| |
|
Ah, broken is
the golden bowl! the spirit flown forever!
Let the
bell toll! -a saintly soul floats on the Stygian river
-
And, Guy De Vere, hast thou no tear? -weep now or
never more!
See! on yon drear and rigid bier low lies
thy love, Lenore!
Come! let the burial rite be read
-the funeral song be sung! -
An anthem for the
queenliest dead that ever died so young -
A dirge
for her, the doubly dead in that she died so young.
"Wretches! ye loved her for her wealth and hated her
for her pride,
And when she fell in feeble health, ye
blessed her -that she died!
How shall the ritual,
then, be read? -the requiem how be sung
By you -by
yours, the evil eye, -by yours, the slanderous tongue
That did to death the innocence that died, and died so
young?"
Peccavimus; but rave not thus! and let a
Sabbath song
Go up to God so solemnly the dead may
feel no wrong!
The sweet Lenore hath "gone before,"
with Hope, that flew beside,
Leaving thee wild for
the dear child that should have been thy bride -
For
her, the fair and debonnaire, that now so lowly lies,
The life upon her yellow hair but not within her eyes -
The life still there, upon her hair -the death upon her
eyes.
Avaunt! tonight my heart is light. No dirge
will I upraise,
But waft the angel on her flight with
a paean of old days!
Let no bell toll! -lest her
sweet soul, amid its hallowed mirth,
Should catch the
note, as it doth float up from the damned Earth.
To
friends above, from fiends below, the indignant ghost is
riven -
From Hell unto a high estate far up within
the Heaven -
From grief and groan to a golden throne
beside the King of Heaven."
|
|
|
