And I hold within my hand TO F Beloved! amid the earnest woes My soul at least a solace hath In dreams of thee, and therein knows And thus thy memory is to me Like some enchanted far-off isle In some tumultuous sea Some ocean throbbing far and free Just o'er that one bright island smile. ULALUME. THE skies they were ashen and sober; In the misty mid region of Weir- Here once, through an alley titanic Of cypress, I roamed with my Soul- Our talk had been serious and sober, But our thoughts they were palsied and sere- For we knew not the month was October, 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, Distinct with its duplicate horn. And I said "She is warmer than Dian: These cheeks, where the worm never dies, Come up, in despite of the Lion, To shine on us with her bright eyes— Said "Sadly this star I mistrust- Oh fly!--let us fly!-for we must." In terror she spoke, letting sink her Wings till they trailed in the dust- Plumes till they trailed in the dust- 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, 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- But were stopped by the door of a tomb- Then my heart it grew ashen and sober As the leaves that were crisped and sere- And I cried "It was surely October That I journeyed-I journeyed down here— Well I know, now, this dark tarn of Auber, TO HELEN. HELEN, thy beauty is to me Like those Nicean barks of yore On desperate seas long wont to roam, Lo, in yon brilliant window-niche 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— 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— What a world of merriment their melody foretells! Keeping time, time, time, To the tintinabulation that so musically wells From the jingling and the tinkling of the bells. II. Hear the mellow wedding bells, What a world of happiness their harmony foretells! 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 Of the bells, bells, bells, bells, To the rhyming and the chiming of the bells! |