From childhood's hour I have not been As others were; I have not seen As others saw; I could not bring My passions from a common spring. From the same source I have not taken My sorrow; I could not awaken
My heart to joy at the same tone; And all I loved, I loved alone.
Then --- in my childhood, in the dawn Of a most stormy life --- was drawn From every depth of good and ill The mystery which binds me still: From the torrent, or the fountain, From the red cliff of the mountain, From the sun that round me rolled In its autumn tint of gold,
From the lightning in the sky
As it passed me flying by,
From the thunder and the storm, And the cloud that took the form (When the rest of Heaven was blue) Of a demon in my view.
It was many and many a year ago,
In a kingdom by the sea,
That a maiden there lived whom you may know By the name of Annabel Lee;
And this maiden she lived with no other thought Than to love and be loved by me.
I was a child and she was a child,
In this kingdom by the sea;
But we loved with a love that was more than love --- I and my Annabel Lee;
With a love that the winged seraphs of heaven Coveted her and me.
And this was the reason that, long ago, In this kingdom by the sea,
A wind blew out of a cloud, chilling My beautiful Annabel Lee;
So that her highborn kinsman came And bore her away from me,
To shut her up in a sepulchre
In this kingdom by the sea.
The angels, not half so happy in heaven, Went envying her and me ---
Yes! --- that was the reason (as all men know, In this kingdom by the sea)
That the wind came out of the cloud by night, Chilling and killing my Annabel Lee.
Of many far wiser than we --- And neither the angels in heaven above,
Nor the demons down under the sea, Can ever dissever my soul from the soul
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee.
For the moon never beams without bringing me dreams Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;
And the stars never rise, but I feel the bright eyes Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;
And so, all the night-tide, I lie down by the side
Of my darling --- my darling --- my life and my bride, In the sepulchre there by the sea,
In her tomb by the sounding sea.
HEAR the sledges with the bells ---
Silver bells!
What a world of merriment their melody foretells! How they tinkle, tinkle, tinkle,
In the icy air of night!
While the stars that oversprinkle
All the heavens, seem to twinkle
With a crystalline delight;
Keeping time, time, time,
In a sort of Runic rhyme,
To the tintinnabulation that so musically wells From the bells, bells, bells, bells,
Bells, bells, bells ---
From the jingling and the tinkling of the bells.
Hear the mellow wedding bells
Golden bells!
What a world of happiness their harmony foretells! Through the balmy air of night
How they ring out their delight!
From the molten-golden notes,
And all in tune,
What a liquid ditty floats
To the turtle-dove that listens, while she gloats On the moon!
Oh, from out the sounding cells,
What a gush of euphony voluminously wells! How it swells!
How it dwells
On the Future! how it tells
Of the rapture that impels
To the swinging and the ringing
Of the bells, bells, bells,
Of the bells, bells, bells, bells,
Bells, bells, bells ---
To the rhyming and the chiming of the bells!
Hear the loud alarum bells ---
Brazen bells!
What tale of terror, now, their turbulency tells! In the startled ear of night
How they scream out their affright!
Too much horrified to speak,
They can only shriek, shriek,
Out of tune,
In a clamorous appealing to the mercy of the fire, In a mad expostulation with the deaf and frantic fire, Leaping higher, higher, higher,
With a desperate desire,
And a resolute endeavor
Now --- now to sit or never,
By the side of the pale-faced moon.
Oh, the bells, bells, bells!
What a tale their terror tells
Of Despair!
How they clang, and clash, and roar!
What a horror they outpour
On the bosom of the palpitating air!
Yet the ear, it fully knows,
By the twanging,
And the clanging,
How the danger ebbs and flows ;
Yet, the ear distinctly tells,
In the jangling,
And the wrangling,
How the danger sinks and swells,
By the sinking or the swelling in the anger of the bells --- Of the bells ---
Of the bells, bells, bells, bells,
Bells, bells, bells ---
In the clamor and the clangor of the bells!
Hear the tolling of the bells ---
Iron bells!
What a world of solemn thought their monody compels! In the silence of the night,
How we shiver with affright
At the melancholy meaning of their tone!
For every sound that floats
From the rust within their throats
Is a groan.
And the people --- ah, the people ---
They that dwell up in the steeple,
All alone,
And who, tolling, tolling, tolling,
In that muffled monotone,
Feel a glory in so rolling
On the human heart a stone ---
They are neither man nor woman ---
They are neither brute nor human ---
They are Ghouls:
And their king it is who tolls;
And he rolls, rolls, rolls, rolls,
Rolls
A pæan from the bells!
And his merry bosom swells
With the pæan of the bells!
And he dances, and he yells;
Keeping time, time, time,
In a sort of Runic rhyme,
To the pæan of the bells ---
Of the bells :
Keeping time, time, time,
In a sort of Runic rhyme,
To the throbbing of the bells ---
Of the bells, bells, bells ---
To the sobbing of the bells ;
Keeping time, time, time,
As he knells, knells, knells,
In a happy Runic rhyme,
To the rolling of the bells ---
Of the bells, bells, bells ---
To the tolling of the bells,
Of the bells, bells, bells, bells ---
Bells, bells, bells ---
To the moaning and the groaning of the bells.
The ring is on my hand,
And the wreath is on my brow;
Satin and jewels grand
Are all at my command,
And I am happy now.
And my lord he loves me well;
But, when first he breathed his vow,
I felt my bosom swell ---
For the words rang as a knell,
And the voice seemed his who fell
In the battle down the dell,
And who is happy now.
But he spoke to reassure me, And he kissed my pallid brow,
While a reverie came o'er me,
And to the church-yard bore me,
And I sighed to him before me,
Thinking him dead D'Elormie, "Oh, I am happy now!"
And thus the words were spoken, And this the plighted vow,
And, though my faith be broken,
And, though my heart be broken,
Behold the golden token
That proves me happy now!
Would God I could awaken! For I dream I know not how!
And my soul is sorely shaken
Lest an evil step be taken, ---
Lest the dead who is forsaken May not be happy now.
Lo! Death has reared himself a throne
In a strange city lying alone
Far down within the dim West,
Where the good and the bad and the worst and the best Have gone to their eternal rest.
There shrines and palaces and towers
(Time-eaten towers that tremble not!)
Resemble nothing that is ours.
Around, by lifting winds forgot,
Resignedly beneath the sky
The melancholy waters lie.
No rays from the holy heaven come down On the long night-time of that town; But light from out the lurid sea
Streams up the turrets silently ---
Gleams up the pinnacles far and free --- Up domes --- up spires --- up kingly halls --- Up fanes --- up Babylon-like walls --- Up shadowy long-forgotten bowers
Of sculptured ivy and stone flowers --- Up many and many a marvellous shrine Whose wreathed friezes intertwine The viol, the violet, and the vine.
Resignedly beneath the sky
The melancholy waters lie.
So blend the turrets and shadows there That all seem pendulous in air, While from a proud tower in the town Death looks gigantically down.
There open fanes and gaping graves Yawn level with the luminous waves; But not the riches there that lie In each idol's diamond eye ---
Not the gaily-jewelled dead
Tempt the waters from their bed; For no ripples curl, alas!
Along that wilderness of glass --- No swellings tell that winds may be Upon some far-off happier sea --- No heavings hint that winds have been On seas less hideously serene.
But lo, a stir is in the air!
The wave --- there is a movement there! As if the towers had thrust aside, In slightly sinking, the dull tide --- As if their tops had feebly given
A void within the filmy Heaven.
The waves have now a redder glow --- The hours are breathing faint and low --- And when, amid no earthly moans, Down, down that town shall settle hence, Hell, rising from a thousand thrones, Shall do it reverence.
Type of the antique Rome! Rich reliquary Of lofty contemplation left to Time
By buried centuries of pomp and power! At length --- at length --- after so many days Of weary pilgrimage and burning thirst, (Thirst for the springs of lore that in thee lie,) I kneel, an altered and an humble man, Amid thy shadows, and so drink within My very soul thy grandeur, gloom, and glory!
Vastness! and Age! and Memories of Eld! Silence! and Desolation! and dim Night! I feel ye now --- I feel ye in your strength --- O spells more sure than e'er Judaean king Taught in the gardens of Gethsemane! O charms more potent than the rapt Chaldee Ever drew down from out the quiet stars!
Here, where a hero fell, a column falls!
Here, where the mimic eagle glared in gold, A midnight vigil holds the swarthy bat!
Here, where the dames of Rome their gilded hair Waved to the wind, now wave the reed and thistle! Here, where on golden throne the monarch lolled, Glides, spectre-like, unto his marble home, Lit by the wan light of the horned moon, The swift and silent lizard of the stones! But stay! these walls --- these ivy-clad arcades --- These moldering plinths --- these sad and blackened shafts-- These vague entablatures --- this crumbling frieze --- These shattered cornices --- this wreck --- this ruin --- These stones --- alas! these grey stones --- are they all --- All of the famed, and the colossal left
By the corrosive Hours to Fate and me?
"Not all" --- the Echoes answer me --- "not all! Prophetic sounds and loud, arise forever From us, and from all Ruin, unto the wise, As melody from Memnon to the Sun.
We rule the hearts of mightiest men --- we rule With a despotic sway all giant minds.
We are not impotent --- we pallid stones. Not all our power is gone --- not all our fame --- Not all the magic of our high renown --- Not all the wonder that encircles us --- Not all the mysteries that in us lie ---
Not all the memories that hang upon
And cling around about us as a garment, Clothing us in a robe of more than glory."
Within the lonesome latter years! An angel throng, bewinged, bedight
In veils, and drowned in tears, Sit in a theatre, to see
A play of hopes and fears,
While the orchestra breathes fitfully
The music of the spheres.
Mimes, in the form of God on high, Mutter and mumble low,
And hither and thither fly ---
Mere puppets they, who come and go
At bidding of vast formless things That shift the scenery to and fro,
Flapping from out their Condor wings Invisible Woe!
That motley drama --- oh, be sure It shall not be forgot!
With its Phantom chased for evermore, By a crowd that seize it not,
Through a circle that ever returneth in To the self-same spot,
And much of Madness, and more of Sin, And Horror the soul of the plot.
But see, amid the mimic rout
A crawling shape intrude!
A blood-red thing that writhes from out The scenic solitude!
It writhes! --- it writhes! --- with mortal pangs The mimes become its food,
And seraphs sob at vermin fangs
In human gore imbued.
Out --- out are the lights --- out all! And, over each quivering form,
The curtain, a funeral pall,
Comes down with the rush of a storm,
While the angels, all pallid and wan, Uprising, unveiling, affirm
That the play is the tragedy, "Man," And its hero the Conqueror Worm.
I have dreamed of joy departed; But a waking dream of life and light
Hath left me broken-hearted.
Ah! what is not a dream by day To him whose eyes are cast
On things around him, with a ray Turned back upon the past?
That holy dream, that holy dream, While all the world were chiding,
Hath cheered me as a lovely beam A lonely spirit guiding.
What though that light, thro' storm and night, So trembled from afar ---
What could there be more purely bright In Truth's day-star?
Take this kiss upon the brow! And, in parting from you now, Thus much let me avow ---
You are not wrong, who deem That my days have been a dream; Yet if hope has flown away In a night, or in a day,
In a vision, or in none,
Is it therefore the less gone?
Is but a dream within a dream.
I stand amid the roar
Of a surf-tormented shore, And I hold within my hand Grains of the golden sand --- How few! yet how they creep Through my fingers to the deep, While I weep --- while I weep! O God! can I not grasp
Them with a tighter clasp? O God! can I not save
One from the pitiless wave? Is allthat we see or seem But a dream within a dream?
By a route obscure and lonely, Haunted by ill angels only,
Where an Eidolon, named NIGHT, On a black throne reigns upright, I have reached these lands but newly From an ultimate dim Thule --- From a wild clime that lieth, sublime, Out of SPACE --- out of TIME.
Bottomless vales and boundless floods, And chasms, and caves, and Titan woods, With forms that no man can discover For the tears that drip all over;
Mountains toppling evermore
Into seas without a shore;
Seas that restlessly aspire,
Surging, unto skies of fire;
Lakes that endlessly outspread
Their lone waters --- lone and dead, --- Their still waters --- still and chilly With the snows of the lolling lily.
By the lakes that thus outspread Their lone waters, lone and dead, --- Their sad waters, sad and chilly
With the snows of the lolling lily, --- By the mountains --- near the river Murmuring lowly, murmuring ever, --- By the gray woods, --- by the swamp Where the toad and the newt encamp --- By the dismal tarns and pools
Where dwell the Ghouls, ---
By each spot the most unholy ---
In each nook most melancholy --- There the traveller meets aghast Sheeted Memories of the Past --- Shrouded forms that start and sigh As they pass the wanderer by --- White-robed forms of friends long given, In agony, to the Earth --- and Heaven.
For the heart whose woes are legion 'Tis a peaceful, soothing region --- For the spirit that walks in shadow 'Tis -- oh, 'tis an Eldorado!
But the traveller, travelling through it, May not --- dare not openly view it! Never its mysteries are exposed
To the weak human eye unclosed; So wills its King, who hath forbid
The uplifting of the fringed lid;
And thus the sad Soul that here passes Beholds it but through darkened glasses.
By a route obscure and lonely, Haunted by ill angels only,
Where an Eidolon, named NIGHT, On a black throne reigns upright, I have wandered home but newly From this ultimate dim Thule.
Oh! that my young life were a lasting dream! My spirit not awakening, till the beam
Of an Eternity should bring the morrow:
Yes! though that long dream were of hopeless sorrow, 'Twere better than the dull reality
Of waking life to him whose heart must be, And hath been still, upon the lovely earth,
A chaos of deep passion from his birth.
But should it be --- that dream eternally
Continuing --- as dreams have been to me
In my young boyhood --- should it thus be given, 'Twere folly still to hope for higher Heaven. For I have revell'd, when the sun was bright I' the summer sky; in dreams of living light,
And loveliness --- have left my very heart
In climes of mine imagining --- apart
From mine own home, with beings that have been Of mine own thought --- what more could I have seen?
'Twas once --- and onlyonce --- and the wild hour From my remembrance shall not pass --- some power Or spell had bound me --- 'twas the chilly wind Came o'er me in the night, and left behind Its image on my spirit, or the moon
Shone on my slumbers in her lofty noon
Too coldly --- or the stars --- howe'er it was That dream was as that night wind --- let it pass. I have been happy --- though in a dream I have been happy --- and I love the theme; Dreams! in their vivid coloring of life
As in that fleeting, shadowy, misty strife Of semblance with reality which brings To the delirious eye more lovely things Of Paradise and Love --- and all our own! Than young Hope in his sunniest hour hath known.
GAILY bedight,
A gallant knight, In sunshine and in shadow,
In search of Eldorado.
But he grew old --- This knight so bold ---
And o'er his heart a shadow Fell as he found
No spot of ground
And, as his strength Failed him at length,
He met a pilgrim shadow --- "Shadow," said he, "Where can it be ---
This land of Eldorado?""Over the Mountains Of the Moon,
Down the Valley of the Shadow, Ride, boldly ride,"
The shade replied, ---
Elizabeth, it surely is most fit
[Logic and common usage so commanding]
In thy own book that first thy name be writ, Zeno and other sages notwithstanding;
And I have other reasons for so doing
Besides my innate love of contradiction;
Each poet - if a poet - in pursuing
The muses thro' their bowers of Truth or Fiction,
Has studied very little of his part,
Read nothing, written less - in short's a fool
Endued with neither soul, nor sense, nor art, Being ignorant of one important rule,
Employed in even the theses of the school- Called - I forget the heathenish Greek name
[Called anything, its meaning is the same]
"Always write first things uppermost in the heart."
"Seldom we find," says Solomon Don Dunce, "Half an idea in the profoundest sonnet.
Through all the flimsy things we see at once As easily as through a Naples bonnet --- Trash of all trash! --- how can a lady don it?
Yet heavier far than your Petrarchan stuff ---
Owl-downy nonsense that the faintest puff Twirls into trunk-paper the while you con it."
And, veritably, Sol is right enough.
The general tuckermanities are arrant
Bubbles --- ephemeral and so transparent --- But this is, now --- you may depend upon it ---
Stable, opaque, immortal --- all by dint
Of the dear names that he concealed within 't.
And my soul was a stagnant tide,
Till the fair and gentle Eulalie became my blushing bride --- Till the yellow-haired young Eulalie became my smiling bride.
Ah, less --- less bright
The stars of the night
Than the eyes of the radiant girl!
That the vapor can make
With the moon-tints of purple and pearl,
Can vie with the modest Eulalie's most unregarded curl ---
Can compare with the bright-eyed Eulalie's most humble and careless curl.
Come never again,
For her soul gives me sigh for sigh, And all day long
Shines, bright and strong,
Astarté within the sky,
While ever to her dear Eulalie upturns her matron eye --- While ever to her young Eulalie upturns her violet eye.