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?

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.

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.
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 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 till 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 sibylic 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!"

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—
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 dark tarn of Auber,
This ghoul-haunted woodland of Weir."

TO HELEN.

HELEN, thy beauty is to me

Like those Nicean 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!

1 This is the form of the poem which obtained, I presume, the ultimate approval of its author. An earlier version gave an additional last stanza :

Said we then-the two, then-" Ah can it

Have been that the woodlandish ghouls—
The pitiful, the merciful ghouls—

To bar up our way and to ban it

From the secret that lies in these wolds

From the thing that lies hidden in these wolds

Have drawn up the spectre of a planet

From the limbo of lunary souls

This sinfully scintillant planet

From the hell of the planetary souls?"

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!

On 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!