10

15

Yes, Heaven is thine; but this
Is a world of sweets and sours;
Our flowers are merely flowers,
And the shadow of thy perfect bliss

Is the sunshine of ours.

If I could dwell

Where Israfel

Hath dwelt, and he where I,

He might not sing so wildly well

A mortal melody,

While a bolder note than this might swell

From my lyre within the sky.

THE CITY IN THE SEA

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

5 Of sculptured ivy and stone flowers -
Up many and many a marvellous shrine
Whose wreathèd friezes intertwine
The viol, the violet, and the vine.
Resignedly beneath the sky

10 The melancholy waters lie.

15

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.

16 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 gayly-jewelled dead

20 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

25 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.

ANNABEL LEE

5

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.

She was a child and I 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 high-born kinsmen came
And bore her away from me,
To shut her up in a sepulchre

In this kingdom by the sea.

5 The angels, not half so happy in heaven, Went envying her and me

10

15

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.

But our love it was stronger by far than the love
Of those who were older than we

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

20 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, 25 In the sepulchre there by the sea

In her tomb by the sounding sea.