But now, at length, dear Dian sank from sight, Into a western couch of thunder-cloud; And thou, a ghost, amid the entombing trees Didst glide away. Only thine eyes remained; They would not go-they never yet have gone; Lighting my lonely pathway home that night, They have not left me (as my hopes have) since; They follow me-they lead me through the years.
They are my ministers-yet I their slave.
Their office is to illumine and enkindle-My duty, to be saved by their bright light, And purified in their electric fire, And sanctified in their elysian fire.
They fill my soul with Beauty (which is Hope), And are far up in Heaven-the stars I kneel to In the sad, silent watches of my night; While even in the meridian glare of day I see them still-two sweetly scintillant Venuses, unextinguished by the sun!
To M…
O! I care not that my earthly lot
Hath little of Earth in it,
That years of love have been forgot In the fever of a minute:
I heed not that the desolate
Are happier, sweet, than I,
But that you meddle with my fate
Who am a passer by.
It is not that my founts of bliss
Are gushing-strange! with tears—
Or that the thrill of a single kiss Hath palsied many years-
‘Tis not that the flowers of twenty springs Which have wither’d as they rose
Lie dead on my heart-strings
With the weight of an age of snows.
Not that the grass-O! may it thrive!
On my grave is growing or grown—
But that, while I am dead yet alive I cannot be, lady, alone.
To Marie
Louise (Shew)
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 thy 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.
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.
To One
in Paradise
Thou wast all that 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! 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 grey eye glances,
And where thy footstep gleams—
In what ethereal dances,
By what eternal streams.
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.
To Zante
Fair isle, that from the fairest of all flowers, Thy gentlest of all gentle names dost take!
How many memories of what radiant hours At sight of thee and thine at once awake!
How many scenes of what departed bliss!
How many thoughts of what entombed hopes!
How many visions of a maiden that is No more-no more upon thy verdant slopes!
No more! alas, that magical sad sound Transforming all! Thy charms shall please no more-Thy memory no more! Accursed ground Henceforth I hold thy flower-enameled shore, O hyacinthine isle! O purple Zante!
“Isola d’oro! Fior di Levante!”
To…
Not long ago, the writer of these lines, In the mad pride of intellectuality, Maintained “the power of words”- denied that ever A thought arose within the human brain Beyond the utterance of the human tongue: And now, as if in mockery of that boast, Two words-two foreign soft dissyllables-Italian tones, made only to be murmured By angels dreaming in the moonlit “dew That hangs like chains of pearl on Hermon hill,”
Have stirred from out the abysses of his heart, Unthought-like thoughts that are the souls of thought, Richer, far wilder, far diviner visions Than even 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 empurpled vapors, far away
To where the prospect terminates-thee only.
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.
Ulalume
The skies they were ashen and sober; The leaves they were crisped and sere-The leaves they were withering and sere; It was night in the lonesome October Of my most immemorial year;
It was hard by the dim lake of Auber, In the misty mid region of Weir-It was down by the dank tarn of Auber, In the ghoul-haunted woodland of Weir.
Here once, through an alley Titanic, Of cypress, I roamed with my Soul-Of cypress, with Psyche, my Soul.
There 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 Psyche, uplifting her finger,
Said- “Sadly this star I mistrust—
Her pallor I strangely mistrust:-
Oh, hasten!- oh, let us not linger!
Oh, fly!- let us fly!- for we must.”
In terror she spoke, letting sink her Wings until they trailed in the dust-In agony sobbed, letting sink her