Now each visitor 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.

Edgar Allan Poe.

TO ONE IN PARADISE

THOU wast that all to me, love,

For which my soul did pineA 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!

TO HELEN

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!

51

(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 dark eye glances,
And where thy footstep gleams
In what ethereal dances,

By what eternal streams.

Edgar Allan Poe.

TO HELEN

HELEN, thy beauty is to me

Like those Nicean barks of yore,
That gently, o'er a perfumed sea,
The weary, wayworn 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 see thee stand!
The agate lamp within thy hand,
Ah! Psyche, from the regions which

Are Holy Land!

Edgar Allan Poe.

TO EDGAR ALLAN POE

Ir thy sad heart, pining for human love,
In its earth solitude grew dark with fear,
Lest the high Sun of Heaven itself should prove
Powerless to save from that phantasmal sphere
Wherein thy spirit wandered, if the flowers
That pressed around thy feet, seemed but to bloom
In lone Gethsemanes, through starless hours,
When all who loved had left thee to thy doom,
Oh, yet believe that in that hollow vale
Where thy soul lingers, waiting to attain
So much of Heaven's sweet grace as shall avail
To lift its burden of remorseful pain,

My soul shall meet thee, and its Heaven forego

Till God's great love, on both, one hope, one Heaven

bestow.

Sarah Helen Whitman.

POE'S COTTAGE AT FORDHAM

HERE lived the soul enchanted

By melody of song;

Here dwelt the spirit haunted

By a demoniac throng;

POE'S COTTAGE AT FORDHAM 53

Here sang the lips elated;

Here grief and death were sated;
Here loved and here unmated
Was he, so frail, so strong.

Here wintry winds and cheerless
The dying firelight blew,
While he whose song was peerless

Dreamed the drear midnight through,

And from dull embers chilling
Crept shadows darkly filling
The silent place, and thrilling
His fancy as they grew.

Here with brows bared to heaven,
In starry night he stood,
With the lost star of seven
Feeling sad brotherhood.
Here in the sobbing showers
Of dark autumnal hours
He heard suspected powers

Shriek through the stormy wood.

From visions of Apollo

And of Astarte's bliss,

He gazed into the hollow

And hopeless vale of Dis,

And though earth were surrounded
By heaven, it still was mounded
With graves. His soul had sounded
The dolorous abyss.

Poor, mad, but not defiant,

He touched at heaven and hell.

Fate found a rare soul pliant
And wrung her changes well.
Alternately his lyre,
Stranded with strings of fire,
Led earth's most happy choir,
Or flashed with Israfel.

No singer of old story
Luting accustomed lays,
No harper for new glory,

No mendicant for praise,

He struck high chords and splendid,
Wherein were finely blended

Tones that unfinished ended
With his unfinished days.

Here through this lonely portal,
Made sacred by his name,
Unheralded immortal

The mortal went and came.
And fate that then denied him,
And envy that decried him,
And malice that belied him,

Here cenotaphed his fame.

John Henry Boner.

THE CHAMBERED NAUTILUS

THIS is the ship of pearl, which, poets feign,
Sails the unshadowed main,

The venturous bark that flings

On the sweet summer wind its purpled wings
In gulfs enchanted, where the Siren sings,