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Their destinies? in all beside
Of glory which the world hath known
Stands she not nobly and alone?
Falling her veriest stepping-stone
Shall form the pedestal of a throne
And who her sovereign? Timour he
Whom the astonished people saw
Striding o'er empires haughtily
A diadem'd outlaw
* * * *
O! human love! thou spirit given,
On Earth, of all we hope in Heaven!
Which fall'st into the soul like rain
Upon the Siroc wither'd plain,
And failing in thy power to bless
But leav'st the heart a wilderness!
Idea! which bindest life around
With music of so strange a sound
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And beauty of so wild a birth
Farewell! for I have won the Earth!
* * * *
When Hope, the eagle that tower'd, could see
No cliff beyond him in the sky,
His pinions were bent droopingly
And homeward turn'd his soften'd eye.
Twas sunset: when the sun will part
There comes a sullenness of heart
To him who still would look upon
The glory of the summer sun.
That soul will hate the ev'ning mist,
So often lovely, and will list
To the sound of the coming darkness (known
To those whose spirits hearken) as one
Who, in a dream of night, would fly
But cannot from a danger nigh.
* * * *
What tho the moon the white moon
Shed all the splendour of her noon,
Her smile is chilly and her beam,
In that time of dreariness, will seem
(So like you gather in your breath)
A portrait taken after death.
And boyhood is a summer sun
Whose waning is the dreariest one
For all we live to know is known,
And all we seek to keep hath flown
Let life, then, as the day-flower, fall
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With the noon-day beauty which is all.
* * * *
I reach'd my home my home no more
For all had flown who made it so
I pass'd from out its mossy door,
And, tho my tread was soft and low,
A voice came from the threshold stone
Of one whom I had earlier known
O! I defy thee, Hell, to show
On beds of fire that burn below,
A humbler heart a deeper wo
* * * *
Father, I firmly do believe
I know for Death, who comes for me
From regions of the blest afar,
Where there is nothing to deceive,
Hath left his iron gate ajar,
And rays of truth you cannot see
Are flashing thro Eternity
I do believe that Eblis hath
A snare in ev'ry human path
Else how, when in the holy grove
I wandered of the idol, Love,
Who daily scents his snowy wings
With incense of burnt offerings
From the most unpolluted things,
Whose pleasant bowers are yet so riven
Above with trelliced rays from Heaven
No mote may shun no tiniest fly
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by Edgar Allan Poe
The light'ning of his eagle eye
How was it that Ambition crept,
Unseen, amid the revels there,
Till growing bold, he laughed and leapt
In the tangles of Love's very hair?
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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 me thee stand,
The agate lamp within thy hand!
Ah, Psyche, from the regions which
Are Holy-land!
* * * *
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THE VALLEY OF UNREST
Once it smiled a silent dell
Where the people did not dwell;
They had gone unto the wars,
Trusting to the mild-eyed stars,
Nightly, from their azure towers,
To keep watch above the flowers,
In the midst of which all day
The red sun-light lazily lay.
Now each visiter shall confess
The sad valley's restlessness.
Nothing there is motionless
Nothing save the airs that brood
Over the magic solitude.
Ah, by no wind are stirred those trees
That palpitate like the chill seas
Around the misty Hebrides!
Ah, by no wind those clouds are driven
That rustle through the unquiet Heaven
Uneasily, from morn till even,
Over the violets there that lie
In myriad types of the human eye
Over the lilies there that wave
And weep above a nameless grave!
They wave: from out their fragrant tops
Eternal dews come down in drops.
They weep: from off their delicate stems
Perennial tears descend in gems.
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ISRAFEL*
IN Heaven a spirit doth dwell
Whose heart-strings are a lute;
None sing so wildly well
As the angel Israfel,
And the giddy stars (so legends tell)
Ceasing their hymns, attend the spell
Of his voice, all mute.
* * * *
Tottering above
In her highest noon
The enamoured moon
Blushes with love,
While, to listen, the red levin
(With the rapid Pleiads, even,
Which were seven,)
Pauses in Heaven
* * * *
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