path: root/79019-0.txt

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 79019 ***




Transcriber‘s Notes:

  Underscores “_” before and after a word or phrase indicate _italics_
    in the original text.
  Small capitals have been converted to SOLID capitals.
  Illustrations have been moved so they do not break up stanzas.
  Deprecated spellings have been preserved.
  Typographical and punctuation errors have been silently corrected.




                               THE
                          POETICAL WORKS
                                OF
                         EDGAR ALLAN POE

                      WITH ORIGINAL MEMOIR.

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

                          [Illustration]

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

                             LONDON:
                     PRINTED BY RICHARD CLAY,
                        BREAD STREET HILL.




PREFACE.


These trifles are collected and republished chiefly with a view to
their redemption from the many improvements to which they have been
subjected while going at random “the rounds of the press.” I am
naturally anxious that what I have written should circulate as I wrote
it, if it circulate at all. In defence of my own taste, nevertheless,
it is incumbent upon me to say that I think nothing in this volume of
much value to the public, or very creditable to myself. Events not to
be controlled have prevented me from making, at any time, any serious
effort in what, under happier circumstances, would have been the field
of my choice. With me poetry has been not a purpose, but a passion; and
the passions should be held in reverence; they must not—they cannot at
will be excited, with an eye to the paltry compensations, or the more
paltry commendations of mankind.

    E. A. P.




CONTENTS.


    MISCELLANEOUS POEMS:—
              PAGE
        THE RAVEN                                      1
        LENORE                                         9
        A VALENTINE                                   12
        THE COLISEUM                                  13
        TO —— ——                                      15
        TO HELEN                                      17
        AN ENIGMA                                     22
        ULALUME                                       23
        TO ——                                         28
        TO MY MOTHER                                  29
        THE BELLS                                     30
        THE CONQUEROR WORM                            39
        ANNABEL LEE                                   42
        THE VALLEY OF UNREST                          46
        ISRAFEL                                       48
        SILENCE                                       52
        TO ZANTE                                      53
        TO F——S S. O——D                               55
        BRIDAL BALLAD                                 56
        THE HAUNTED PALACE                            58
        EULALIE                                       62
        TO F——                                        64
        TO ONE IN PARADISE                            65
        DREAM-LAND                                    67
        HYMN                                          71
        THE SLEEPER                                   72
        FOR ANNIE                                     76
        ELDORADO                                      82
        A DREAM WITHIN A DREAM                        85
        THE CITY IN THE SEA                           87
        SCENES FROM “POLITIAN;” AN UNPUBLISHED DRAMA  91

    POEMS WRITTEN IN YOUTH:—
        AL AARAAF                                    149
        SONNET—TO SCIENCE                            173
        TO THE RIVER ——                              174
        TAMERLANE                                    176
        TO ——                                        192
        A DREAM                                      194
        ROMANCE                                      195
        FAIRY-LAND                                   197
        THE LAKE.——TO——                              201
        SONG                                         203
        TO M. L. S.                                  204
        TO HELEN                                     205

        NOTES TO AL AARAAF                           207

        THE POETIC PRINCIPLE                         217

[Illustration]




ILLUSTRATIONS.


                                        ARTIST.       ENGRAVER.    PAGE
    Portrait of Edgar Allan Poe.    DAGUERREOTYPE    _J. Cooper_   xvii

                     THE RAVEN.
    And the silken sad uncertain rustling of each
          purple curtain
    Thrilled me—filled me with fantastic terrors
          never felt before.
                                    JOHN TENNIEL     _J. Cooper_      1

    Open here I flung the shutter, when, with many
          a flirt and flutter,
    In there stepped a stately Raven of the saintly
          days of yore.
                                    JOHN TENNIEL     _J. Cooper_      3

    “Wretch,” I cried, “thy God hath lent thee—by
          these angels he hath sent thee
    Respite—respite and nepenthe from thy memories
          of Lenore!”
                                    JOHN TENNIEL     _J. Cooper_      6

    And the Raven, never flitting, still is sitting,
          still is sitting
    On the pallid bust of Pallas just above my
          chamber door.
                                    JOHN TENNIEL     _J. Cooper_      8

                         LENORE.
    The life upon her yellow hair, but not within
          her eyes—
    The life still there, upon her hair—the death
          upon her eyes.
                                 F. R. PICKERSGILL   _W. J. Linton_   9

    The sweet Lenore hath “gone before,” with Hope,
          that flew beside,
    Leaving thee wild for the dear child that should
          have been thy bride.
                                 FELIX DARLEY        _J. Cooper_     11

                    THE COLISEUM.
    But stay! these walls—these ivy-clad arcades—
    These mouldering plinths—these sad and
          blackened shafts.
                                 JASPER CROPSEY      _W. J. Linton_  13

                      TO HELEN.
    It was a July midnight; and from out
    A full-orbed moon, ...
    There fell a silvery-silken veil of light.
                                  BIRKET FOSTER      _W. T. Green_   17

    Clad all in white, upon a violet bank
    I saw thee half reclining.
                              F. R. PICKERSGILL      _W. J. Linton_  19

    And thou, a ghost, amid the entombing trees
    Didst glide away.
                                  BIRKET FOSTER      _J. Cooper_     21

                      ULALUME.
    It was down by the dank tarn of Auber,
        In the ghoul-haunted woodland of Weir.
                                 JASPER CROPSEY      _W. J. Linton_  23

    That I brought a dread burden down here—
    On this night of all nights in the year.
                              F. R. PICKERSGILL      _W. J. Linton_  27

                      THE BELLS.
    Hear the sledges with the bells—
            Silver bells!          FELIX DARLEY      _J. Cooper_     30

    Through the balmy air of night
    How they ring out their delight!
                                  BIRKET FOSTER      _E. Evans_      32

        Hear the loud alarum bells—

                *       *       *       *       *

    In a clamorous appealing to the mercy of the fire.
                                   FELIX DARLEY      _J. Cooper_     34

    In the silence of the night,
    How we shiver with affright.
                              F. R. PICKERSGILL      _W. J. Linton_  36

                   ANNABEL LEE.
    _I_ was a child and _she_ was a child,
      In this kingdom by the sea.
                                  BIRKET FOSTER      _J. Cooper_     42

    For the moon never beams, without bringing me dreams
      Of the beautiful Annabel Lee.
                                  BIRKET FOSTER      _J. Cooper_     44

                     ISRAFEL.
    In heaven a spirit doth dwell
      “Whose heart-strings are a lute.”
                                       P. DUGGAN    _W. J. Linton_   48

                     TO ZANTE.
    Fair isle, that from the fairest of all flowers,
      Thy gentlest of all gentle names dost take!
                                   BIRKET FOSTER     _E. Evans_      53

                 THE HAUNTED PALACE.
    Once a fair and stately palace—
      Radiant palace—reared its head.
                                     A. M. MADOT    _E. Evans_       58

                       EULALIE.
    Till the fair and gentle Eulalie became my
          blushing bride—
    Till the yellow-haired young Eulalie became my
          smiling bride.
                               F. R. PICKERSGILL    _W. J. Linton_   62

                   TO ONE IN PARADISE.
    Such language holds the solemn sea
      To the sands upon the shore.
                                   BIRKET FOSTER    _E. Evans_       65

                            DREAM-LAND.
    Shrouded forms that start and sigh
    As they pass the wanderer by.
                               F. R. PICKERSGILL    _W. J. Linton_   69

                           THE SLEEPER.
    At midnight, in the month of June,
    I stand beneath the mystic moon.
                                   BIRKET FOSTER    _E. Evans_       72

                            FOR ANNIE.
    And she prayed to the angels
      To keep me from harm.
                               F. R. PICKERSGILL    _W. J. Linton_   78

                            ELDORADO.
          And, as his strength
          Failed him at length,
    He met a pilgrim shadow.
                               F. R. PICKERSGILL    _W. J. Linton_   83

                     A DREAM WITHIN A DREAM.
    I stand amid the roar
    Of a surf-tormented shore.
                                   BIRKET FOSTER    _J. Cooper_      85

                         THE CITY IN THE SEA.
    Lo! Death has reared himself a throne
    In a strange city lying alone.
                                  JASPER CROPSEY    _W. J. Linton_   87

    The waves have now a redder glow—
    The hours are breathing faint and low.
                                  JASPER CROPSEY    _W. J. Linton_   89

                       SCENES FROM “POLITIAN.”
    View of Rome.               PERCIVAL SKELTON    _J. Cooper_      93

                    Heard I aright?
    I speak to him—he speaks of Lalage!
                               F. R. PICKERSGILL    _Hammond_        97

    A garden.        BIRKET FOSTER     _J. Cooper_                  102

                    Think of eternal things;
    Give up thy soul to penitence, and pray!
                               F. R. PICKERSGILL    _E. Evans_      110

                  Politian, it doth grieve me
    To see thee thus.
                                     A. M. MADOT    _E. Evans_      114

            Listen now—listen!—the faintest sound,
    And yet the sweetest that ear ever heard!
    A lady’s voice!—and sorrow in the tone!
                                     A. M. MADOT    _H. Harral_     120

    Weep not! oh, sob not thus!—thy bitter tears
    Will madden me. Oh, mourn not, Lalage!
                                   BIRKET FOSTER    _J. Cooper_     127

                  Hist! hush! within the gloom
    Of yonder trees methought a figure passed.
                               F. R. PICKERSGILL    _E. Evans_      132

    The suburbs of Rome.        PERCIVAL SKELTON    _J. Cooper_     136

                          AL AARAAF.
    O! nothing earthly save the thrill
    Of melody in woodland rill.
                                   BIRKET FOSTER    _J. Cooper_     149

    Of her who loved a mortal—and so died.
                               F. R. PICKERSGILL    _W. J. Linton_  152

    As sprang that yellow star from downy hours,
    Up rose the maiden from her shrine of flowers.
                                     A. M. MADOT    _W. Thomas_     157

    High on a mountain of enamelled head—
         . . . . . . arose a pile
    Of gorgeous columns.
                                PERCIVAL SKELTON    _J. Whymper_    159

    On its margin is sleeping
      Full many a maid.
                               F. R. PICKERSGILL    _W. J. Linton_  166

    Was a proud temple called the Parthenon.
                                PERCIVAL SKELTON    _J. Cooper_     170

                        TO THE RIVER.
    For in his heart, as in thy stream,
        Her image deeply lies.
                                   BIRKET FOSTER    _E. Evans_      174

                         TAMERLANE.
    We grew in age—and love—together—
      Roaming the forest, and the wild.
                                     A. M. MADOT    _W. J. Linton_  181

    We walked together on the crown
    Of a high mountain.
                                   BIRKET FOSTER    _J. Cooper_     185

    A voice came from the threshold stone
    Of one whom I had earlier known.
                                     A. M. MADOT    _W. J. Linton_  189

                           TO ——.
    The bowers whereat, in dreams, I see
      The wantonest singing birds.
                                   BIRKET FOSTER    _E. Evans_      192

                          FAIRY-LAND.
    Dim vales—and shadowy floods—
    And cloudy-looking woods.
                                   BIRKET FOSTER    _J. Cooper_     198

                           THE LAKE.
    A wild lake, with black rock bound,
    And the tall pines that towered around.
                                   BIRKET FOSTER    _J. Cooper_     201

    The Head and Tail-pieces and Initial Letters.
                                 W. HARRY ROGERS    _E. Evans_

              _Under the Superintendence of_ JOSEPH CUNDALL.




MEMOIR OF EDGAR ALLAN POE.


[Illustration]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

_June, 1857._




MISCELLANEOUS POEMS.


[Illustration]


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.

    And the silken sad uncertain rustling of each purple curtain
    Thrilled me—filled me with fantastic terrors never felt before:
    So that now, to still the beating of my heart, I stood repeating,
    “’Tis some visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door—
    Some late visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door;
                                        This it is and nothing more.”

    Presently my soul grew stronger; hesitating then no longer,
    “Sir,” said I, “or Madam, truly your forgiveness I implore;
    But the fact is I was napping, and so gently you came rapping,
    And so faintly you came tapping, tapping at my chamber door,
    That I scarce was sure I heard you”—here I opened wide the door;
                                        Darkness there and nothing more.

    Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there wondering,
         fearing,
    Doubting, dreaming dreams no mortals ever dared to dream before;
    But the silence was unbroken, and the stillness gave no token,
    And the only word there spoken was the whispered word, “Lenore!”
    This I whispered, and an echo murmured back the word, “Lenore!”—
                                        Merely this and nothing more.

[Illustration]

    Back into the chamber turning, all my soul within me burning,
    Soon again I heard a tapping something louder than before.
    “Surely,” said I, “surely that is something at my window lattice;
    Let me see, then, what thereat is, and this mystery explore—
    Let my heart be still a moment, and this mystery explore;—
                                        ’Tis the wind and nothing more.”

    Open here I flung the shutter, when, with many a flirt and flutter,
    In there stepped a stately Raven of the saintly days of yore.
    Not the least obeisance made he; not a minute stopped or stayed he;
    But, with mien of lord or lady, perched above my chamber door—
    Perched upon a bust of Pallas just above my chamber door—
                                     Perched, and sat, and nothing more.

    Then this ebony bird beguiling my sad fancy into smiling,
    By the grave and stern decorum of the countenance it wore,
    “Though thy crest be shorn and shaven, thou,” I said, “art sure no
          craven,
    Ghastly grim and ancient Raven wandering from the Nightly shore—
    Tell me what thy lordly name is on the Night’s Plutonian shore!”
                                        Quoth the Raven, “Nevermore.”

    Much I marveled this ungainly fowl to hear discourse so plainly,
    Though its answer little meaning—little relevancy bore;
    For we cannot help agreeing that no living human being
    Ever yet was blessed with seeing bird above his chamber door—
    Bird or beast upon the sculptured bust above his chamber door,
                                        With such name as “Nevermore.”

    But the Raven, sitting lonely on that placid bust, spoke only
    That one word, as if his soul in that one word he did outpour.
    Nothing farther then he uttered; not a feather then he fluttered—
    Till I scarcely more than muttered, “Other friends have flown before—
    On the morrow _he_ will leave me, as my Hopes have flown before.”
                                        Then the bird said, “Nevermore.”

    Startled at the stillness broken by reply so aptly spoken,
    “Doubtless,” said I, “what it utters is its only stock and store,
    Caught from some unhappy master whom unmerciful Disaster
    Followed fast and followed faster till his songs one burden bore—
    Till the dirges of his Hope that melancholy burden bore
                                        Of ‘Never—nevermore.’”

    But the Raven still beguiling all my sad soul into smiling,
    Straight I wheeled a cushioned seat in front of bird and bust and
         door;
    Then, upon the velvet sinking, I betook myself to linking
    Fancy unto fancy, thinking what this ominous bird of yore—
    What this grim, ungainly, ghastly, gaunt, and ominous bird of yore
                                        Meant in croaking “Nevermore.”

    This I sat engaged in guessing, but no syllable expressing
    To the fowl whose fiery eyes now burned into my bosom’s core;
    This and more I sat divining, with my head at ease reclining
    On the cushion’s velvet lining that the lamp-light gloated o’er,
    But whose velvet violet lining with the lamp-light gloating o’er
                                  _She_ shall press, ah, nevermore!

[Illustration]

    Then, methought, the air grew denser, perfumed from an unseen censer
    Swung by Seraphim whose foot-falls tinkled on the tufted floor.
    “Wretch,” I cried, “thy God hath lent thee—by these angels he hath
          sent thee
    Respite—respite and nepenthe from thy memories of Lenore!
    Quaff, oh quaff this kind nepenthe and forget this lost Lenore!”
                                           Quoth the Raven, “Nevermore.”

    “Prophet!” said I, “thing of evil!—prophet still, if bird or devil!—
    Whether Tempter sent, or whether tempest tossed thee here ashore,
    Desolate yet all undaunted, on this desert land enchanted—
    On this home by Horror haunted—tell me truly, I implore—
    Is there—_is_ there balm in Gilead?—tell me—tell me, I
         implore!”
                                           Quoth the Raven, “Nevermore.”

    “Prophet!” said I, “thing of evil—prophet still, if bird or devil!
    By that heaven that bends above us—by that God we both adore—
    Tell this soul with sorrow laden if, within the distant Aidenn,
    It shall clasp a sainted maiden whom the Angels name Lenore—
    Clasp a rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name Lenore.”
                                           Quoth the Raven, “Nevermore.”

    “Be that word our sign of parting, bird or fiend!” I shrieked,
         upstarting—
    “Get thee back into the tempest and the Night’s Plutonian shore!
    Leave no black plume as a token of that lie thy soul hath spoken!
    Leave my loneliness unbroken!—quit the bust above my door!
    Take thy beak from out my heart, and take thy form from off my door!”
                                           Quoth the Raven, “Nevermore.”

    And the Raven, never flitting, still is sitting, still is sitting
    On the pallid bust of Pallas just above my chamber door;
    And his eyes have all the seeming of a demon’s that is dreaming,
    And the lamp-light o’er him streaming throws his shadow on the floor;
    And my soul from out that shadow that lies floating on the floor
                                            Shall be lifted—nevermore!

[Illustration]

[Illustration]


LENORE.

    Ah, broken is the golden bowl! the spirit flown for ever!
    Let the bell toll!—a saintly soul floats on the Stygian river;
    And, Guy De Vere, hast _thou_ no tear?—weep now or never more!

    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?—-the requiem how be
         sung
    By you—by yours, the evil eye,—by yours, the slanderous tongue
    That did to death the innocence that died, and died so young?

    _Peccavimus_; but rave not thus! and let a Sabbath song
    Go up to God so solemnly the dead may feel no wrong!
    The sweet Lenore hath “gone before,” with Hope, that flew beside,
    Leaving thee wild for the dear child that should have been thy
         bride—
    For her, the fair and _débonnaire_, that now so lowly lies,
    The life upon her yellow hair, but not within her eyes—
    The life still there, upon her hair—the death upon her eyes.

    “Avaunt! to-night my heart is light. No dirge will I upraise,
    But waft the angel on her flight with a pæan of old days!
    Let _no_ bell toll!—lest her sweet soul, amid its hallowed
         mirth,
    Should catch the note, as it doth float up from the damnèd Earth.
    To friends above, from fiends below, the indignant ghost is riven—
    From Hell unto a high estate far up within the Heaven—
    From grief and groan, to a golden throne, beside the King of Heaven.”

[Illustration]


A VALENTINE.

    For her this rhyme is penned, whose luminous eyes,
      Brightly expressive as the twins of Lœda,
    Shall find her own sweet name, that, nestling lies
      Upon the page enwrapped from every reader.
    Search narrowly the lines!—they hold a treasure
      Divine—a talisman—an amulet
    That must be worn _at heart_. Search well the measure—
      The words—the syllables! Do not forget
    The trivialest point, or you may lose your labour!
      And yet there is in this no Gordian knot
    Which one might not undo without a sabre,
      If one could merely comprehend the plot.
    Enwritten upon the leaf where now are peering
      Eyes’ scintillating soul, there lie _perdus_
    Three eloquent words oft uttered in the hearing
      Of poets, by poets—as the name is a poet’s, too.
    Its letters, although naturally lying
      Like the knight Pinto—Mendez Ferdinando—
    Still form a synonym for Truth.—Cease trying!
      You will not read the riddle, though you do the best you
           _can_ do.

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

[Illustration]


THE COLISEUM.

    Type of the antique Rome! Rich reliquary
    Of lofty contemplation left to Time
    By buried centuries of pomp and power!
    At length—at length—after so many days
    Of weary pilgrimage and burning thirst,
    (Thirst for the springs of lore that in thee lie,)
    I kneel, an altered and an humble man,
    Amid thy shadows, and so drink within
    My very soul thy grandeur, gloom, and glory!

    Vastness! and Age! and Memories of Eld!
    Silence! and Desolation! and dim Night!
    I feel ye now—I feel ye in your strength—
    O spells more sure than e’er Judæan king
    Taught in the gardens of Gethsemane!
    O charms more potent than the rapt Chaldee
    Ever drew down from out the quiet stars!

    Here, where a hero fell, a column falls!
    Here, where the mimic eagle glared in gold,
    A midnight vigil holds the swarthy bat!
    Here, where the dames of Rome their gilded hair
    Waved to the wind, now wave the reed and thistle!
    Here, where on golden throne the monarch lolled,
    Glides, spectre-like, unto his marble home,
    Lit by the wan light of the hornèd moon,
    The swift and silent lizard of the stones!

    But stay! these walls—these ivy-clad arcades—
    These mouldering plinths—these sad and blackened shafts—
    These vague entablatures—this crumbling frieze—
    These shattered cornices—this wreck—this ruin—
    These stones—alas! these grey stones—are they all—
    All of the famed and the colossal left
    By the corrosive Hours to Fate and me?

    “Not all”—the Echoes answer me—“not all!
    Prophetic sounds and loud arise for ever
    From us, and from all Ruin, unto the wise,
    As melody from Memnon to the Sun.
    We rule the hearts of mightiest men—we rule
    With a despotic sway all giant minds.
    We are not impotent—we pallid stones.
    Not all our power is gone—not all our fame—
    Not all the magic of our high renown—
    Not all the wonder that encircles us—
    Not all the mysteries that in us lie—
    Not all the memories that hang upon
    And cling around about us as a garment,
    Clothing us in a robe of more than glory.”

[Illustration]


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 moon-lit “dew
    That hangs like chains of pearl on Hermon hill,”—
    Have stirred from out the abysses of his heart,
    Unthought-like thoughts that are the souls of thought,
    Richer, far wilder, far diviner visions
    Than even the seraph harper, Israfel,
    (Who has “the sweetest voice of all God’s creatures,”)
    Could hope to utter. And I! my spells are broken.
    The pen falls powerless from my shivering hand.
    With thy dear name as text, though bidden by thee,
    I cannot write—I cannot speak or think—
    Alas, I cannot feel; for ’tis not feeling,
    This standing motionless upon the golden
    Threshold of the wide-open gate of dreams,
    Gazing, entranced, adown the gorgeous vista,
    And thrilling as I see, upon the right,
    Upon the left, and all the way along,
    Amid unpurpled vapours, far away
    To where the prospect terminates—_thee only_.

[Illustration]


TO HELEN.

    I saw thee once—once only—years ago:
    I must not say _how_ many—but _not_ many.
    It was a July midnight; and from out
    A full-orbed moon, that, like thine own soul, soaring,
    Sought a precipitate pathway up through heaven,
    There fell a silvery-silken veil of light,
    With quietude, and sultriness, and slumber,
    Upon the upturn’d faces of a thousand
    Roses that grew in an enchanted garden,
    Where no wind dared to stir, unless on tiptoe—
    Fell on the upturn’d faces of these roses,
    That gave out, in return for the love-light,
    Their odorous souls in an ecstatic death—
    Fell on the upturn’d faces of these roses
    That smiled and died in this parterre, enchanted
    By thee, and by the poetry of thy presence.

    Clad all in white, upon a violet bank
    I saw thee half reclining; while the moon
    Fell on the upturn’d faces of the roses,
    And on thine own, upturn’d—alas, in sorrow!

    Was it not Fate, that, on this July midnight—
    Was it not Fate (whose name is also Sorrow)
    That bade me pause before that garden-gate,
    To breathe the incense of those slumbering roses?
    No 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!)

[Illustration]

    The pearly lustre of the moon went out:
    The mossy banks and the meandering paths,
    The happy flowers and the repining trees,
    Were seen no more: the very roses’ odours
    Died in the arms of the adoring airs.

    All—all expired save thee—save less than thou:
    Save only the divine light in thine eyes—
    Save but the soul in thine uplifted eyes.
    I saw but them—they were the world to me.
    I saw but them—saw only them for hours—
    Saw only them until the moon went down.
    What wild heart-histories seemed to lie enwritten
    Upon those crystalline, celestial spheres!
    How dark a woe! yet how sublime a hope!
    How silently serene a sea of pride!
    How daring an ambition! yet how deep—
    How fathomless a capacity for love!

    But now, at length, dear Dian sank from sight,
    Into a western couch of thunder-cloud;
    And thou, a ghost, amid the entombing trees
    Didst glide away. _Only thine eyes remained._
    They _would not_ go—they never yet have gone.
    Lighting my lonely pathway home that night,
    _They_ have not left me (as my hopes have) since.
    They follow me—they lead me through the years.
    They are my ministers—yet I their slave.
    Their office is to illumine and enkindle—
    My duty, _to be saved_ by their bright light,
    And purified in their electric fire,
    And sanctified in their elysian fire.
    They fill my soul with Beauty (which is Hope),
    And are far up in heaven—the stars I kneel to
    In the sad, silent watches of my night;
    While even in the meridian glare of day
    I see them still—two sweetly scintillant
    Venuses, unextinguished by the sun!

[Illustration]


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.

[Illustration]

[Illustration]


ULALUME.

    The skies they were ashen and sober;
        The leaves they were crisped and sere—
        The leaves they were withering and sere;
    It was night in the lonesome October
        Of my most immemorial year;
    It was hard by the dim lake of Auber,
        In the misty mid region of Weir—
    It was down by the dank tarn of Auber,
        In the ghoul-haunted woodland of Weir.

    Here once, through an alley Titanic,
        Of cypress, I roamed with my Soul—
        Of cypress, with Pysche, my Soul.
    These were days when my heart was volcanic
        As the scoriac rivers that roll—
        As the lavas that restlessly roll
    Their sulphurous currents down Yaanek
        In the ultimate climes of the pole—
    That groan as they roll down Mount Yaanek
        In the realms of the boreal pole.

    Our talk had been serious and sober,
        But our thoughts they were palsied and sere—
        Our memories were treacherous and sere—
    For we knew not the month was October,
        And we marked not the night of the year—
        (Ah, night of all nights in the year!)
    We noted not the dim lake of Auber—
        (Though once we had journeyed down here)—
    Remembered not the dank tarn of Auber,
        Nor the ghoul-haunted woodland of Weir.

    And now, as the night was senescent
        And star-dials pointed to morn—
        As the star-dials hinted of morn—
    At the end of our path a liquescent
        And nebulous lustre was born,
    Out of which a miraculous crescent
        Arose with a duplicate horn—
    Astarte’s bediamonded crescent
        Distinct with its duplicate horn.

    And I said—“She is warmer than Dian:
        She rolls through an ether of sighs—
        She revels in a region of sighs:
    She has seen that the tears are not dry on
        These cheeks, where the worm never dies,
    And has come past the stars of the Lion
        To point us the path to the skies—
        To the Lethean peace of the skies—
    Come up, in despite of the Lion,
        To shine on us with her bright eyes—
    Come up through the lair of the Lion,
        With love in her luminous eyes.”

    But Pysche, uplifting her finger,
        Said—“Sadly this star I mistrust—
        Her pallor I strangely mistrust:—
    Oh, hasten!—oh, let us not linger!
        Oh, fly! let us fly!—for we must.”
    In terror she spoke, letting sink her
        Wings until they trailed in the dust—
    In agony sobbed, letting sink her
        Plumes till they trailed in the dust—
        Till they sorrowfully trailed in the dust.

    I replied—“This is nothing but dreaming:
        Let us on by this tremulous light!
        Let us bathe in this crystalline light!
    Its Sybilic splendour is beaming
        With Hope and in Beauty to-night:—
        See!—it flickers up the sky through the night!
    Ah, we safely may trust to its gleaming,
        And be sure it will lead us aright—
    We safely may trust to a gleaming
        That cannot but guide us aright,
        Since it flickers up to Heaven through the night.”

    Thus I pacified Psyche and kissed her,
        And tempted her out of her gloom—
        And conquered her scruples and gloom;
    And we passed to the end of the vista,
        But were stopped by the door of a tomb—
        By the door of a legended tomb;
    And I said—“What is written, sweet sister,
        On the door of this legended tomb?”
        She replied—“Ulalume—Ulalume—
        ’Tis the vault of thy lost Ulalume!”

[Illustration]

    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.”

[Illustration]


TO ——.

    I heed not that my earthly lot
      Hath—little of Earth in it—
    That years of love have been forgot
      In the hatred of a minute:—
    I mourn not that the desolate
      Are happier, sweet, than I,
    But that _you_ sorrow for _my_ fate
      Who am a passer by.


TO MY MOTHER.

    Because I feel that, in the heavens above,
      The angels, whispering to one another,
    Can find, among their burning terms of love,
      None so devotional as that of “Mother,”
    Therefore by that dear name I long have called you—
      You who are more than mother unto me,
    And fill my heart of hearts, where Death installed you
      In setting my Virginia’s spirit free.
    My mother—my own mother, who died early,
      Was but the mother of myself; but you
    Are mother to the one I loved so dearly,
      And thus are dearer than the mother I knew
    By that infinity with which my wife
    Was dearer to my soul than its soul-life.

[Illustration]

[Illustration]


THE BELLS.

                           I.

            Hear the sledges with the bells—
                    Silver bells!
    What a world of merriment their melody foretells!
            How they tinkle, tinkle, tinkle,
                In the icy air of night!
              While the stars that oversprinkle
              All the heavens, seem to twinkle
                  With a crystalline delight;
                Keeping time, time, time,
                In a sort of Runic rhyme,
    To the tintinabulation that so musically wells
            From the bells, bells, bells, bells,
                      Bells, bells, bells—
      From the jingling and the tinkling of the bells.

                          II.

            Hear the mellow wedding bells,
                      Golden bells!
    What a world of happiness their harmony foretells!
            Through the balmy air of night
            How they ring out their delight!
              From the molten-golden notes,
                  And all in tune,
              What a liquid ditty floats
      To the turtle-dove that listens, while she gloats
                  On the moon!
            Oh, from out the sounding cells,
    What a gush of euphony voluminously wells!
                  How it swells!
                  How it dwells
              On the Future! how it tells
              Of the rapture that impels
            To the swinging and the ringing
              Of the bells, bells, bells,
            Of the bells, bells, bells, bells,
                  Bells, bells, bells—
    To the rhyming and the chiming of the bells!

[Illustration]

                         III.

            Hear the loud alarum bells—
                    Brazen bells!
              What a tale of terror now their turbulency tells!
                In the startled ear of night
                How they scream out their affright!
                Too much horrified to speak,
                They can only shriek, shriek,
                    Out of tune,
    In a clamorous appealing to the mercy of the fire,
    In a mad expostulation with the deaf and frantic fire.
                Leaping higher, higher, higher,
                With a desperate desire,
              And a resolute endeavour,
              Now—now to sit or never,
            By the side of the pale-faced moon.
                Oh, the bells, bells, bells!
                What a tale their terror tells
                        Of Despair!
              How they clang, and clash, and roar!
              What a horror they outpour
    On the besom 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 clamour and the clangour of the bells!

[Illustration]

[Illustration]

                          IV.

              Hear the tolling of the bells—
                        Iron bells!
    What a world of solemn thought their monody compels!
              In the silence of the night,
              How we shiver with affright
        At the melancholy menace of their tone!
              For every sound that floats
              From the rust within their throats
                        Is a groan.
    And the people—ah, the people—
    They that dwell up in the steeple,
              All alone,
      And who tolling, tolling, tolling,
        In that muffled monotone,
      Feel a glory in so rolling
        On the human heart a stone—
    They are neither man nor woman—
    They are neither brute nor human—
          They are Ghouls:
    And their king it is who tolls;
    And he rolls, rolls, rolls,
                Rolls
      A pæan from the bells!
    And his merry bosom swells
      With the pæan of the bells!
    And he dances, and he yells;
    Keeping time, time, time,
    In a sort of Runic rhyme,
      To the pæan of the bells—
          Of the bells:
    Keeping time, time, time,
    In a sort of Runic rhyme,
      To the throbbing of the bells—
    Of the bells, bells, bells—
      To the sobbing of the bells;
    Keeping time, time, time,
      As he knells, knells, knells,
    In a happy Runic rhyme,
        To the rolling of the bells—
      Of the bells, bells, bells—
        To the tolling of the bells,
      Of the bells, bells, bells, bells—
             Bells, bells, bells—
    To the moaning and the groaning of the bells.

[Illustration]


THE CONQUEROR WORM.

    Lo! ’tis a gala night
      Within the lonesome latter years!
    An angel throng, bewinged, bedight
      In veils, and drowned in tears,
    Sit in a theatre, to see
      A play of hopes and fears,
    While the orchestra breathes fitfully
      The music of the spheres.

    Mimes, in the form of God on high,
      Mutter and mumble low,
    And hither and thither fly—
      Mere puppets they, who come and go
    At bidding of vast formless things
      That shift the scenery to and fro,
    Flapping from out their Condor wings
      Invisible Woe!

    That motley drama—oh, be sure
      It shall not be forgot!
    With its Phantom chased for evermore,
      By a crowd that seize it not,
    Through a circle that ever returneth in
      To the self-same spot,
    And much of Madness, and more of Sin,
      And Horror the soul of the plot.

    But see, amid the mimic rout
      A crawling shape intrude!
    A blood-red thing that writhes from out
      The scenic solitude!
    It writhes!—it writhes!—with mortal pangs
      The mimes become its food,
    And the angels sob at vermin fangs
      In human gore imbued.

    Out—out are the lights—out all!
      And, over each quivering form,
    The curtain, a funeral pall,
      Comes down with the rush of a storm,
    And the angels, all pallid and wan,
      Uprising, unveiling, affirm
    That the play is the tragedy “Man,”
      And its hero the Conqueror Worm.

[Illustration]

[Illustration]


ANNABEL LEE.

    It was many and many a year ago,
        In a kingdom by the sea,
    That a maiden there lived whom you may know
        By the name of ANNABEL LEE;
    And this maiden she lived with no other thought
        Than to love and be loved by me.

    _I_ was a child and _she_ was a child,
        In this kingdom by the sea:
    But we loved with a love that was more than love—
        I and my ANNABEL LEE;
    With a love that the winged seraphs of heaven
        Coveted her and me.

    And this was the reason that, long ago,
        In this kingdom by the sea,
    A wind blew out of a cloud, chilling
        My beautiful ANNABEL LEE;
    So that her high-born kinsman came
        And bore her away from me,
    To shut her up in a sepulchre
        In this kingdom by the sea.

    The angels, not half so happy in heaven,
        Went envying her and me—
    Yes!—that was the reason (as all men know,
        In this kingdom by the sea)
    That the wind came out of the cloud by night,
        Chilling and killing my ANNABEL LEE.

[Illustration]

    But our love it was stronger by far than the love
        Of those who were older than we—
        Of many far wiser than we—
    And neither the angels in heaven above,
        Nor the demons down under the sea,
    Can ever dissever my soul from the soul
        Of the beautiful ANNABEL LEE:

    For the moon never beams, without bringing me dreams
        Of the beautiful ANNABEL LEE;
    And the stars never rise, but I feel the bright eyes
        Of the beautiful ANNABEL LEE;
    And so, all the night-tide, I lie down by the side
    Of my darling—my darling—my life and my bride,
        In the sepulchre there by the sea,
        In her tomb by the sounding sea.

[Illustration]


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 sun-light lazily lay.
    _Now_ each visitor shall confess
    The sad valley’s restlessness.
    Nothing there is motionless—
    Nothing save the airs that brood
    Over the magic solitude.
    Ah, by no wind are stirred those trees
    That palpitate like the chill seas
    Around the misty Hebrides!
    Ah, by no wind those clouds are driven
    That rustle through the unquiet heaven
    Uneasily, from morn till even,
    Over the violets there that lie
    In myriad types of the human eye—
    Over the lilies there that wave
    And weep above a nameless grave!
    They wave:—from out their fragrant tops
    Eternal dews come down in drops.
    They weep:—from off their delicate stems
    Perennial tears descend in gems.

[Illustration]

[Illustration]


ISRAFEL.[1]

    In heaven a spirit doth dwell
      “Whose heart-strings are a lute;”
    None sing so wildly well
    As the angel Israfel,
    And the giddy stars (so legends tell)
    Ceasing their hymns, attend the spell
      Of his voice, all mute.

    Tottering above
      In her highest noon,
      The enamoured moon
    Blushes with love,
      While, to listen, the red levin
      (With the rapid Pleiads, even,
      Which were seven)
      Pauses in heaven.

    And they say (the starry choir
      And the other listening things)
    That Israfeli’s fire
    Is owing to that lyre
      By which he sits and sings—
    The trembling living wire
      Of those unusual strings.

    But the skies that angel trod,
      Where deep thoughts are a duty—
    Where Love’s a grown-up God—
      Where the Houri glances are
      Imbued with all the beauty
      Which we worship in a star.

    Therefore, thou art not wrong,
      Israfeli, who despisest
    An unimpassioned song;
    To thee the laurels belong,
      Best bard, because the wisest!
    Merrily live, and long!

    The ecstasies above
      With thy burning measures suit—
    Thy grief, thy joy, thy hate, thy love,
      With the fervour of thy lute—
      Well may the stars be mute!

    Yes, heaven is thine; but this
      Is a world of sweets and sours;
      Our flowers are merely—flowers,
    And the shadow of thy perfect bliss
      Is the sunshine of ours.

    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.

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

[Illustration]


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 two-fold _Silence_—sea and shore—
      Body and soul. One dwells in lonely places,
      Newly with grass o’ergrown; some solemn graces,
    Some human memories and tearful lore,
    Render him terrorless: his name’s “No More.”
    He is the corporate Silence: dread him not!
      No power hath he of evil in himself;
    But should some urgent fate (untimely lot!)
      Bring thee to meet his shadow (nameless elf,
    That haunteth the lone regions where hath trod
    No foot of man), commend thyself to God!

[Illustration]


TO ZANTE.

    Fair isle, that from the fairest of all flowers,
      Thy gentlest of all gentle names dost take!
    How many memories of what radiant hours
      At sight of thee and thine at once awake!
    How many scenes of what departed bliss!
      How many thoughts of what entombèd hopes!
    How many visions of a maiden that is
      No more—no more upon thy verdant slopes!
    _No more!_ alas, that magical sad sound
      Transforming all! Thy charms shall please _no more_—
    Thy memory _no more_! Accursèd ground
      Henceforth I hold thy flower-enamelled shore,
    O hyacinthine isle! O purple Zante!
      “Isola d’oro! Fior di Levante!”

[Illustration]


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.

[Illustration]


BRIDAL BALLAD.

    The ring is on my hand,
      And the wreath is on my brow;
    Satins and jewels grand
    Are all at my command,
      And I am happy now.

    And my lord he loves me well;
      But, when first he breathed his vow,
    I felt my bosom swell—
    For the words rang as a knell,
    And the voice seemed _his_ who fell
    In the battle down the dell,
      And who is happy now.

    But he spoke to reassure me,
      And he kissed my pallid brow,
    While a reverie came o’er me,
    And to the church-yard bore me,
    And I sighed to him before me,
    Thinking him dead D’Elormie,
      “Oh, I am happy now!”

    And thus the words were spoken,
      And thus the plighted vow;
    And though my faith be broken,
    And though my heart be broken,
    Behold the golden token
      That _proves_ me happy now!

    Would God I could awaken!
      For I dream I know not how,
    And my soul is sorely shaken
    Lest an evil step be taken,—
    Lest the dead who is forsaken
      May not be happy now.


[Illustration]


THE HAUNTED PALACE.

    In the greenest of our valleys
      By good angels tenanted,
    Once a fair and stately palace—
      Radiant palace—reared its head.
    In the monarch Thought’s dominion—
      It stood there!
    Never seraph spread a pinion
      Over fabric half so fair!

    Banners yellow, glorious, golden,
      On its roof did float and flow,
    (This—all this—was in the olden
      Time long ago,)
    And every gentle air that dallied,
      In that sweet day,
    Along the ramparts plumed and pallid,
      A wingèd odour went away.

    Wanderers in that happy valley,
      Through two luminous windows, saw
    Spirits moving musically,
      To a lute’s well-tunèd law,
    Round about a throne where, sitting
      (Porphyrogene!)
    In state his glory well befitting,
      The ruler of the realm was seen.

    And all with pearl and ruby glowing
      Was the fair palace-door,
    Through which came flowing, flowing, flowing,
      And sparkling evermore,
    A troop of Echoes, whose sweet duty
      Was but to sing,
    In voices of surpassing beauty,
      The wit and wisdom of their king.

    But evil things, in robes of sorrow,
      Assailed the monarch’s high estate.
    (Ah, let us mourn!—for never morrow
      Shall dawn upon him desolate!)
    And round about his home, the glory
      That blushed and bloomed
    Is but a dim-remembered story
      Of the old time entombed.

    And travellers now, within that valley,
      Through the red-litten windows see
    Vast forms, that move fantastically
      To a discordant melody,
    While, like a ghastly rapid river,
      Through the pale door
    A hideous throng rush out for ever
      And laugh—but smile no more.

[Illustration]

[Illustration]


EULALIE.

                          I dwelt alone
                          In a world of moan,
                    And my soul was a stagnant tide,
    Till the fair and gentle Eulalie became my blushing bride—
    Till the yellow-haired young Eulalie became my smiling bride.

                          Ah, less—less bright
                          The stars of the night
                    Than the eyes of the radiant girl!
                          And never a flake
                          That the vapour can make
                    With the moon-tints of purple and pearl,
    Can vie with the modest Eulalie’s most unregarded curl—
    Can compare with the bright-eyed Eulalie’s most humble and careless
         curl.

                          Now Doubt—now Pain
                          Come never again,
                    For her soul gives me sigh for sigh,
                          And all day long
                          Shines, bright and strong,
                    Astarté within the sky,
    While ever to her dear Eulalie upturns her matron eye—
    While ever to her young Eulalie upturns her violet eye.

[Illustration]


TO F——.

    Beloved! amid the earnest woes
      That crowd around my earthly path—
    (Drear path, alas! where grows
    Not even one lonely rose)—
      My soul at least a solace hath
    In dreams of thee, and therein knows
    An Eden of bland repose.

    And thus thy memory is to me
      Like some enchanted far-off isle
    In some tumultuous sea—
    Some ocean throbbing far and free
      With storms—but where meanwhile
    Serenest skies continually
      Just o’er that one bright island smile.

[Illustration]


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.

[Illustration]


DREAM-LAND.

    By a route obscure and lonely,
        Haunted by ill angels only,
        Where an Eidolon, named Night,
        On a black throne reigns upright,
        I have reached these lands but newly
        From an ultimate dim Thule—
    From a wild weird clime that lieth, sublime,
          Out of SPACE—out of TIME.

        Bottomless vales and boundless floods,
        And chasms, and caves, and Titan woods,
        With forms that no man can discover
        For the dews that drip all over;
        Mountains toppling evermore
        Into seas without a shore;
        Seas that restlessly aspire,
        Surging, unto skies of fire;
        Lakes that endlessly outspread
        Their lone waters—lone and dead,—
        Their still waters—still and chilly
        With the snows of the lolling lily.
        By the lakes that thus outspread
        Their lone waters, lone and dead,—
        Their sad waters, sad and chilly
        With the snows of the lolling lily,—
        By the mountains—near the river
        Murmuring lowly, murmuring ever,—
        By the grey woods,—by the swamp
        Where the toad and the newt encamp,—
        By the dismal tarns and pools
            Where dwell the Ghouls,—
        By each spot the most unholy —
        In each nook most melancholy,—
        There the traveller meets aghast
        Sheeted Memories of the Past—
        Shrouded forms that start and sigh
        As they pass the wanderer by—
        White-robed forms of friends long given,
        In agony, to the Earth—and Heaven.
        For the heart whose woes are legion
        ’Tis a peaceful, soothing region—
        For the spirit that walks in shadow
        ’Tis—oh, ’tis an Eldorado!

[Illustration]

        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.


HYMN.

    At morn—at noon—at twilight dim—
          Maria! thou hast heard my hymn!
          In joy and woe—in good and ill—
          Mother of God, be with me still!
      When the Hours flew brightly by,
      And not a cloud obscured the sky,
    My soul, lest it should truant be,
    Thy grace did guide to thine and thee;
    Now, when storms of Fate o’ercast
    Darkly my Present and my Past,
    Let my Future radiant shine
    With sweet hopes of thee and thine!

[Illustration]

[Illustration]


THE SLEEPER.

    At midnight, in the month of June,
    I stand beneath the mystic moon.
    An opiate vapour, dewy, dim,
    Exhales from out her golden rim,
    And, softly dripping, drop by drop,
    Upon the quiet mountain top,
    Steals drowsily and musically
    Into the universal valley.
    The rosemary nods upon the grave;
    The lily lolls upon the wave;
    Wrapping the fog about its breast,
    The ruin moulders into rest;
    Looking like Lethe, see! the lake
    A conscious slumber seems to take,
    And would not, for the world, awake.
    All Beauty sleeps!—and lo! where lies
    (Her casement open to the skies)
    Irene, with her Destinies!

    Oh, lady bright! can it be right—
    This window open to the night?
    The wanton airs, from the tree-top,
    Laughingly through the lattice drop—
    The bodiless airs, a wizard rout,
    Flit through thy chamber in and out,
    And wave the curtain canopy
    So fitfully—so fearfully—
    Above the close and fringed lid
    ’Neath which thy slumb’ring soul lies hid,
    That, o’er the floor and down the wall,
    Like ghosts the shadows rise and fall!
    Oh, lady dear, hast thou no fear?
    Why and what art thou dreaming here?
    Sure thou art come o’er far-off seas,
    A wonder to these garden trees!
    Strange is thy pallor! strange thy dress!
    Strange, above all, thy length of tress,
    And this all solemn silentness!

    The lady sleeps. Oh, may her sleep,
    Which is enduring, so be deep!
    Heaven have her in its sacred keep!
    This chamber changed for one more holy,
    This bed for one more melancholy,
    I pray to God that she may lie
    For ever with unopened eye,
    While the dim sheeted ghosts go by!

    My love, she sleeps! Oh, may her sleep
    As it is lasting, so be deep!
    Soft may the worms about her creep!
    Far in the forest, dim and old,
    For her may some tall vault unfold—
    Some vault that oft hath flung its black
    And winged panels fluttering back,
    Triumphant, o’er the crested palls,
    Of her grand family funerals—
    Some sepulchre, remote, alone,
    Against whose portal she hath thrown,
    In childhood, many an idle stone—
    Some tomb from out whose sounding door
    She ne’er shall force an echo more,
    Thrilling to think, poor child of sin!
    It was the dead who groaned within.


FOR ANNIE.

    Thank Heaven! the crisis—
      The danger is past,
    And the lingering illness
      Is over at last—
    And the fever called “Living”
      Is conquered at last.

    Sadly, I know
      I am shorn of my strength,
    And no muscle I move
      As I lie at full length—
    But no matter!—I feel
      I am better at length.

    And I rest so composedly,
      Now, in my bed,
    That any beholder
      Might fancy me dead—
    Might start at beholding me,
      Thinking me dead.

    The moaning and groaning,
      The sighing and sobbing,
    Are quieted now,
      With that horrible throbbing
    At heart:—ah, that horrible,
      Horrible throbbing!

    The sickness—the nausea—
      The pitiless pain—
    Have ceased, with the fever
      That maddened my brain—
    With the fever called “Living”
      That burned in my brain.

    And oh! of all tortures
      _That_ torture the worst
    Has abated—the terrible
      Torture of thirst
    For the naphthaline river
      Of Passion accurst:—
    I have drunk of a water
      That quenches all thirst:—

[Illustration]

    Of a water that flows,
      With a lullaby sound,
    From a spring but a very few
      Feet under ground—
    From a cavern not very far
      Down under ground.

    And ah! let it never
      Be foolishly said
    That my room it is gloomy
      And narrow my bed;
    For man never slept
      In a different bed—
    And, to _sleep_, you must slumber
      In just such a bed.

    My tantalized spirit
      Here blandly reposes,
    Forgetting, or never
      Regretting its roses—
    Its old agitations
      Of myrtles and roses:

    For now, while so quietly
      Lying, it fancies
    A holier odour
      About it, of pansies—
    A rosemary odour,
      Commingled with pansies—
    With rue and the beautiful
      Puritan pansies.

    And so it lies happily,
      Bathing in many
    A dream of the truth
      And the beauty of Annie—
    Drowned in a bath
      Of the tresses of Annie.

    She tenderly kissed me,
      She fondly caressed,
    And then I fell gently
      To sleep on her breast—
    Deeply to sleep
      From the heaven of her breast.

    When the light was extinguished,
      She covered me warm,
    And she prayed to the angels
      To keep me from harm—
    To the queen of the angels
      To shield me from harm.

    And I lie so composedly,
      Now, in my bed,
    (Knowing her love)
      That you fancy me dead—
    And I rest so contentedly,
      Now in my bed,
    (With her love at my breast)
      That you fancy me dead—
    That you shudder to look at me,
      Thinking me dead:—

    But my heart it is brighter
      Than all of the many
    Stars in the sky,
      For it sparkles with Annie—
    It glows with the light
      Of the love of my Annie—
    With the thought of the light
      Of the eyes of my Annie.

[Illustration]


ELDORADO.

            Gaily bedight,
            A gallant knight,
    In sunshine and in shadow,
            Had journeyed long,
            Singing a song,
    In search of Eldorado.

            But he grew old—
            This knight so bold—
    And o’er his heart a shadow
            Fell as he found
            No spot of ground
    That looked like Eldorado.

[Illustration]

        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!”

[Illustration]

[Illustration]


A DREAM WITHIN A DREAM.

    Take this kiss upon the brow!
    And, in parting from you now,
    Thus much let me avow—
    You are not wrong, who deem
    That my days have been a dream;
    Yet if hope has flown away
    In a night, or in a day,
    In a vision, or in none,
    Is it therefore the less _gone_?
    _All_ that we see or seem
    Is but a dream within a dream.

    I stand amid the roar
    Of a surf-tormented shore,
    And I hold within my hand
    Grains of the golden sand—
    How few! yet how they creep
    Through my fingers to the deep,
    While I weep—while I weep!
    O God! can I not grasp
    Them with a tighter clasp?
    O God! can I not save
    _One_ from the pitiless wave?
    Is _all_ that we see or seem
    But a dream within a dream?

[Illustration]


THE CITY IN THE SEA.

    Lo! Death has reared himself a throne
    In a strange city lying alone
    Far down within the dim West,
    Where the good and the bad and the worst and the best
    Have gone to their eternal rest.
    There shrines and palaces and towers
    (Time-eaten towers that tremble not!)
    Resemble nothing that is ours.
    Around, by lifting winds forgot,
    Resignedly beneath the sky
    The melancholy waters lie.

    No rays from the holy heaven come down
    On the long night-time of that town;
    But light from out the lurid sea
    Streams up the turrets silently—
    Gleams up the pinnacles far and free—
    Up domes—up spires—up kingly halls—
    Up fanes—up Babylon-like walls—
    Up shadowy long-forgotten bowers
    Of sculptured ivy and stone flowers—
    Up many and many a marvellous shrine
    Whose wreathèd friezes intertwine
    The viol, the violet, and the vine.
    Resignedly beneath the sky
    The melancholy waters lie.
    So blend the turrets and shadows there
    That all seem pendulous in air,
    While from a proud tower in the town
    Death looks gigantically down.

[Illustration]

    There open fanes and gaping graves
    Yawn level with the luminous waves;
    But not the riches there that lie
    In each idol’s diamond eye—
    Not the gaily-jewelled dead
    Tempt the waters from their bed;
    For no ripples curl, alas!
    Along that wilderness of glass—
    No swellings tell that winds may be
    Upon some far-off happier sea—
    No heavings hint that winds have been
    On seas less hideously serene.

    But lo, a stir is in the air!
    The wave—there is a movement there!
    As if the towers had thrust aside,
    In slightly sinking, the dull tide—
    As if their tops had feebly given
    A void within the filmy heaven.
    The waves have now a redder glow—
    The hours are breathing faint and low—
    And when, amid no earthly moans,
    Down, down that town shall settle hence,
    Hell, rising from a thousand thrones,
    Shall do it reverence.




SCENES FROM “POLITIAN;”

AN UNPUBLISHED DRAMA.


[Illustration]


I.

ROME.—_A Hall in a Palace._ ALESSANDRA _and_ CASTIGLIONE.

          ALESSANDRA.
    Thou art sad, Castiglione.

          CASTIGLIONE.
                              Sad!—not I.
    Oh, I’m the happiest, happiest man in Rome!
    A few days more, thou knowest, my Alessandra,
    Will make thee mine. Oh, I am very happy!

          ALESSANDRA.
    Methinks thou hast a singular way of showing
    Thy happiness!—what ails thee, cousin of mine?
    Why didst thou sigh so deeply?

          CASTIGLIONE.
                                    Did I sigh?
    I was not conscious of it. It is a fashion,
    A silly—a most silly fashion I have
    When I am _very_ happy. Did I sigh?      [_Sighing._

          ALESSANDRA.
    Thou didst. Thou art not well. Thou hast indulged
    Too much of late, and I am vexed to see it.
    Late hours and wine, Castiglione,—these
    Will ruin thee! thou art already altered—
    Thy looks are haggard—nothing so wears away
    The constitution as late hours and wine.

          CASTIGLIONE [_musing_].
    Nothing, fair cousin, nothing—not even deep sorrow—
    Wears it away like evil hours and wine.
    I will amend.

          ALESSANDRA.
                  Do it! I would have thee drop
    Thy riotous company, too—fellows low born—
    Ill suit the like with old Di Broglio’s heir
    And Alessandra’s husband.

          CASTIGLIONE.
    I will drop them.

          ALESSANDRA.
    Thou wilt—thou must. Attend thou also more
    To thy dress and equipage—they are over plain
    For thy lofty rank and fashion—much depends
    Upon appearances.

          CASTIGLIONE.
                   I’ll see to it.

          ALESSANDRA.
    Then see to it!—pay more attention, Sir,
    To a becoming carriage—much thou wantest
    In dignity.

          CASTIGLIONE.
                Much, much, oh much I want
    In proper dignity.

[Illustration]

          ALESSANDRA [_haughtily_].
                      Thou mockest me, sir!

          CASTIGLIONE [_abstractedly_].
    Sweet, gentle Lalage!

          ALESSANDRA.
                          Heard I aright?
    I speak to him—he speaks of Lalage!
    Sir Count! [_Places her hand on his shoulder._]
        What, art thou dreaming? he’s not well!
    What ails thee, Sir?

          CASTIGLIONE [_starting_].
                          Cousin! fair cousin!—madam!
    I crave thy pardon—indeed I am not well—
    Your hand from off my shoulder, if you please.
    This air is most oppressive!—Madam—the Duke!

              _Enter_ DI BROGLIO.

          DI BROGLIO.
    My son, I’ve news for thee!—hey?—what’s the matter?

                           [_Observing_ ALESSANDRA.

    I’ the pouts? Kiss her, Castiglione! kiss her,
    You dog! and make it up, I say, this minute!
    I’ve news for you both. Politian is expected
    Hourly in Rome—Politian, Earl of Leicester!
    We’ll have him at the wedding. ’Tis his first visit
    To the imperial city.

          ALESSANDRA.
                          What! Politian
    Of Britain, Earl of Leicester?

          DI BROGLIO.
                                    The same, my love.
    We’ll have him at the wedding. A man quite young
    In years, but grey in fame. I have not seen him,
    But Rumour speaks of him as of a prodigy
    Pre-eminent in arts, and arms, and wealth,
    And high descent. We’ll have him at the wedding.

          ALESSANDRA.
    I have heard much of this Politian.
    Gay, volatile, and giddy—is he not?
    And little given to thinking.

          DI BROGLIO.
                                Far from it, love.
    No branch, they say, of all philosophy
    So deep abstruse he has not mastered it.
    Learned as few are learned.

          ALESSANDRA.
                            ’Tis very strange!
    I have known men have seen Politian
    And sought his company. They speak of him
    As of one who entered madly into life,
    Drinking the cup of pleasure to the dregs.

          CASTIGLIONE.
    Ridiculous! Now, _I_ have seen Politian,
    And know him well—nor learned nor mirthful he.
    He is a dreamer and a man shut out
    From common passions.

          DI BROGLIO.
                          Children, we disagree.
    Let us go forth and taste the fragrant air
    Of the garden. Did I dream, or did I hear
    Politian was a _melancholy_ man?      [_Exeunt._

[Illustration]

[Illustration]


II.

ROME.—_A Lady’s apartment, with a window open and looking into a
garden._ LALAGE, _in deep mourning, reading at a table on which lie
some books and a hand mirror. In the background_ JACINTA (_a servant
maid_) _leans carelessly upon a chair_.

          LALAGE.

     Jacinta! is it thou?

          JACINTA [_pertly_].
                     Yes, Ma’am, I’m here.

          LALAGE.
    I did not know, Jacinta, you were in waiting.
    Sit down!—let not my presence trouble you—
    Sit down!—for I am humble, most humble.

          JACINTA [_aside_].
    ’Tis time.

    [JACINTA _seats herself in a side-long manner upon the
         chair, resting her elbows upon the back, and regarding her
         mistress with a contemptuous look_. LALAGE
         _continues to read_.

          LALAGE.
    “It in another climate, so he said,
     Bore a bright golden flower, but not i’ this soil!”

                [_Pauses—turns over some leaves, and resumes._

    “No lingering winters there, nor snow, nor shower—
    But Ocean ever to refresh mankind
    Breathes the shrill spirit of the western wind.”
    Oh, beautiful!—most beautiful!—how like
    To what my fevered soul doth dream of Heaven!
    O happy land! [_Pauses._] She died!—the maiden died!
    O still more happy maiden who couldst die!
    Jacinta!

    [JACINTA _returns no answer, and_ LALAGE
         _presently resumes_.

             Again!—a similar tale
    Told of a beauteous dame beyond the sea!
    Thus speaketh one Ferdinand in the words of the play—
    “She died full young”—one Bossola answers him—
    “I think not so—her infelicity
    Seemed to have years too many”—Ah luckless lady!
    Jacinta!

                                     [_Still no answer._

             Here’s a far sterner story,
    But like—oh, very like in its despair—
    Of that Egyptian queen, winning so easily
    A thousand hearts—losing at length her own.
    She died. Thus endeth the history—and her maids
    Lean over her and weep—two gentle maids
    With gentle names—Eiros and Charmion!
    Rainbow and Dove!——Jacinta!

          JACINTA [_pettishly_].
                             Madam, what _is_ it?

          LALAGE.
    Wilt thou, my good Jacinta, be so kind
    As go down in the library and bring me
    The Holy Evangelists?

          JACINTA.
                    Pshaw!
                                       [_Exit._

          LALAGE.
                                 If there be balm
    For the wounded spirit in Gilead, it is there!
    Dew in the night-time of my bitter trouble
    Will there be found—“dew sweeter far than that
    Which hangs like chains of pearl on Hermon hill.”

        _Re-enter_ JACINTA, _and throws a volume on the table_.

          JACINTA.
    There, Ma’am, ’s the book. Indeed she is very troublesome.
                                                [_Aside._

          LALAGE [_astonished_].
    What didst thou say, Jacinta? Have I done aught
    To grieve thee or to vex thee?—I am sorry.
    For thou hast served me long, and ever been
    Trustworthy and respectful.
                                   [_Resumes her reading._

          JACINTA.
                            I can’t believe
    She has any more jewels—no—no—she gave me all.  [_Aside._

          LALAGE.
    What didst thou say, Jacinta? Now I bethink me
    Thou hast not spoken lately of thy wedding.
    How fares good Ugo?—and when is it to be?
    Can I do aught?—is there no farther aid
    Thou needest, Jacinta?

          JACINTA.
                           Is there no _farther_ aid!
    That’s meant for me. [_Aside._] I’m sure, Madam, you need not
    Be always throwing those jewels in my teeth.

          LALAGE.
    Jewels! Jacinta,—now indeed, Jacinta,
    I thought not of the jewels.

          JACINTA.
                                 Oh! perhaps not!
    But then I might have sworn it. After all,
    There’s Ugo says the ring is only paste,
    For he’s sure the Count Castiglione never
    Would have given a real diamond to such as you;
    And at the best I’m certain, Madam, you cannot
    Have use for jewels _now_. But I might have sworn it.   [_Exit._

    [LALAGE _bursts into tears, and leans her head upon the
         table—after a short pause raises it_.

          LALAGE.
    Poor Lalage!—and is it come to this?
    Thy servant maid!—but courage!—’tis but a viper
    Whom thou hast cherished to sting thee to the soul!
                                 [_Taking up the mirror._
    Ha! here at least’s a friend—too much a friend
    In earlier days—a friend will not deceive thee.
    Fair mirror and true! now tell me (for thou canst)
    A tale—a pretty tale—and heed thou not
    Though it be rife with woe. It answers me.
    It speaks of sunken eyes, and wasted cheeks,
    And Beauty long deceased—remembers me
    Of Joy departed—Hope, the Seraph Hope,
    Inurned and entombed!—now, in a tone
    Low, sad, and solemn, but most audible,
    Whispers of early grave untimely yawning
    For ruined maid. Fair mirror and true!—thou liest not!
    _Thou_ hast no end to gain—no heart to break—
    Castiglione lied who said he loved——
    Thou true—he false!—false!—false!

    [_While she speaks, a_ MONK _enters her apartment,
          and approaches unobserved_.

          MONK.
                                         Refuge thou hast,
    Sweet daughter! in Heaven. Think of eternal things;
    Give up thy soul to penitence, and pray!

          LALAGE [_arising hurriedly_].
    I _cannot_ pray!—My soul is at war with God!
    The frightful sounds of merriment below
    Disturb my senses—go! I cannot pray—
    The sweet airs from the garden worry me!
    Thy presence grieves me—go!—thy priestly raiment
    Fills me with dread—thy ebony crucifix
    With horror and awe!

[Illustration]

          MONK.
                Think of thy precious soul!

          LALAGE.
    Think of my early days!—think of my father
    And mother in heaven! think of our quiet home,
    And the rivulet that ran before the door!
    Think of my little sisters!—think of them!
    And think of me!—think of my trusting love
    And confidence—his vows—my ruin—think—think
    Of my unspeakable misery!—begone!
    Yet stay! yet stay!—what was it thou saidst of prayer
    And penitence? Didst thou not speak of faith
    And vows before the Throne?

          MONK.
                        I did.

          LALAGE.
                                       ’Tis well.
    There _is_ a vow were fitting should be made—
    A sacred vow, imperative, and urgent,
    A solemn vow!

          MONK.
               Daughter, this zeal is well!

          LALAGE.
    Father, this zeal is anything but well!
    Hast thou a crucifix fit for this thing?
    A crucifix whereon to register
    This sacred vow?
                      [_He hands her his own._
                Not that—Oh! no!—no!—no!

                      [_Shuddering._

    Not that! Not that!—I tell thee, holy man,
    Thy raiments and thy ebony cross affright me!
    Stand back! I have a crucifix myself,—
    _I_ have a crucifix! Methinks ’twere fitting
    The deed—the vow—the symbol of the deed—
    And the deed’s register should tally, father!
           [_Draws a cross-handled dagger, and raises it on high._
    Behold the cross wherewith a vow like mine
    Is written in heaven!

          MONK.

                       Thy words are madness, daughter,
    And speak a purpose unholy—thy lips are livid—
    Thine eyes are wild—tempt not the wrath divine!
    Pause ere too late!—oh be not—be not rash!
    Swear not the oath—oh swear it not!

          LALAGE.
                             ’Tis sworn!

[Illustration]

[Illustration]


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 humours. Be thyself!
    Shake off the idle fancies that beset thee,
    And live, for now thou diest!

          POLITIAN.
                            Not so, Baldazzar!
         _Surely_ I live.

          BALDAZZAR.
                     Politian, it doth grieve me
    To see thee thus.

          POLITIAN.
                      Baldazzar, it doth grieve me
    To give thee cause for grief, my honoured friend.
    Command me, Sir! what wouldst thou have me do?
    At thy behest I will shake off that nature
    Which from my forefathers I did inherit,
    Which with my mother’s milk I did imbibe,
    And be no more Politian, but some other.
    Command me, Sir!

          BALDAZZAR.
                 To the field then—to the field—
    To the senate or the field.

          POLITIAN.
                              Alas! alas!
    There is an imp would follow me even there!
    There is an imp _hath_ followed me even there!
    There is——what voice was that?

          BALDAZZAR.
                                I heard it not.
    I heard not any voice except thine own,
    And the echo of thine own.

          POLITIAN.
                         Then I but dreamed.

          BALDAZZAR.
    Give not thy soul to dreams: the camp—the court
    Befit thee—Fame awaits thee—Glory calls—
    And her the trumpet-tongued thou wilt not hear
    In hearkening to imaginary sounds
    And phantom voices.

          POLITIAN.
                     It _is_ a phantom voice!
    Didst thou not hear it _then_?

          BALDAZZAR.
                                I heard it not.

          POLITIAN.
    Thou heardst it not!——Baldazzar, speak no more
    To me, Politian, of thy camps and courts.
    Oh! I am sick, sick, sick, even unto death,
    Of the hollow and high-sounding vanities
    Of the populous Earth! Bear with me yet awhile!
    We have been boys together—school-fellows—
    And now are friends—yet shall not be so long—
    For in the eternal city thou shalt do me
    A kind and gentle office, and a Power—
    A Power august, benignant and supreme—
    Shall then absolve thee of all farther duties
    Unto thy friend.

          BALDAZZAR.
                     Thou speakest a fearful riddle;
    I _will_ not understand.

          POLITIAN.
                           Yet now as Fate
    Approaches, and the Hours are breathing low,
    The sands of Time are changed to golden grains,
    And dazzle me, Baldazzar. Alas! alas!
    I _cannot_ die, having within my heart
    So keen a relish for the beautiful
    As hath been kindled within it. Methinks the air
    Is balmier now than it was wont to be—
    Rich melodies are floating in the winds—
    A rarer loveliness bedecks the earth—
    And with a holier lustre the quiet moon
    Sitteth in heaven.—Hist! hist! thou canst not say
    Thou hearest not _now_, Baldazzar?

          BALDAZZAR.
                                 Indeed I hear not.

          POLITIAN.
    Not hear it!—listen now—listen!—the faintest sound,
    And yet the sweetest that ear ever heard!
    A lady’s voice!—and sorrow in the tone!
    Baldazzar, it oppresses me like a spell!
    Again!—again!—how solemnly it falls
    Into my heart of hearts! that eloquent voice
    Surely I never heard—yet it were well
    Had I _but_ heard it with its thrilling tones
    In earlier days!

[Illustration]


          BALDAZZAR.
                     I myself hear it now.
    Be still!—the voice, if I mistake not greatly,
    Proceeds from yonder lattice—which you may see
    Very plainly through the window—it belongs,
    Does it not? unto this palace of the Duke.
    The singer is undoubtedly beneath
    The roof of his Excellency—and perhaps
    Is even that Alessandra of whom he spoke
    As the betrothed of Castiglione,
    His son and heir.

          POLITIAN.
                    Be still!—it comes again!

              _Voice_ [_very faintly_].

              “And is thy heart so strong
               As for to leave me thus,
               Who hath loved thee so long,
               In wealth and woe among?
               And is thy heart so strong
               As for to leave me thus?
                           Say nay—say nay!”

          BALDAZZAR.
    The song is English, and I oft have heard it
    In merry England—never so plaintively—
    Hist! hist! it comes again!

              _Voice_ [_more loudly_].

              “Is it so strong
               As for to leave me thus,
               Who hath loved thee so long,
               In wealth and woe among?
               And is thy heart so strong
               As for to leave me thus?
                           Say nay—say nay!”

          BALDAZZAR.
    ’Tis hushed, and all is still!

          POLITIAN.
                        All _is not_ still.

          BALDAZZAR.
                               Let us go down.

          POLITIAN.
                                     Go down, Baldazzar, go!

          BALDAZZAR.
    The hour is growing late—the Duke awaits us,—
    Thy presence is expected in the hall
    Below. What ails thee, Earl Politian?

              _Voice_ [_distinctly_].

              “Who hath loved thee so long,
               In wealth and woe among,
               And is thy heart so strong?
                           Say nay—say nay!”

          BALDAZZAR.
    Let us descend!—’tis time. Politian, give
    These fancies to the wind. Remember, pray,
    Your bearing lately savoured much of rudeness
    Unto the Duke. Arouse thee! and remember!

          POLITIAN.
    Remember? I do. Lead on! I _do_ remember.
                                           [_Going._
    Let us descend. Believe me, I would give,
    Freely would give, the broad lands of my earldom
    To look upon the face hidden by yon lattice—
    “To gaze upon that veiled face, and hear
    Once more that silent tongue.”

          BALDAZZAR.
                              Let me beg you, sir,
    Descend with me—the Duke may be offended.
    Let us go down, I pray you.

              _Voice_ [_loudly_].
                          “Say nay!—say nay!”

          POLITIAN [_aside_].
    ’Tis strange!—’tis very strange—methought the voice
    Chimed in with my desires and bade me stay!
                                    [_Approaching the window._
    Sweet voice! I heed thee, and will surely stay.
    Now be this Fancy, by Heaven, or be it Fate,
    Still will I not descend. Baldazzar, make
    Apology unto the Duke for me;
    I go not down to-night.

          BALDAZZAR.
                          Your lordship’s pleasure
    Shall be attended to. Good night, Politian.

          POLITIAN.
    Good night, my friend, good night.

[Illustration]

[Illustration]


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, _I love thee—love thee—love thee_;
    Thro’ good and ill—thro’ weal and woe I _love thee_.
    Not mother, with her first-born on her knee,
    Thrills with intenser love than I for thee.
    Not on God’s altar, in any time or clime,
    Burned there a holier fire than burneth now
    Within my spirit for _thee_. And do I love?
                                                 [_Arising._
    Even for thy woes I love thee—even for thy woes—
    Thy beauty and thy woes.

          LALAGE.
                             Alas, proud Earl,
    Thou dost forget thyself, remembering me!
    How, in thy father’s halls, among the maidens
    Pure and reproachless of thy princely line,
    Could the dishonoured Lalage abide?
    Thy wife, and with a tainted memory—
    My seared and blighted name, how would it tally
    With the ancestral honours of thy house,
    And with thy glory?

          POLITIAN.
                        Speak not to me of glory!
    I hate—I loathe the name; I do abhor
    The unsatisfactory and ideal thing.
    Art thou not Lalage, and I Politian?
    Do I not love—art thou not beautiful—
    What need we more? Ha! glory!—now speak not of it.
    By all I hold most sacred and most solemn—
    By all my wishes now—my fears hereafter—
    By all I scorn on earth and hope in heaven—
    There is no deed I would more glory in,
    Than in thy cause to scoff at this same glory
    And trample it under foot. What matters it—
    What matters it, my fairest, and my best,
    That we go down unhonoured and forgotten
    Into the dust—so we descend together.
    Descend together—and then—and then perchance——

          LALAGE.
    Why dost thou pause, Politian?

          POLITIAN.
                               And then perchance
    _Arise_ together, Lalage, and roam
    The starry and quiet dwellings of the blest,
    And still——

          LALAGE.
                Why dost thou pause, Politian?

          POLITIAN.
    And still _together—together_.

          LALAGE.
                                Now, Earl of Leicester!
    Thou _lovest_ me, and in my heart of hearts
    I feel thou lovest me truly.

          POLITIAN.
                             Oh, Lalage!
             [_Throwing himself upon his knee._
    And lovest thou _me_?

          LALAGE.
                          Hist! hush! within the gloom
    Of yonder trees methought a figure pass’d—
    A spectral figure, solemn, and slow, and noiseless—
    Like the grim shadow Conscience, solemn and noiseless.
                                     [_Walks across and returns._
    I was mistaken—’twas but a giant bough
    Stirred by the autumn wind, Politian!

          POLITIAN.
    My Lalage—my love! why art thou moved?
    Why dost thou turn so pale? Not Conscience’ self,
    Far less a shadow which thou likenest to it,
    Should shake the firm spirit thus. But the night wind
    Is chilly—and these melancholy boughs
    Throw over all things a gloom.

[Illustration]

          LALAGE.
                                   Politian!
    Thou speakest to me of love. Knowest thou the land
    With which all tongues are busy—a land new found—
    Miraculously found by one of Genoa—
    A thousand leagues within the golden west?
    A fairy-land of flowers, and fruit, and sunshine,
    And crystal lakes, and over-arching forests,
    And mountains, around whose towering summits the winds
    Of Heaven untrammelled flow—which air to breathe
    Is Happiness now, and will be Freedom hereafter
    In days that are to come?

          POLITIAN.
                              O, wilt thou—wilt thou
    Fly to that Paradise—my Lalage, wilt thou
    Fly thither with me? There Care shall be forgotten,
    And Sorrow shall be no more, and Eros be all.
    And life shall then be mine, for I will live
    For thee, and in thine eyes—and thou shalt be
    No more a mourner—but the radiant Joys
    Shall wait upon thee, and the angel Hope
    Attend thee ever; and I will kneel to thee
    And worship thee, and call thee my beloved,
    My own, my beautiful, my love, my wife,
    My all;—oh, wilt thou—wilt thou, Lalage,
    Fly thither with me?

          LALAGE.
                      A deed is to be done—
    Castiglione lives!

          POLITIAN.
                      And he shall die!
                                        [_Exit._

          LALAGE [_after a pause_].
    And—he—shall—die!——alas!
    Castiglione die? Who spoke the words?
    Where am I?—what was it he said?—Politian!
    Thou _art_ not gone—thou art not _gone_, Politian!
    I _feel_ thou art not gone—yet dare not look,
    Lest I behold thee not; thou _couldst_ not go
    With those words upon thy lips—O, speak to me!
    And let me hear thy voice—one word—one word,
    To say thou art not gone,—one little sentence,
    To say how thou dost scorn—how thou dost hate
    My womanly weakness. Ha! ha! thou _art_ not gone—
    O speak to me! I _knew_ thou wouldst not go!
    I knew thou wouldst not, couldst not, _durst_ not go.
    Villain, thou _art_ not gone—thou mockest me!
    And thus I clutch thee—thus!——He is gone, he is gone—
    Gone—gone. Where am I?——’tis well—’tis very well!
    So that the blade be keen—the blow be sure,
    ’Tis well, ’tis _very_ well—alas! alas!

[Illustration]

[Illustration]


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,
    O Azrael, yet awhile!—Prince of the Powers
    Of Darkness and the Tomb, O pity me!
    O pity me! let me not perish now,
    In the budding of my Paradisal Hope!
    Give me to live yet—yet a little while:
    ’Tis I who pray for life—I who so late
    Demanded but to die!—what sayeth the Count?

                        _Enter_ BALDAZZAR.

          BALDAZZAR.
    That, knowing no cause of quarrel or of feud
    Between the Earl Politian and himself,
    He doth decline your cartel.

          POLITIAN.
                              _What_ didst thou say?
    What answer was it you brought me, good Baldazzar?
    With what excessive fragrance the zephyr comes
    Laden from yonder bowers!—a fairer day,
    Or one more worthy Italy, methinks
    No mortal eyes have seen!—_what_ said the Count?

          BALDAZZAR.
    That he, Castiglione, not being aware
    Of any feud existing, or any cause
    Of quarrel between your lordship and himself,
    Cannot accept the challenge.

          POLITIAN.
                                 It is most true—
    All this is very true. When saw you, Sir,
    When saw you now, Baldazzar, in the frigid
    Ungenial Britain which we left so lately,
    A heaven so calm as this—so utterly free
    From the evil taint of clouds?—and he did _say_?

          BALDAZZAR.
    No more, my Lord, than I have told you, Sir
    The Count Castiglione will not fight,
    Having no cause for quarrel.

          POLITIAN.
                                 Now this is true—
    All very true. Thou art my friend, Baldazzar,
    And I have not forgotten it—thou’lt do me
    A piece of service; wilt thou go back and say
    Unto this man, that I, the Earl of Leicester,
    Hold him a villain?—thus much, I pr’ythee, say
    Unto the Count—it is exceeding just
    He should have cause for quarrel.

          BALDAZZAR.
    My lord!—my friend!——

          POLITIAN [_aside_].
    ’Tis he—he comes himself! [_aloud_] thou reasonest well.
    I know what thou wouldst say—not send the message—
    Well!—I will think of it—I will not send it.
    Now pr’ythee, leave me—hither doth come a person
    With whom affairs of a most private nature
    I would adjust.

          BALDAZZAR.
                    I go—to-morrow we meet,
    Do we not?—at the Vatican.

          POLITIAN.
                                At the Vatican.
                          [_Exit_ BALDAZZAR.

    _Enter_ CASTIGLIONE.

          CASTIGLIONE.
    The Earl of Leicester here!

          POLITIAN.
    I _am_ the Earl of Leicester, and thou seest,
    Dost thou not? that I am here.

          CASTIGLIONE.
                             My Lord, some strange,
    Some singular mistake—misunderstanding—
    Hath without doubt arisen: thou hast been urged
    Thereby, in heat of anger, to address
    Some words most unaccountable, in writing,
    To me, Castiglione; the bearer being
    Baldazzar, Duke of Surrey. I am aware
    Of nothing which might warrant thee in this thing,
    Having given thee no offence. Ha!—am I right?
    ’Twas a mistake?—undoubtedly—we all
    Do err at times.

          POLITIAN.
                     Draw, villain, and prate no more!

          CASTIGLIONE.
    Ha!—draw?—and villain? have at thee then at once,
    Proud Earl!
                                       [_Draws._

          POLITIAN [_drawing_].
                Thus to the expiatory tomb,
    Untimely sepulchre, I do devote thee
    In the name of Lalage!

    CASTIGLIONE [_letting fall his sword and recoiling to the
                  extremity of the stage_].

                                Of Lalage!
    Hold off—thy sacred hand!—avaunt, I say!
    Avaunt—I will not fight thee—indeed I dare not.

          POLITIAN.
    Thou wilt not fight with me didst say, Sir Count?
    Shall I be baffled thus?—now this is well;
    Didst say thou _darest_ not? Ha!

          CASTIGLIONE.
                I dare not—dare not—
    Hold off thy hand—with that beloved name
    So fresh upon thy lips I will not fight thee—
    I cannot—dare not.

          POLITIAN.
                        Now by my halidom
    I do believe thee!—coward, I do believe thee!

          CASTIGLIONE.
    Ha!—coward!—this may not be!

    [_Clutches his sword, and staggers towards_ POLITIAN,
         _but his purpose is changed before reaching him, and he falls
           upon his knee at the feet of the_ Earl.

                                   Alas! my Lord,
    It is—it is—most true. In such a cause
    I am the veriest coward. O pity me!

          POLITIAN [_greatly softened_].
    Alas!—I do—indeed I pity thee.

          CASTIGLIONE.
    And Lalage——

          POLITIAN.
                   _Scoundrel!—arise and die!_

          CASTIGLIONE.
    It needeth not be—thus—thus—O let me die
    Thus on my bended knee. It were most fitting
    That in this deep humiliation I perish.
    For in the fight I will not raise a hand
    Against thee, Earl of Leicester. Strike thou home—
                                          [_Baring his bosom._
    Here is no let or hindrance to thy weapon—
    Strike home. I _will not_ fight thee.

          POLITIAN.
              Now s’Death and Hell!
    Am I not—am I not sorely—grievously tempted
    To take thee at thy word? But mark me, Sir,
    Think not to fly me thus. Do thou prepare
    For public insult in the streets—before
    The eyes of the citizens. I’ll follow thee—
    Like an avenging spirit I’ll follow thee
    Even unto death. Before those whom thou lovest—
    Before all Rome I’ll taunt thee, villain,—I’ll taunt thee,
    Dost hear? with _cowardice_—thou _wilt not_ fight me?
    Thou liest! thou _shalt_!      [_Exit._

          CASTIGLIONE.
                           Now this indeed is just!
    Most righteous, and most just, avenging Heaven!

[Illustration]




POEMS WRITTEN IN YOUTH.


Private reasons—some of which have reference to the sin of plagiarism,
and others to the date of Tennyson’s first poems—have induced me, after
some hesitation, to republish these, the crude compositions of my
earliest boyhood. They are printed _verbatim_—without alteration from
the original edition—the date of which is too remote to be judiciously
acknowledged.

    E. A. P.

[Illustration]


AL AARAAF.[2]


PART I.

    O! 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—
    O! nothing earthly save the thrill
    Of melody in woodland rill—
    Or (music of the passion-hearted)
    Joy’s voice so peacefully departed
    That, like the murmur in the shell,
    Its echo dwelleth and will dwell—
    Oh, nothing of the dross of ours—
    Yet all the beauty—all the flowers
    That list our Love, and deck our bowers—
    Adorn yon world afar, afar—
    The wandering star.

      ’Twas a sweet time for Nesace—for there
    Her world lay lolling on the golden air,
    Near four bright suns—a temporary rest—
    An oasis in desert of the blest.
    Away—away—’mid seas of rays that roll
    Empyrean splendour o’er th’ unchained soul—
    The soul that scares (the billows are so dense)
    Can struggle to its destined eminence—
    To distant spheres, from time to time, she rode,
    And late to ours, the favoured one of God—
    But, now, the ruler of an anchored realm,
    She throws aside the sceptre—leaves the helm,
    And, amid incense and high spiritual hymns,
    Laves in quadruple light her angel limbs.

      Now happiest, loveliest in yon lovely Earth,
    Whence sprang the “Idea of Beauty” into birth,
    (Falling in wreaths thro’ many a startled star,
    Like woman’s hair ’mid pearls, until, afar,
    It lit on hills Achaian, and there dwelt)
    She looked into Infinity—and knelt.
    Rich clouds, for canopies, about her curled—
    Fit emblems of the model of her world—
    Seen but in beauty—not impeding sight
    Of other beauty glittering thro’ the light—
    A wreath that twined each starry form around,
    And all the opaled air in colour bound.

      All hurriedly she knelt upon a bed
    Of flowers: of lilies such as reared the head
    On the fair Capo Deucato,[3] and sprang
    So eagerly around about to hang
    Upon the flying footsteps of——deep pride—
    Of her[4] who loved a mortal—and so died.
    The Sephalica, budding with young bees,
    Upreared its purple stem around her knees:
    And gemmy flower,[5] of Trebizond misnamed—
    Inmate of highest stars, where erst it shamed
    All other loveliness: its honied dew
    (The fabled nectar that the heathen knew),

[Illustration]

    Deliriously sweet, was dropp’d from heaven,
    And fell on gardens of the unforgiven
    In Trebizond—and on a sunny flower
    So like its own above that, to this hour,
    It still remaineth, torturing the bee
    With madness, and unwonted reverie:
    In heaven, and all its environs, the leaf
    And blossom of the fairy plant, in grief
    Disconsolate linger—grief that hangs her head,
    Repenting follies that full long have fled,
    Heaving her white breast to the balmy air,
    Like guilty beauty, chastened, and more fair:
    Nyctanthes too, as sacred as the light
    She fears to perfume, perfuming the night:
    And Clytia[6] pondering between many a sun,
    While pettish tears adown her petals run:
    And that aspiring flower[7] that sprang on Earth—
    And died, ere scarce exalted into birth,
    Bursting its odorous heart in spirit to wing
    Its way to heaven, from garden of a king:
    And Valisnerian lotus[8] thither flown
    From struggling with the waters of the Rhone:
    And thy most lovely purple perfume,[9] Zante!
    Isola d’oro!—Fior di Levante!
    And the Nelumbo bud that floats for ever;
    With Indian Cupid[10] down the holy river—
    Fair flowers, and fairy! to whose care is given
    To bear[11] the Goddess’ song, in odours, up to heaven:

        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
          And with pain that shall not part—
        Who livest—_that_ we know—
          In Eternity—we feel—
        But the shadow of whose brow
          What spirit shall reveal?
        Tho’ the beings whom thy Nesace,
          Thy messenger hath known,
        Have dreamed for thy Infinity
          A model[12] of their own—
        Thy will is done, O God!
          The star hath ridden high
        Thro’ many a tempest, but she rode
          Beneath thy burning eye;
        And here, in thought, to thee—
          In thought that can alone
        Ascend thy empire and so be
          A partner of thy throne—
        By winged Fantasy,[13]
          My embassy is given,
        Till secrecy shall knowledge be
          In the environs of Heaven.”

    She ceased—and buried then her burning cheek
    Abashed, amid the lilies there, to seek
    A shelter from the fervour of His eye;
    For the stars trembled at the Deity.
    She stirred not—breathed not—for a voice was there
    How solemnly pervading the calm air!
    A sound of silence on the startled ear
    Which dreamy poets name “the music of the sphere.”
    Ours is a world of words: Quiet we call
    “Silence”—which is the merest word of all.
    All Nature speaks, and e’en ideal things
    Flap shadowy sounds from visionary wings—
    But ah! not so when, thus, in realms on high
    The eternal voice of God is passing by,
    And the red winds are withering in the sky!

      “What tho’ in worlds which sightless[14] cycles run,
    Linked to a little system, and one sun—
    Where all my love is folly, and the crowd
    Still think my terrors but the thunder-cloud,
    The storm, the earthquake, and the ocean-wrath—
    (Ah! will they cross me in my angrier path?)
    What tho’ in worlds which own a single sun
    The sands of Time grow dimmer as they run,
    Yet thine is my resplendency, so given
    To bear my secrets thro’ the upper heaven.
    Leave tenantless thy crystal home, and fly,
    With all thy train, athwart the moony sky—
    Apart—like fire-flies[15] in Sicilian night,
    And wing to other worlds another light!
    Divulge the secrets of thy embassy
    To the proud orbs that twinkle—and so be
    To ev’ry heart a barrier and a ban
    Lest the stars totter in the guilt of man!”

[Illustration]

      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 birth-place of young Beauty had no more.
    As sprang that yellow star from downy hours,
    Up rose the maiden from her shrine of flowers,
    And bent o’er sheeny mountain and dim plain
    Her way—but left not yet her Therasæan[16] reign.

[Illustration]

[Illustration]


PART II.

    High on a mountain of enamelled head—
    Such as the drowsy shepherd on his bed
    Of giant pasturage lying at his ease,
    Raising his heavy eyelid, starts and sees
    With many a muttered “hope to be forgiven”
    What time the moon is quadrated in heaven—
    Of rosy head, that towering far away
    Into the sunlit ether, caught the ray
    Of sunken suns at eve—at noon of night,
    While the moon danced with the fair stranger light—
    Upreared upon such height arose a pile
    Of gorgeous columns on th’ unburthened air,
    Flashing from Parian marble that twin smile
    Far down upon the wave that sparkled there,
    And nursled the young mountain in its lair.
    Of molten stars[17] their pavement, such as fall
    Thro’ the ebon air, besilvering the pall
    Of their own dissolution, while they die—
    Adorning then the dwellings of the sky.
    A dome, by linked light from heaven let down,
    Sat gently on these columns as a crown—
    A window of one circular diamond, there,
    Looked out above into the purple air,
    And rays from God shot down that meteor chain
    And hallowed all the beauty twice again,
    Save when, between th’ Empyrean and that ring,
    Some eager spirit flapped his dusky wing.
    But on the pillars seraph eyes have seen
    The dimness of this world: that greyish green
    That Nature loves the best for Beauty’s grave
    Lurked in each cornice, round each architrave—
    And every sculptured cherub thereabout,
    That from his marble dwelling peerèd out,
    Seemed earthly in the shadow of his niche—
    Achaian statues in a world so rich?
    Friezes from Tadmor and Persepolis[18]—
    From Balbec, and the stilly, clear abyss
    Of beautiful Gomorrah! O, the wave[19]
    Is now upon thee—but too late to save!

      Sound loves to revel in a summer night:
    Witness the murmur of the grey twilight
    That stole upon the ear, in Eyraco,[20]
    Of many a wild star-gazer long ago—
    That stealeth ever on the ear of him
    Who, musing, gazeth on the distance dim,
    And sees the darkness coming as a cloud—
    Is not its form—its voice—most palpable and loud?[21]

      But what is this?—it cometh—and it brings
    A music with it—’tis the rush of wings—
    A pause—and then a sweeping, falling strain,
    And Nesace is in her halls again.
    From the wild energy of wanton haste
      Her cheeks were flushing, and her lips apart;
    And zone that clung around her gentle waist
      Had burst beneath the heaving of her heart.
    Within the centre of that hall to breathe
    She paused and panted, Zanthe! all beneath,
    The fairy light that kissed her golden hair
    And longed to rest, yet could but sparkle there!

      Young flowers were whispering in melody[22]
    To happy flowers that night—and tree to tree;
    Fountains were gushing music as they fell
    In many a star-lit grove, or moon-lit dell;
    Yet silence came upon material things—
    Fair flowers, bright waterfalls and angel wings—
    And sound alone that from the spirit sprang
    Bore burthen to the charm the maiden sang:

        “’Neath blue-bell or streamer—
          Or tufted wild spray
        That keeps, from the dreamer,
          The moonbeam away[23]—
        Bright beings! that ponder,
          With half-closing eyes,
        On the stars, which your wonder
          Hath drawn from the skies,
        Till they glance thro’ the shade, and
          Come down to your brow
        Like——eyes of the maiden
          Who calls on you now—
        Arise! from your dreaming
          In violet bowers,
        To duty beseeming
          These star-litten hours—
        And shake from your tresses
          Encumbered with dew
        The breath of those kisses
          That cumber them too—
        (O! how, without you, Love!
          Could angels be blest?)
        Those kisses of true love
          That lulled ye to rest!
        Up!—shake from your wing
          Each hindering thing:
        The dew of the night—
          It would weigh down your flight
        And true love caresses—
          O! leave them apart!
        They are light on the tresses,
          But lead on the heart.

        “Ligeia! Ligeia!
          My beautiful one!
        Whose harshest idea
          Will to melody run,
        Oh! is it thy will
          On the breezes to toss?
        Or, capriciously still,
          Like the lone Albatross,[24]
        Incumbent on night
          (As she on the air)
        To keep watch with delight
          On the harmony there?

        “Ligeia! wherever
          Thy image may be,
        No magic shall sever
          Thy music from thee.
        Thou hast bound many eyes
          In a dreamy sleep—
        But the strains still arise
          Which _thy_ vigilance keep—
        The sound of the rain
          Which leaps down to the flower,
        And dances again
          In the rhythm of the shower—
        The murmur that springs[25]
          From the growing of grass
        Are the music of things—
          But are modelled, alas!—
        Away, then, my dearest,
          Oh! hie thee away
        To springs that lie clearest
          Beneath the moon-ray—
        To lone lake that smiles,
          In its dream of deep rest,
        At the many star-isles
          That enjewel its breast—
        Where wild flowers, creeping,
          Have mingled their shade,
        On its margin is sleeping
          Full many a maid—
        Some have left the cool glade, and
          Have slept with the bee[26]—
        Arouse them, my maiden,
          On moorland and lea—
        Go! breathe on their slumber,
          All softly in ear,
        The musical number
          They slumbered to hear—
        For what can awaken
          An angel so soon
        Whose sleep hath been taken
          Beneath the cold moon,
        As the spell which no slumber
          Of witchery may test,
        The rhythmical number
          Which lulled him to rest?”

[Illustration]

        Spirits in wing, and angels to the view,
        A thousand seraphs burst th’ Empyrean thro’,
        Young dreams still hovering on their drowsy flight—
        Seraphs in all but “Knowledge,” the keen light
        That fell, refracted, thro’ thy bounds, afar,
        O Death! from eye of God upon that star:
        Sweet was that error—sweeter still that death—
        Sweet was that error—e’en with _us_ the breath
        Of Science dims the mirror of our joy—
        To them ’twere the Simoom, and would destroy—
        For what (to them) availeth it to know
        That Truth is Falsehood—or that Bliss is Woe?
        Sweet was their death—with them to die was rife
        With the last ecstasy of satiate life—
        Beyond that death no immortality—
        But sleep that pondereth and is not “to be”—
        And there—oh! may my weary spirit dwell—
        Apart from Heaven’s Eternity—and yet how far from Hell![27]
        What guilty spirit, in what shrubbery dim,
        Heard not the stirring summons of that hymn?
        But two: they fell: for Heaven no grace imparts
        To those who hear not for their beating hearts.
        A maiden-angel and her seraph-lover—
        O! where (and ye may seek the wide skies over)
        Was Love, the blind, near sober Duty known?
        Unguided Love hath fallen—’mid “tears of perfect moan.”[28]

            He was a goodly spirit—he who fell:
            A wanderer by mossy-mantled well—
            A gazer on the lights that shine above—
            A dreamer in the moonbeam by his love:
            What wonder? for each star is eye-like there,
            And looks so sweetly down on Beauty’s hair—
            And they and ev’ry mossy spring were holy
            To his love-haunted heart and melancholy.
            The night had found (to him a night of woe)
            Upon a mountain crag, young Angelo—
            Beetling it bends athwart the solemn sky,
            And scowls on starry worlds that down beneath it lie.
            Here sat he with his love—his dark eye bent
            With eagle gaze along the firmament:
            Now turned it upon her—but ever then
            It trembled to the orb of Earth again.

            “Ianthe, dearest, see! how dim that ray!
            How lovely ’tis to look so far away!
            She seemed not thus upon that autumn eve
            I left her gorgeous halls—nor mourned to leave.
            That eve—that eve—I should remember well—
            The sun-ray dropped, in Lemnos, with a spell
            On th’ arabesque carving of a gilded hall
            Wherein I sat, and on the draperied wall—
            And on my eyelids—O the heavy light!
            How drowsily it weighed them into night!
            On flowers, before, and mist, and love they ran
            With Persian Saadi in his Gulistan:
            But O that light!—I slumber’d—Death, the while,
            Stole o’er my senses in that lovely isle,
            So softly that no single silken hair
            Awoke that slept—or knew that he was there.

    [Illustration]

            “The last spot of Earth’s orb I trod upon
            Was a proud temple called the Parthenon[29]—
            More beauty clung around her column’d wall
            Than e’en thy glowing bosom beats withal;”[30]
            And when old Time my wing did disenthral,
            Thence sprang I—as the eagle from his tower,
            And years I left behind me in an hour.
            What time upon her airy bounds I hung
            One half the garden of her globe was flung,
            Unrolling as a chart unto my view—
            Tenantless cities of the desert too!
            Ianthe, beauty crowded on me then,
            And half I wished to be again of men.”

            “My Angelo! and why of them to be?
            A brighter dwelling-place is here for thee—
            And greener fields than in yon world above,
            And woman’s loveliness—and passionate love.”

            “But, list, Ianthe! when the air so soft
            Failed, as my pennon’d spirit leapt aloft,[31]
            Perhaps my brain grew dizzy—but the world
            I left so late was into chaos hurled—
            Sprang from her station, on the winds apart,
            And rolled, a flame, the fiery heaven athwart.
            Methought, my sweet one, then I ceased to soar,
            And fell—not swiftly as I rose before,
            But with a downward, tremulous motion thro’
            Light, brazen rays, this golden star unto!
            Nor long the measure of my falling hours,
            For nearest of all stars was thine to ours—
            Dread star! that came, amid a night of mirth,
            A red Dædalion on the timid Earth.

            “We came—and to thy Earth—but not to us
            Be given our lady’s bidding to discuss:
            We came, my love; around, above, below,
            Gay fire-fly of the night we come and go,
            Nor ask a reason save the angel-nod
            _She_ grants to us, as granted by her God—
            But, Angelo, than thine grey Time unfurled
            Never his fairy wing o’er fairier world!
            Dim was its little disk, and angel eyes
            Alone could see the phantom in the skies,
            When first Al Aaraaf knew her course to be
            Headlong thitherward o’er the starry sea—
            But when its glory swelled upon the sky,
            As glowing Beauty’s bust beneath man’s eye,
            We paused before the heritage of men,
            And thy star trembled—as doth Beauty then!”

            Thus, in discourse, the lovers whiled away
            The night that waned and waned and brought no day.
            They fell: for Heaven to them no hope imparts
            Who hear not for the beating of their hearts.


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 jewelled skies,
      Albeit he soared with an undaunted wing?
    Hast thou not dragged Diana from her car?
      And driven the Hamadryad from the wood
    To seek a shelter in some happier star?
      Hast thou not torn the Naiad from her flood,
    The Elfin from the green grass, and from me
    The summer dream beneath the tamarind tree?

[Illustration]


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.

[Illustration]

[Illustration]


TAMERLANE.

                    I.
    Kind solace in a dying hour!
      Such, father, is not (now) my theme—
    I will not madly deem that power
        Of Earth may shrive me of the sin
        Unearthly pride hath revelled in—
      I have no time to dote or dream:
    You call it hope—that fire of fire!
      It is but agony of desire:
    If I _can_ hope—Oh God! I can—
      Its fount is holier—more divine—
    I would not call thee fool, old man,
      But such is not a gift of thine.

                    II.
    Know thou the secret of a spirit
      Bowed from its wild pride into shame.
    O yearning heart! I did inherit
      Thy withering portion with the fame,
    The searing glory which hath shone
    Amid the Jewels of my throne,
    Halo of Hell! and with a pain
    Not Hell shall make me fear again—
    O craving heart, for the lost flowers
    And sunshine of my summer hours!
    The undying voice of that dead time,
    With its interminable chime,
    Rings, in the spirit of a spell,
    Upon thy emptiness—a knell.

                  III.
    I have not always been as now:
    The fevered diadem on my brow
      I claimed and won usurpingly——
    Hath not the same fierce heirdom given
      Rome to the Cæsar—this to me?
        The heritage of a kingly mind,
    And a proud spirit which hath striven
        Triumphantly with human kind.

                    IV.
    On mountain soil I first drew life:
      The mists of the Taglay have shed
      Nightly their dews upon my head,
    And, I believe, the winged strife
    And tumult of the headlong air
    Have nestled in my very hair.

                    V.
    So late from Heaven—that dew—it fell
      (’Mid dreams of an unholy night)
    Upon me with the touch of Hell,
      While the red flashing of the light
    From clouds that hung, like banners, o’er,
      Appeared to my half-closing eye
      The pageantry of monarchy,
    And the deep trumpet-thunder’s roar
      Came hurriedly upon me, telling
        Of human battle, where my voice—
    My own voice, silly child!—was swelling
        (O! how my spirit would rejoice,
    And leap within me at the cry)
    The battle-cry of Victory!

                   VI.
    The rain came down upon my head
      Unsheltered—and the heavy wind
      Rendered me mad and deaf and blind.
    It was but man, I thought, who shed
      Laurels upon me: and the rush—
    The torrent of the chilly air
      Gurgled within my ear the crush
    Of empires—with the captive’s prayer—
    The hum of suitors—and the tone
    Of flattery round a sovereign’s throne.

                   VII.
    My passions, from that hapless hour,
      Usurped a tyranny which men
    Have deemed, since I have reached to power,
        My innate nature—be it so:
      But, father, there lived one who, then,
    Then—in my boyhood—when their fire
        Burned with a still intenser glow
    (For passion must, with youth, expire),
      E’en _then_ who knew this iron heart
      In woman’s weakness had a part.

                   VIII.
    I have no words—alas!—to tell
    The loveliness of loving well!
    Nor would I now attempt to trace
    The more than beauty of a face
    Whose lineaments, upon my mind,
    Are——shadows on th’ unstable wind;
    Thus I remember having dwelt
      Some page of early lore upon,
    With loitering eye, till I have felt
    The letters—with their meaning—melt
      To fantasies—with none.

                   IX.
    O, she was worthy of all love!
      Love as in infancy was mine—
    ’Twas such as angel minds above
      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 fire within, for light?

[Illustration]

                    X.
    We grew in age—and love—together—
      Roaming the forest, and the wild;
    My breast her shield in wintry weather—
      And, when the friendly sunshine smiled,
    And she would mark the opening skies,
    _I_ saw no Heaven—but in her eyes.

                    XI.
    Young Love’s first lesson is——the heart:
      For ’mid that sunshine, and those smiles,
    When, from our little cares apart,
      And laughing at her girlish wiles,
    I’d throw me on her throbbing breast,
      And pour my spirit out in tears—
    There was no need to speak the rest—
      No need to quiet any fears
    Of her—who asked no reason why,
    But turned on me her quiet eye!

                   XII.
    Yet _more_ than worthy of the love
    My spirit struggled with, and strove,
    When, on the mountain peak, alone,
    Ambition lent it a new tone—
    I had no being—but in thee:
      The world, and all it did contain
    In the earth—the air—the sea—
      Its joy—its little lot of pain
    That was new pleasure——the ideal,
      Dim, vanities of dreams by night—
    And dimmer nothings which were real—
      (Shadows—and a more shadowy light!)
    Parted upon their misty wings,
        And so, confusedly, became
        Thine image and—a name—a name!
    Two separate—yet most intimate things.

                  XIII.
    I was ambitious—have you known
      The passion, father? You have not:
    A cottager, I marked a throne
    Of half the world as all my own,
      And murmured at such lowly lot—
    But, just like any other dream,
      Upon the vapour of the dew
    My own had past, did not the beam
      Of beauty which did while it thro’
    The minute—the hour—the day—oppress
    My mind with double loveliness.

                   XIV.
    We walked together on the crown
    Of a high mountain which looked down
    Afar from its proud natural towers
      Of rock and forest, on the hills—
    The dwindled hills! begirt with bowers
      And shouting with a thousand rills.

                   XV.
    I spoke to her of power and pride,
      But mystically—is such guise
    That she might deem it nought beside
      The moment’s converse; in her eyes
    I read, perhaps too carelessly—
      A mingled feeling with my own—
    The flush on her bright cheek to me
      Seemed to become a queenly throne,
    Too well that I should let it be
      Light in the wilderness alone.

[Illustration]

                   XVI.
    I wrapped myself in grandeur then,
      And donned a visionary crown——
        Yet it was not that Fantasy
        Had thrown her mantle over me—
    But that, among the rabble—men,
      Lion ambition is chained down—
    And crouches to a keeper’s hand—
    Not so in deserts where the grand—
    The wild—the terrible conspire
    With their own breath to fan his fire.

                  XVII.
    Look round thee now on Samarcand!—
      Is she not queen of Earth? her pride
    Above all cities? in her hand
      Their destinies? in all beside
    Of glory which the world hath known
    Stands she not nobly and alone?
    Falling—her veriest stepping-stone
    Shall form the pedestal of a throne—
    And who her sovereign? Timour—he
      Whom the astonished people saw
    Striding o’er empires haughtily
      A diademed outlaw!

                 XVIII.
    O human love! thou spirit given,
    On Earth, of all we hope in Heaven!
    Which fall’st into the soul like rain
    Upon the Siroc-withered plain,
    And, failing in thy power to bless,
    But leav’st the heart a wilderness!
    Idea! which bindest life around
    With music of so strange a sound
    And beauty of so wild a birth—
    Farewell! for I have won the Earth.

                  XIX.
    When Hope, the eagle that towered, could see
      No cliff beyond him in the sky,
    His pinions were bent droopingly—
      And homeward turned his softened eye.
    ’Twas sunset: when the sun will part
    There comes a sullenness of heart
    To him who still would look upon
    The glory of the summer sun.
    That soul will hate the ev’ning mist
    So often lovely, and will list
    To the sound of the coming darkness (known
    To those whose spirits hearken) as one
    Who, in a dream of night, _would_ fly,
    But _cannot_, from a danger nigh.

                   XX.
    What tho’ the moon—the white moon
    Shed all the splendour of her noon,
    _Her_ smile is chilly—and _her_ beam,
    In that time of dreariness, will seem
    (So like you gather in your breath)
    A portrait taken after death.
    And boyhood is a summer sun
    Whose waning is the dreariest one—
    For all we live to know is known,
    And all we seek to keep hath flown—
    Let life, then, as the day-flower, fall
    With the noon-day beauty—which is all.

                   XXI.
    I reached my home—my home no more—
      For all had flown who made it so.
    I passed from out its mossy door,
      And, tho’ my tread was soft and low,
    A voice came from the threshold stone
    Of one whom I had earlier known—
    O, I defy thee, Hell, to show
    On beds of fire that burn below,
    An humbler heart—a deeper woe.

[Illustration]

                   XXII.
    Father, I firmly do believe—
      I _know_—for Death who comes for me
        From regions of the blest afar,
    Where there is nothing to deceive,
        Hath left his iron gate ajar,
      And rays of truth you cannot see
      Are flashing thro’ Eternity——
    I do believe that Eblis hath
    A snare in every human path—
    Else how, when in the holy grove
    I wandered of the idol, Love,
    Who daily scents his snowy wings
    With incense of burnt offerings
    From the most unpolluted things,
    Whose pleasant bowers are yet so riven
    Above with trelliced rays from Heaven
    No mote may shun—no tiniest fly—
    The lightning of his eagle eye—
    How was it that Ambition crept,
      Unseen, amid the revels there,
    Till growing bold, he laughed and leapt
      In the tangles of Love’s very hair?

[Illustration]

[Illustration]


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 enshrined
      Then desolately fall,
    O God! on my funereal mind
      Like starlight on a pall—

    Thy heart—_thy_ heart!—I wake and sigh,
      And sleep to dream till day
    Of the truth that gold can never buy—
      Of the baubles that it may.

[Illustration]


A DREAM.

    In visions of the dark night
      I have dreamed of joy departed—
    But a waking dream of life and light
      Hath left me broken-hearted.

    Ah! what is not a dream by day
      To him whose eyes are cast
    On things around him with a ray
      Turned back upon the past?

    That holy dream—that holy dream,
      While all the world were chiding,
    Hath cheered me as a lovely beam
      A lonely spirit guiding.

    What though that light, thro’ storm and night,
      So trembled from afar—
    What could there be more purely bright
      In Truth’s day-star?


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
    To while away—forbidden things!
    My heart would feel to be a crime
    Unless it trembled with the strings.

[Illustration]

[Illustration]

[Illustration]


FAIRY-LAND.

    Dim vales—and shadowy floods—
    And cloudy-looking woods,
    Whose forms we can’t discover
    For the tears that drip all over—
    Huge moons there wax and wane—
    Again—again—again—
    Every moment of the night—
    For ever changing places—
    And they put out the starlight
    With the breath from their pale faces.
    About twelve by the moon-dial
    One more filmy than the rest
    (A kind which, upon trial,
    They have found to be the best)
    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 buries them up quite
    In a labyrinth of light—
    And then, how deep!—O, deep!
    Is the passion of their sleep.
    In the morning they arise,
    And their moony covering
    Is soaring in the skies,
    With the tempests as they toss,
    Like——almost any thing—
    Or a yellow Albatross.
    They use that moon no more
    For the same end as before—
    Videlicet a tent—
    Which I think extravagant:
    Its atomies, however,
    Into a shower dissever,
    Of which those butterflies,
    Of Earth, who seek the skies,
    And so come down again,
    (Never-contented things!)
    Have brought a specimen
    Upon their quivering wings.

[Illustration]

[Illustration]


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 loneliness
    Of a wild lake, with black rock bound,
    And the tall pines that towered around.

    But when the Night had thrown her pall
    Upon that spot, as upon all,
    And the mystic wind went by
    Murmuring in melody—
    Then—ah then I would awake
    To the terror of the lone lake.

    Yet that terror was not fright,
    But a tremulous delight—
    A feeling not the jewelled mine
    Could teach or bribe me to define—
    Nor Love—although the Love were thine.

    Death was in that poisonous wave,
    And in its gulf a fitting grave
    For him who thence could solace bring
    To his lone imagining—
    Whose solitary soul could make
    An Eden of that dim lake.


SONG.

    I saw thee on thy bridal day—
      When a burning blush came o’er thee,
    Though happiness around thee lay,
      The world all love before thee:

    And in thine eye a kindling light
      (Whatever it might be)
    Was all on Earth my aching sight
      Of Loveliness could see.

    That blush, perhaps, was maiden shame—
      As such it well may pass—
    Though its glow hath raised a fiercer flame
      In the breast of him, alas!

    Who saw thee on that bridal day,
      When that deep blush _would_ come o’er thee,
    Though happiness around thee lay,
      The world all love before thee.


TO M. L. 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 unhallowed bed
    Lying down to die, have suddenly arisen
    At thy soft-murmured words, “Let there be light!”
    At the soft-murmured words that were fulfilled
    In the seraphic glancing of thine eyes—
    Of all who owe thee most—whose gratitude
    Nearest resembles worship—oh, remember
    The truest—the most fervently devoted,
    And think that these weak lines are written by him—
    By him who, as he pens them, thrills to think
    His spirit is communing with an angel’s.

[Illustration]


TO HELEN.

    Helen, thy beauty is to me
      Like those Nicéan barks of yore
    That gently, o’er a perfumed sea,
      The weary way-worn wanderer bore
      To his own native shore.

    On desperate seas long wont to roam,
      Thy hyacinth hair, thy classic face,
    Thy Naiad airs have brought me home
      To the glory that was Greece,
    And the grandeur that was Rome.

    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!

[Illustration]




NOTES TO AL AARAAF.




NOTES.


[Footnote 2: page 149. _Al Aaraaf._

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

[Footnote 3: P. 151. _On the fair Capo Deucato._

On Santa Maura—olim Deucadia.]

[Footnote 4: P. 151. _Of her who loved a mortal—and so died._}—Sappho.]

[Footnote 5: P. 152. _And gemmy flower, of Trebizond misnamed._

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

[Footnote 6: P. 153. _And Clytia pondering between many a sun._

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

[Footnote 7: P. 153. _And that aspiring flower that sprang on Earth._

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

[Footnote 8: P. 153. _And Valisnerian lotus thither flown._

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

[Footnote 9: P. 153. _And thy most lovely purple perfume, Zante!_}—The
Hyacinth.]

[Footnote 10: P. 154.

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

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

[Footnote 11: P. 154. _To bear the Goddess’ song, in odours, up to
heaven._

And golden vials full of odours which are the prayers of the
saints.—_Rev. St. John._]

[Footnote 12: P. 155. _A model of their own._

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

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

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

Among Milton’s minor poems are these lines:—

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

And afterwards,—

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

[Footnote 13: P. 155. _By winged Fantasy._

    Seltsamen Tochter Jovis
    Seinem Schosskinde
    Der Phantasie.—_Göthe._]

[Footnote 14: P. 156. _What tho’ in worlds which sightless cycles run._

Sightless—too small to be seen.—_Legge._]

[Footnote 15: P. 156. _Apart—like fire-flies in Sicilian night._

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

[Footnote 16: P. 158. _Her way—but left not yet her Therasæan reign._

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

[Footnote 17: P. 160.

    _Of molten stars their pavement, such as fall
    Thro’ the ebon air._

    Some star which, from the ruin’d roof
    Of shaked Olympus, by mischance, did fall.—_Milton._]

[Footnote 18: P. 161. _Friezes from Tadmor and Persepolis._

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

[Footnote 19: P. 161. _Of beautiful Gomorrah! O, the wave._

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

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

[Footnote 20: P. 161. _That stole upon the ear, in
Eyraco._}—Eyraco—Chaldæa.]

[Footnote 21: P. 161. _Is not its form—its voice—most palpable and
loud?_

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

[Footnote 22: P. 162. _Young flowers were whispering in melody._

Fairies use flowers for their charactery.—_Merry Wives of Windsor._]

[Footnote 23: P. 163. _The moonbeam away._

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

[Footnote 24: P. 164. _Like the lone Albatross._

The Albatross is said to sleep on the wing.]

[Footnote 25: PP. 165. _The murmur that springs._

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

[Footnote 26: P. 165. _Have slept with the bee._

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

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

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

[Footnote 27: P. 168. _Apart from Heaven’s Eternity—and yet how far
from Hell!_

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

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

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

[Footnote 28: P. 168. _Unguided Love hath fallen—’mid “tears of perfect
moan.”_

    There be tears of perfect moan
    Wept for thee in Helicon.—_Milton._]

[Footnote 29: P. 169. _Was a proud temple called the Parthenon._

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

[Footnote 30: P. 170. _Than e’en thy glowing bosom beats withal._

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

[Footnote 31: P. 171. _Failed, as my pennoned spirit leapt aloft._

Pennon—for pinion.—_Milton._]




THE POETIC PRINCIPLE.


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    I arise from dreams of thee
      In the first sweet sleep of night,
    When the winds are breathing low,
      And the stars are shining bright.
    I arise from dreams of thee,
      And a spirit in my feet
    Has led me—who knows how?—
      To thy chamber-window, sweet!

    The wandering airs they faint
      On the dark, the silent stream—
    The champak odours fail
      Like sweet thoughts in a dream;
    The nightingale’s complaint,
      It dies upon her heart,
    As I must die on thine,
      O, beloved as thou art!

    O, lift me from the grass!
      I die, I faint, I fail!
    Let thy love in kisses rain
      On my lips and eyelids pale.
    My cheek is cold and white, alas!
      My heart beats loud and fast:
    Oh! press it close to thine again,
      Where it will break at last!

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

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

    The shadows lay along Broadway,
      ’Twas near the twilight-tide—
    And slowly there a lady fair
      Was walking in her pride.
    Alone walk’d she: but, viewlessly,
      Walk’d spirits at her side.

    Peace charm’d the street beneath her feet,
      And Honour charm’d the air;
    And all astir look’d kind on her,
      And call’d her good as fair—
    For all God ever gave to her
      She kept with chary care.

    She kept with care her beauties rare
      From lovers warm and true—
    For her heart was cold to all but gold,
      And the rich came not to woo—
    But honour’d well are charms to sell,
      If priests the selling do.

    Now walking there was one more fair—
      A slight girl, lily-pale;
    And she had unseen company
      To make the spirit quail—
    ’Twixt Want and Scorn she walk’d forlorn,
      And nothing could avail.

    No mercy now can clear her brow
      For this world’s peace to pray;
    For, as love’s wild prayer dissolved in air,
      Her woman’s heart gave way!—
    But the sin forgiven by Christ in heaven
      By man is cursed alway!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    The day is done, and the darkness
      Falls from the wings of Night,
    As a feather is wafted downward
      From an Eagle in his flight.

    I see the lights of the village
      Gleam through the rain and the mist,
    And a feeling of sadness comes o’er me,
      That my soul cannot resist;

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

    Come, read to me some poem,
      Some simple and heartfelt lay,
    That shall soothe this restless feeling,
      And banish the thoughts of day.

    Not from the grand old masters,
      Not from the bards sublime,
    Whose distant footsteps echo
      Through the corridors of Time.

    For, like strains of martial music,
      Their mighty thoughts suggest
    Life’s endless toil and endeavour;
      And to-night I long for rest.

    Read from some humbler poet,
      Whose songs gushed from his heart,
    As showers from the clouds of summer,
      Or tears from the eyelids start;

    Who through long days of labour,
      And nights devoid of ease,
    Still heard in his soul the music
      Of wonderful melodies.

    Such songs have power to quiet
      The restless pulse of care,
    And come like the benediction
      That follows after prayer.

    Then read from the treasured volume
      The poem of thy choice,
    And lend to the rhyme of the poet
      The beauty of thy voice.

    And the night shall be filled with music,
      And the cares, that infest the day,
    Shall fold their tents, like the Arabs,
      And as silently steal away.

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

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

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

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

    There, through the long, long summer hours,
        The golden light should lie,
    And thick, young herbs and groups of flowers
        Stand in their beauty by.
    The oriole should build and tell
    His love-tale close beside my cell;
        The idle butterfly
    Should rest him there, and there be heard
    The housewife-bee and humming-bird.

    And what, if cheerful shouts, at noon,
        Come, from the village sent,
    Or songs of maids, beneath the moon,
        With fairy laughter blent?
    And what if, in the evening light,
    Betrothed lovers walk in sight
        Of my low monument?
    I would the lovely scene around
    Might know no sadder sight nor sound.

    I know, I know I should not see
        The season’s glorious show,
    Nor would its brightness shine for me,
        Nor its wild music flow;
    But if, around my place of sleep,
    The friends I love should come to weep,
        They might not haste to go.
    Soft airs, and song, and light, and bloom
    Should keep them lingering by my tomb.

    These to their soften’d hearts should bear
        The thought of what has been,
    And speak of one who cannot share
        The gladness of the scene;
    Whose part in all the pomp that fills
    The circuit of the summer hills,
        Is—that his grave is green;
    And deeply would their hearts rejoice
    To hear again his living voice.

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

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

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

    I fill this cup to one made up
      Of loveliness alone,
    A woman, of her gentle sex
      The seeming paragon;
    To whom the better elements
      And kindly stars have given
    A form so fair, that, like the air,
      ’Tis less of earth than heaven.

    Her every tone is Music’s own,
      Like those of morning birds,
    And something more than melody
      Dwells ever in her words;
    The coinage of her heart are they,
      And from her lips each flows
    As one may see the burden’d bee
      Forth issue from the rose.

    Affections are as thoughts to her,
      The measures of her hours;
    Her feelings have the fragrancy,
      The freshness of young flowers;
    And lovely passions, changing oft,
      So fill her, she appears
    The image of themselves by turns,—
      The idol of past years!

    Of her bright face one glance will trace
      A picture on the brain,
    And of her voice in echoing hearts
      A sound must long remain;
    But memory, such as mine of her,
      So very much endears,
    When death is nigh my latest sigh
      Will not be life’s, but hers.

    I fill’d this cup to one made up
      Of loveliness alone,
    A woman, of her gentle sex
      The seeming paragon—
    Her health! and would on earth there stood,
      Some more of such a frame,
    That life might be all poetry,
      And weariness a name.

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

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

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

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

    Come, rest in this bosom, my own stricken deer,
    Though the herd have fled from thee, thy home is still here;
    Here still is the smile, that no cloud can o’ercast,
    And a heart and a hand all thy own to the last.

    Oh! what was love made for, if ’tis not the same
    Through joy and through torment, through glory and shame?
    I know not, I ask not, if guilt’s in that heart,
    I but know that I love thee, whatever thou art.

    Thou hast call’d me thy Angel in moments of bliss,
    And thy Angel I’ll be ’mid the horrors of this,—
    Through the furnace, unshrinking, thy steps to pursue,
    And shield thee, and save thee,—or perish there too!

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

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

    O saw ye not fair Ines?
      She’s gone into the West,
    To dazzle when the sun is down,
      And rob the world of rest:
    She took our daylight with her,
      The smiles that we love best,
    With morning blushes on her cheek,
      And pearls upon her breast.

    O turn again, fair Ines,
      Before the fall of night,
    For fear the moon should shine alone,
      And stars unrivall’d bright;
    And blessed will the lover be
      That walks beneath their light,
    And breathes the love against thy cheek
      I dare not even write!

    Would I had been, fair Ines,
      That gallant cavalier,
    Who rode so gaily by thy side,
      And whisper’d thee so near!
    Were there no bonny dames at home,
      Or no true lovers here,
    That he should cross the seas to win
      The dearest of the dear?

    I saw thee, lovely Ines,
      Descend along the shore,
    With bands of noble gentlemen,
      And banners waved before;
    And gentle youth and maidens gay,
      And snowy plumes they wore
    It would have been a beauteous dream,
      —If it had been no more!

    Alas, alas, fair Ines!
      She went away with song,
    With Music waiting on her steps,
      And shoutings of the throng;
    But some were sad and felt no mirth,
      But only Music’s wrong,
    In sounds that sang Farewell, Farewell,
      To her you’ve loved so long.

    Farewell, farewell, fair Ines,
      That vessel never bore
    So fair a lady on its deck,
      Nor danced so light before,—
    Alas for pleasure on the sea,
      And sorrow on the shore!
    The smile that blest one lover’s heart
      Has broken many more!

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

    One more Unfortunate,
    Weary of breath,
    Rashly importunate,
    Gone to her death!

    Take her up tenderly,
    Lift her with care;——
    Fashion’d so slenderly,
    Young, and so fair!

    Look at her garments
    Clinging like cerements;
    Whilst the wave constantly
    Drips from her clothing;
    Take her up instantly,
    Loving, not loathing.—

    Touch her not scornfully;
    Think of her mournfully,
    Gently and humanly;
    Not of the stains of her:
    All that remains of her,
    Now, is pure womanly.

    Make no deep scrutiny
    Into her mutiny
    Rash and undutiful;
    Past all dishonour,
    Death has left on her
    Only the beautiful.

    Still, for all slips of hers,
    One of Eve’s family—
    Wipe those poor lips of hers
    Oozing so clammily;
    Loop up her tresses
    Escaped from the comb,
    Her fair auburn tresses;
    Whilst wonderment guesses
    Where was her home?

    Who was her father?
    Who was her mother?
    Had she a sister?
    Had she a brother?
    Or was there a dearer one
    Still, and a nearer one
    Yet, than all other?

    Alas for the rarity
    Of Christian charity
    Under the sun!
    Oh! it was pitiful!
    Near a whole city full,
    Home she had none.

    Sisterly, brotherly,
    Fatherly, motherly,
    Feelings had changed:
    Love, by harsh evidence,
    Thrown from its eminence:
    Even God’s providence
    Seeming estranged.

    Where the lamps quiver
    So far in the river,
    With many a light
    From window and casement,
    From garret to basement,
    She stood, with amazement,
    Houseless by night.

    The bleak wind of March
    Made her tremble and shiver;
    But not the dark arch,
    Or the black flowing river:
    Mad from life’s history,
    Glad to death’s mystery,
    Swift to be hurl’d—
    Anywhere, anywhere
    Out of the world!

    In she plunged boldly,
    No matter how coldly
    The rough river ran,—
    Over the brink of it,
    Picture it,—think of it,
    Dissolute Man!
    Lave in it, drink of it
    Then, if you can!

    Take her up tenderly,
    Lift her with care;
    Fashion’d so slenderly,
    Young, and so fair!
    Ere her limbs frigidly
    Stiffen too rigidly,
    Decently,—kindly,—
    Smooth, and compose them;
    And her eyes, close them,
    Staring so blindly!

    Dreadfully staring
    Through muddy impurity,
    As when with the daring
    Last look of despairing
    Fixed on futurity.

    Perishing gloomily,
    Spurred by contumely,
    Cold inhumanity,
    Burning insanity,
    Into her rest,—
    Cross her hands humbly,
    As if praying dumbly,
    Over her breast!
    Owning her weakness,
    Her evil behaviour,
    And leaving, with meekness,
    Her sins to her Saviour!

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

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

    Though the day of my destiny’s over,
      And the star of my fate hath declined,
    Thy soft heart refused to discover
      The faults which so many could find;
    Though thy soul with my grief was acquainted,
      It shrunk not to share it with me,
    And the love which my spirit hath painted
      It never hath found but in thee.

    Then when nature around me is smiling,
      The last smile which answers to mine,
    I do not believe it beguiling,
      Because it reminds me of thine;
    And when winds are at war with the ocean,
      As the breasts I believed in with me,
    If their billows excite an emotion,
      It is that they bear me from _thee_.

    Though the rock of my last hope is shivered,
      And its fragments are sunk in the wave,
    Though I feel that my soul is delivered
      To pain—it shall not be its slave.
    There is many a pang to pursue me:
      They may crush, but they shall not contemn—
    They may torture, but shall not subdue me—
      ’Tis of _thee_ that I think—not of them.

    Though human, thou didst not deceive me,
      Though woman, thou didst not forsake,
    Though loved, thou forborest to grieve me,
      Though slandered, thou never couldst shake,—
    Though trusted, thou didst not disclaim me,
      Though parted, it was not to fly,
    Though watchful, ’twas not to defame me,
      Nor mute, that the world might belie.

    Yet I blame not the world, nor despise it,
      Nor the war of the many with one—
    If my soul was not fitted to prize it,
      ’Twas folly not sooner to shun:
    And if dearly that error hath cost me,
      And more than I once could foresee,
    I have found that whatever it lost me,
      It could not deprive me of _thee_.

    From the wreck of the past, which hath perished,
      Thus much I at least may recall,
    It hath taught me that which I most cherished
      Deserved to be dearest of all:
    In the desert a fountain is springing,
      In the wide waste there still is a tree,
    And a bird in the solitude singing,
      Which speaks to my spirit of _thee_.

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

From Alfred Tennyson—although in perfect sincerity I regard him as
the noblest poet that ever lived—I have left myself time to cite only
a very brief specimen. I call him, and _think_ him the noblest of
poets—_not_ because the impressions he produces are, at _all_ times,
the most profound—_not_ because the poetical excitement which he
induces is, at _all_ times, the most intense—but because it _is_, at
all times, the most ethereal—in other words, the most elevating and the
most pure. No poet is so little of the earth, earthy. What I am about
to read is from his last long poem, “The Princess:”

      Tears, idle tears, I know not what they mean,
    Tears from the depth of some divine despair
    Rise in the heart, and gather to the eyes,
    In looking on the happy Autumn-fields,
    And thinking of the days that are no more.

      Fresh as the first beam glittering on a sail,
    That brings our friends up from the underworld,
    Sad as the last which reddens over one
    That sinks with all we love below the verge;
    So sad, so fresh, the days that are no more.

      Ah, sad and strange as in dark summer dawns
    The earliest pipe of half-awakened birds
    To dying ears, when unto dying eyes
    The casement slowly grows a glimmering square;
    So sad, so strange, the days that are no more.

      Dear as remember’d kisses after death,
    And sweet as those by hopeless fancy feign’d
    On lips that are for others; deep as love,
    Deep as first love, and wild with all regret;
    O Death in Life, the days that are no more.

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

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

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

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

[Illustration]

                  LONDON:—PRINTED BY RICHARD CLAY,
                          BREAD STREET HILL

*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 79019 ***