retrogradation, to what original impulse it was due. 
 This power of retrogradation in its absolute fulness 
 and perfection this faculty of referring at all epochs 
 all effects to all causes is of course the prerogative 
 of the Deity alone ; but in every variety of degree, 
 short of the absolute perfection, is the power itself 
 exercised by the whole host of the Angelic Intelli 
 gences. 
 
 Oinos. But you speak merely of impulses upon 
 the air. 
 
 Agathos. In speaking of the air, I referred only 
 to the earth : but the general proposition has refer 
 ence to impulses upon the ether, which, since it 
 pervades (and alone pervades) all space, is thus the 
 great medium of creation. 
 
 Oinos. Then all motion, of whatever nature, 
 creates ? 
 
 Agathos. It must : but a true philosophy has 
 
198 THE POWER OF WORDS. 
 
 Jong taught that the source of all motion is thought, 
 and the source of all thought is 
 
 Oinos. God. 
 
 Agathos. I have spoken to you, Oinos, as to a 
 child of the fair Earth which lately perished of 
 impulses upon the atmosphere of the Earth. 
 
 Onios. You did. 
 
 Agathos. And while I thus spoke, did there not 
 cross your mind some thought of the physical power 
 of words ? Is not every word an impulse on the air? 
 
 Oinos. But why, Agathos, do you weep? And 
 why, oh why do your wings droop as we hover above 
 this fair star, which is the greenest and yet most 
 terrible of all we have encountered in our flight? 
 Its brilliant flowers look like a fairy dream, but its 
 fierce volcanoes like the passions of a turbulent 
 heart. 
 
 Agathos. They are ! they are ! This wild star 
 it is now three centuries since, with clasped hands, 
 and with streaming eyes, at the feet of my beloved 
 I spoke it with a few passionate sentences into 
 birth. Its brilliant flowers are the dearest of all 
 unfulfilled dreams, and its raging volcanoes are the 
 passions of the most turbulent and unhallowed of 
 hearts. 
 
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