"The Bridal Ballad" is first discoverable in the "Southern Literary Messenger" for January 1837, and, in its present compressed and revised form, was reprinted in the "Broadway Journal" for August, 1845.
POEMS OF MANHOOD.
LENORE.
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 G.o.d 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! to-night 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 d.a.m.ned Earth.
To friends above, from fiends below, the indignant ghost is riven-- From h.e.l.l unto a high estate far up within the Heaven-- From grief and groan to a golden throne beside the King of Heaven."
1844.
TO ONE IN PARADISE,
Thou wast that all to me, love, For which my soul did pine-- A 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!
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!
"No more--no more--no more"-- (Such language holds the solemn sea To the sands upon the sh.o.r.e) 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!
Alas! for that accursed time They bore thee o"er the billow, From love to t.i.tled age and crime, And an unholy pillow!
From me, and from our misty clime, Where weeps the silver willow!
1835
THE COLISEUM.
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!