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I lighted down my sword to draw,
I hacked him in pieces sma',
I hacked him in pieces sma',

For her sake that died for me.

O Helen fair, beyond compare!
I'll make a garland of thy hair
Shall bind my heart for evermair
Until the day I dee.

O that I were where Helen lies!
Night and day on me she cries;
Out of my bed she bids me rise,

Says, "Haste and come to me!"

O Helen fair! O Helen chaste!
If I were with thee, I were blest,
Where thou lies low and takes thy rest
On fair Kirconnell lea.

I wad my grave were growing green,
A winding-sheet drawn ower my een,
And I in Helen's arms lying,

On fair Kirconnell lea.

I wad I were where Helen lies;
Night and day on me she cries;
And I am weary of the skies,

Since my Love died for me.

Old Ballad

118

Τ

THE SLEEPER

AT midnight, in the month of June,

Α

I stand beneath the mystic moon.

An opiate vapor, dewy, dim,
Exhales from out her golden rim,
And, softly dripping, drop by drop,
Upon the quiet mountain top,
Steals drowsily and musically
Into the universal valley.

The rosemary nods upon the grave;
The lily lolls upon the wave;
Wrapping the fog about its breast,
The ruin molders into rest;
Looking like Lethe, see! the lake.

A conscious slumber seems to take,
And would not, for the world, awake.
All Beauty sleeps!-and lo! where lies
Irene, with her Destinies!

Oh, lady bright! can it be right-
This window open to the night?
The wanton airs, from the tree-top,
Laughingly through the lattice drop-
The bodiless airs, a wizard rout,
Flit through thy chamber in and out,
And wave the curtain canopy
So fitfully-so fearfully—

Above the closed and fringèd lid

'Neath which thy slumb'ring soul lies hid, That, o'er the floor and down the wall, Like ghosts the shadows rise and fall!

Oh, lady dear, hast thou no fear?
Why and what art thou dreaming here?
Sure thou art come o'er far-off seas,
A wonder to these garden trees!
Strange is thy pallor! strange thy dress!
Strange, above all, thy length of tress,
And this all solemn silentness!

The lady sleeps! Oh, may her sleep,
Which is enduring, so be deep!
Heaven have her in its sacred keep!
This chamber changed for one more holy,
This bed for one more melancholy,

I pray to God that she may lie
Forever with unopened eye,

While the pale sheeted ghosts go by!

My love, she sleeps! Oh, may her sleep,
As it is lasting, so be deep!

Soft may the worms about her creep!
Far in the forest, dim and old,

For her may some tall vault unfold—
Some vault that oft hath flung its black
And winged panels fluttering back,
Triumphant o'er the crested palls
Of her grand family funerals-
Some sepulcher, remote, alone,
Against whose portal she hath thrown,
In childhood, many an idle stone—
Some tomb from out whose sounding door
She ne'er shall force an echo more,
Thrilling to think, poor child of sin!
It was the dead who groaned within.

Edgar Allan Poe

119

TO ONE IN PARADISE

HOU wast all that to me, love,

THO

For which my soul did pine

A green isle in the sea, love,

A fountain and a shrine,

All wreathed with fairy fruits and flowers,
And all the flowers were mine.

Ah, dream too bright to last!
Ah, starry Hope! that didst arise
But to be overcast!

A voice from out the Future cries,
"On! on!"-but o'er the Past

(Dim gulf!) my spirit hovering lies Mute, motionless, aghast!

For, alas! alas! with me

The light of Life is o'er!

"No more-no more-no more-
(Such language holds the solemn sea
To the sands upon the shore)
Shall bloom the thunder-blasted tree,
Or the stricken eagle soar!

And all my days are trances,

And all my nightly dreams.

Are where thy gray eye glances,

And where thy footstep gleams

In what ethereal dances,

By what eternal streams.

Edgar Allan Poe

120

THE

BEATRICE DEAD1

eyes that weep for pity of the heart

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Have wept so long that their grief languisheth,
And they have no more tears to weep withal:
And now, if I would ease me of a part

Of what, little by little, leads to death,
It must be done by speech, or not at all.
And because often, thinking, I recall
How it was pleasant, ere she went afar,
To talk of her with you, kind damozels,
I talk with no one else,

But only with such hearts as women's are.

And I will say, still sobbing as speech fails,—
That she hath gone to Heaven suddenly,
And hath left Love below, to mourn with me.

Beatrice is gone up into high Heaven,

The kingdom where the angels are at peace;
And lives with them; and to her friends is dead.
Not by the frost of winter was she driven
Away, like others; nor by summer-heats;
But through a perfect gentleness, instead.
For from the lamp of her meek lowlihead
Such an exceeding glory went up hence

That it woke wonder in the Eternal Sire,
Until a sweet desire

Entered Him for that lovely excellence,

So that He bade her to Himself aspire:
Counting this weary and most evil place
Unworthy of a thing so full of grace.

1 From La Vita Nuova. Translated by Dante Gabriel Rossetti.

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