I saw thee half reclining; while the moon
Fell on the upturn'd faces of the roses,
And on thine own, upturn'd-alas, in sorrow!
Was it not Fate, that, on this July midnight-
Was it not Fate, (whose name is also Sorrow,)
That bade me pause before that garden gate,
To breathe the incense of those slumbering

roses?

No footsteps stirred: the hated world all slept, Save only thee and me. (Oh, Heaven!-oh,

God!

How my heart beats in coupling those two words!)

Save only thee and me.

I paused-I looked-
And in an instant all things disappeared.
(Ah, bear in mind this garden was enchanted!)
The pearly luster of the moon went out:
The mossy banks and the meandering paths,
The happy flowers and the repining trees,
Were seen no more: the very roses' odors
Died in the arms of the adoring airs.

All-all expired save thee-save less than thou:
Save only the divine light in thine eyes-
Save but the soul in thine uplifted eyes.

I saw but them-they were the world to me.
I saw but them-saw only them for hours—
Saw only them until the moon went down.
What wild heart-histories seemed to lie en-
written

Upon those crystalline, celestial spheres!
How dark a woe! yet how sublime a hope!
How silently serene a sea of pride!
How daring an ambition! yet how deep-
How fathomless a capacity for love!

But now, at length, dear Dian sank from sight,

Into a western couch of thunder-cloud;

And thou, a ghost, amid the entombing trees Didst glide away. Only thine eyes remained. They would not go-they never yet have gone. Lighting my lonely pathway home that night, They have not left me (as my hopes have) since

They follow me-they lead me through the

years

They are my ministers-yet I their slave.

Their office is to illumine and enkindle-
My duty, to be saved by their bright light,
And purified in their electric fire,

And sanctified in their elysian fire.

They fill my soul with Beauty (which is Hope),
And are far up in Heaven-the stars I kneel to
In the sad, silent watches of my night;
While even in the meridian glare of day
I see them still-two sweetly scintillant
Venuses, unextinguished by the sun!

ΤΟ

Not long ago, the writer of these lines,
In the mad pride of intellectuality,
Maintained "the power of words"-denied
that ever

A thought arose within the human brain
Beyond the utterance of the human tongue:
And now, as if in mockery of that boast,
Two words-two foreign soft dissyllables-
Italian tones, made only to be murmured

By angels dreaming in the moonlit "dew That hangs like chains of pearl on Hermon hill,

Have stirred from out the abysses of his heart, Unthought-like thoughts that are the souls of thought,

Richer, far wilder, far diviner visions

Than even the seraph harper, Israfel,

(Who has "the sweetest voice of all God's creatures,'')

Could hope to utter. And I my spells are

broken.

The pen falls powerless from my shivering hand.

With thy dear name as text, though bidden by thee,

I cannot write-I cannot speak or think-
Alas, I cannot feel; for 'tis not feeling,
This standing motionless upon the golden
Threshold of the wide-open gate of dreams,
Gazing entranced, adown the gorgeous vista,
And thrilling as I see, upon the right,
Upon the left, and all the way along,
Amid unpurpled vapors, far away

To where the prospect terminates-thee only.

ULALUME.

The skies they were ashen and sober;

The leaves they were crisped and sere-
The leaves they were withering and sere-

It was light in the lonesome October
Of my most immemorial year;

It was hard by the dim lake of Auber,

In the misty mid region of WeirIt 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 Mount 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 luster 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 eyesCome up through the lair of the Lion, With love in her luminous eyes.

But Psyche, uplifting her finger,

Said "Sadly this star I mistrustHer 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 until they trailed in the dustIn agony sobbed letting sink her

Plumes till they trailed in the dustTill 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 Sybilic splendor 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