Far in thy realm withdrawn,

Old empires sit in sullenness and gloom,
And glorious ages gone

Lie deep within the shadow of thy womb.

Childhood, with all its mirth,

Youth, Manhood, Age that draws us to the ground,
And last, Man's Life on earth,
Glide to thy dim dominions, and are bound.

Thou hast my better years;

Thou hast my earlier friends, the good, the kind,
Yielded to thee with tears-

The venerable form, the exalted mind.

My spirit yearns to bring

The lost ones back-yearns with desire intense,
And struggles hard to wring

Thy bolts apart, and pluck thy captives thence.

In vain; thy gates deny

All passage save to those who hence depart;
Nor to the streaming eye

Thou giv'st them back-nor to the broken heart.

In thy abysses hide

Beauty and excellence unknown; to thee
Earth's wonder and her pride
Are gathered, as the waters to the sea;

Labors of good to man, Unpublished charity, unbroken faith,

Love, that midst grief began,

And grew with years, and faltered not in death.

Full many a mighty name

Lurks in thy depths, unuttered, unrevered;
With thee are silent fame,

Forgotten arts, and wisdom disappeared.

751

Thine for a space are they

Yet shalt thou yield thy treasures up at last:
Thy gates shall yet give way,

Thy bolts shall fall, inexorable Past!

All that of good and fair

Has gone into thy womb from earliest time,
Shall then come forth to wear

The glory and the beauty of its prime.

They have not perished-no!

Kind words, remembered voices once so sweet,
Smiles, radiant long ago,

And features, the great soul's apparent seat.

All shall come back; each tie

Of pure affection shall be knit again;
Alone shall Evil die,

And Sorrow dwell a prisoner in thy reign.

And then shall I behold

Him, by whose kind paternal side I sprung,
And her, who, still and cold,

Fills the next grave-the beautiful and young.

TO A WATERFOWL

WHITHER, midst falling dew,

While glow the heavens with the last steps of day,
Far, through their rosy depths, dost thou pursue
Thy solitary way?

Vainly the fowler's eye

Might mark thy distant flight to do thee wrong,

As, darkly seen against the crimson sky,

Thy figure floats along.

Seek'st thou the plashy brink

Of weedy lake, or marge of river wide,
Or where the rocking billows rise and sink
On the chafed ocean-side?

752

There is a Power whose care

Teaches thy way along that pathless coast-
The desert and illimitable air-

Lone wandering, but not lost.

All day thy wings have fanned,
At that far height, the cold, thin atmosphere,
Yet stoop not, weary, to the welcome land,
Though the dark night is near.

And soon that toil shall end;

Soon shalt thou find a summer home, and rest,
And scream among thy fellows; reeds shall bend,
Soon, o'er thy sheltered nest.

Thou'rt gone, the abyss of heaven
Hath swallowed up thy form; yet, on my heart
Deeply has sunk the lesson thou hast given,
And shall not soon depart.

He who, from zone to zone,

Guides through the boundless sky thy certain flight,
In the long way that I must tread alone,

Will lead my steps aright.

THE DEATH OF LINCOLN

OH, slow to smite and swift to spare,
Gentle and merciful and just!

Who, in the fear of God, didst bear
The sword of power, a nation's trust!

In sorrow by thy bier we stand,
Amid the awe that hushes all,
And speak the anguish of a land

That shook with horror at thy fall.

Thy task is done; the bond are free:
We bear thee to an honored grave,
Whose proudest monument shall be

The broken fetters of the slave.

Pure was thy life; its bloody close

Hath placed thee with the sons of light,
Among the noble host of those

Who perished in the cause of Right.

April, 1865.

753

EDGAR ALLAN POE

[1809-1849]

LENORE

Aн, 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 never more!

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 youngA 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! 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 damnèd 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.'

754

THE HAUNTED PALACE

In the greenest of our valleys
By good angels tenanted,
Once a 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!

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 odor went away.

Wanderers in that happy valley,

Through two luminous windows, saw

Spirits moving musically,

To a lute's well-tuned law,