66 '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! 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," THE BELLS.* I. HEAR the sledges with the bells,— What a world of merriment their melody foretells! How they tinkle, tinkle, tinkle, 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 |