Those thoughts I would control,
As a spell upon his soul:
For that bright hope at last
And that light time have past,
And my worldly rest hath gone
With a sigh as it passed on:
I care not though it perish
With a thought I then did cherish.
“In Youth
I Have Known One”
How often we forget all time, when lone Admiring Nature’s universal throne; Her woods – her winds – her mountains – the intense Reply of Hers to Our intelligence!
I.
In youth I have known one with whom the Earth In secret communing held – as he with it, In daylight, and in beauty, from his birth: Whose fervid, flickering torch of life was lit From the sun and stars, whence he had drawn forth A passionate light – such for his spirit was fit –
And yet that spirit knew – not in the hour Of its own fervour – what had o’er it power.
II.
Perhaps it may be that my mind is wrought To a fever by the moonbeam that hangs o’er, But I will half believe that wild light fraught With more of sovereignty than ancient lore Hath ever told – or is it of a thought The unembodied essence, and no more That with a quickening spell doth o’er us pass As dew of the night time, o’er the summer grass?
III.
Doth o’er us pass, when as th’ expanding eye To the loved object – so the tear to the lid Will start, which lately slept in apathy?
And yet it need not be – (that object) hid From us in life – but common – which doth lie Each hour before us – but then only bid With a strange sound, as of a harpstring broken T’ awake us – ‘Tis a symbol and a token –
IV.
Of what in other worlds shall be – and given In beauty by our God, to those alone Who otherwise would fall from life and Heaven Drawn by their heart’s passion, and that tone, That high tone of the spirit which hath striven Though not with Faith – with godliness – whose throne With desperate energy ‘t hath beaten down; Wearing its own deep feeling as a crown.
“In the
Greenest of the Valleys”
I.
In the greenest of our valleys,
By good angels tenanted,
Once 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.
II.
Banners yellow, glorious, golden,
On its roof did float and flow;
(This —all this —was in the olden Time long ago)
And every gentle air that dallied, In that sweet day,
Along the ramparts plumed and pallid, A winged odour went away.
III.
Wanderers in that happy valley
Through two luminous windows saw
Spirits moving musically
To a lute’s well-tuned law,
Round about a throne, where sitting (Porphyrogene!)
In state his glory well befitting, The ruler of the realm was seen.
IV.
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.
V.
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.
VI.
And travellers now within that valley, Through the red-litten windows, see Vast forms that move fantastically To a discordant melody;
While, like a rapid ghastly river, Through the pale door,
A hideous throng rush out forever, And laugh —but smile no more.
Israfel
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 enamored 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 fervor of thy lute-Well may the stars be mute!
Yes, Heaven is thine; but this
Is a world of sweets and sours;
Our flowers are merely-flowers,
And the shadow of thy perfect 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.
The Lake
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.
Lenore
Ah, broken is the golden bowl! the spirit flown forever!
Let the bell toll!- a saintly soul floats on the Stygian river; And, Guy de Vere, hast thou no tear?- weep now or nevermore!
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 debonair, that now so lowly lies, The life upon her yellow hair but not within her eyes The life still there, upon her hair-the death upon her eyes.
“Avaunt! avaunt! 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!
Let no bell toll, then,- lest her soul, amid its hallowed mirth, Should catch the note as it doth float up from the damned Earth!
And I!- tonight my heart is light!- no dirge will I upraise, But waft the angel on her flight with a Paean of old days!”
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.”