In the hatred of a minute: mourn not that the desolate Are happier, sweet, than I, But that you sorrow for my fate Who am a passer-by. 1829. A DREAM WITHIN A DREAM TAKE this kiss upon the brow! All that we see or seem Is but a dream within a dream. TO HELEN HELEN, thy beauty is to me On desperate seas long wont to roam, Lo! in yon brilliant window-niche ISRAFEL 2 1831. IN Heaven a spirit doth dwell 1 This poem suffered more changes than any other of Poe's. The germ of it is perhaps to be found in 'Imitation,' in the 1827 volume; but no phrase of that poem is identical with any phrase of this. 'To in the volume of 1829, contains one line taken from Imitation.' Part of To - was used as a last paragraph of Tamerlane' in the edition of 1831; and the whole was later revised and considerably shortened, and was published by Griswold in 1849 with its present title. 2 And the angel Israfel, whose heart-strings are a lute, and who has the sweetest voice of all God's creatures.- KORAN. (Poe's note, 1845.) Poe alone is responsible for the words Whose heartstrings are a lute.' The rest of the phrase had been quoted by Thomas Moore, in his Lalla Rookh,' from Sale's Preliminary Discourse' to the Koran. Poe, as Professor Woodberry has pointed out, took the phrase from Moore. As the angel Israfel, THE CITY IN THE SEA And the giddy stars (so legends tell) Ceasing their hymns, attend the spell Of his voice, all mute. Tottering above In her highest noon, The enamored moon Blushes with love, While, to listen, the red levin (With the rapid Pleiads, even, And they say (the starry choir And the other listening things) That Israfeli's fire Is owing to that lyre By which he sits and sings - But the skies that angel trod, Where deep thoughts are a duty Where Love's a grown-up God Where the Houri glances are Imbued with all the beauty Which we worship in a star. Therefore, thou art not wrong, An unimpassioned song ; Best bard, because the wisest! Merrily live, and long! The ecstasies above With thy burning measures suit Thy grief, thy joy, thy hate, thy love, 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. 1831. 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 Around, by lifting winds forgot, Νο rays from the holy heaven come down Streams up the turrets silently Gleams up the pinnacles far and free - up kingly halls Up fanes up Babylon-like walls. 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 There open fanes and gaping graves Not the gayly-jewelled dead Tempt the waters from their bed; may be 20 30 No heavings hint that winds have been 40 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 Ar midnight, in the month of June, The rosemary nods upon the grave; Oh, lady bright! can it be right The lady sleeps! Oh, may her sleep, Which is enduring, so be deep! 10 20 30 1 Poe says in a letter, probably of 1845: Your appreciation of The Sleeper" delights me. In the higher qualities of poetry it is better than "The Raven; " but there is not one man in a million who could be brought to agree with me in this opinion. "The Raven" of course, is far the better as a work of art; but in the true basis of all art, "The Sleeper" is the superior. I wrote the latter when quite a boy.' Heaven have her in its sacred keep! 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, Soft may the worms about her creep! 41 Some tomb from out whose sounding door LENORE 2 64 1831. Aн, broken is the golden bowl! the spirit flown forever! 2 The first and third stanzas are supposed to be spoken by the wretches,' relatives or false friends of Lenore; the second and fourth stanzas by Guy De Vere, her lover. In this one case, perhaps, Poe's latest version is not so good as an earlier one. The form of Lenore published in 1843 is given below for comparison. Ah, broken is the golden bowl! Hast thou no tear? Weep now or nevermore ! See, on yon drear And rigid bier, Low lies thy love Lenore! Yon heir, whose cheeks of pallid hue Sees only, through Their crocodile dew, A vacant coronet False friends! 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 For her most wrong'd of all the dead It seems probable that Poe was influenced by the succeas of The Raven' to rearrange Lenore' in somewhat similar lines of even length. In the text above I have given the last stanza of the poem as it stands in the Lorimer Graham copy-a copy of the edition of 1845, corrected by Poe's own hand. In the edition of 1845, uncorrected, the stanz", reads as follows: 'Avaunt!-avaunt! from fiends below, the indignant ghost is riven From Hell unto a high estate far up within the HeavenFrom grief and groan, to a golden throne, beside the King of Heaven.' Let no bell toll then!-lest her soul, amid its hallowed mirth, Should catch the note as it doth float up from the damned Earth! And I to-night my heart is light! No dirge will I upraise, But waft the angel on her flight with a Pæan of old days! It is interesting to note that in this case, and perhaps in this case only, Poe, after changing considerably a passage of his work, later returned to a previous version. The arrangement of ideas in his corrected copy of this fourth stanza is much closer to the 1843 version than to that of 1845. '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 debonair, 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! to-night my heart is light. No dirge will I upraise. 'But waft the angel on her flight with a pæan 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.' 1831, 1843, 1845. THE VALLEY OF UNREST ONCE it smiled a silent dell Ah, by no wind are stirred those trees Ah, by no wind those clouds are driven |