ever!

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.

II.

"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?"

III.

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.

IV.

"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 damned earth.

To friends above, from fiends below, the indignant ghost is riven;

From hell unto a high estate far up within the

heaven;

From grief and groan, to a golden throne beside the King of heaven."

HYMN.

Ar 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!

A VALENTINE.

FOR her this rhyme is penned whose luminous eyes,
Brightly expressive as the twins of Leda,
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.*

* FRANCES SARgent Osgood, the poetess,—dead, since Poe, For her opinion of him, see Griswold's Memoir.-ED.

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