AH, broken is the golden bowl!

The spirit flown forever!

Let the bell toll! — A saintly soul

Glides down the Stygian river!

And let the burial rite be read —

The funeral song be sung —

A dirge for the most lovely dead

That ever died so young!

And, Guy De Vere,

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

With tears are streaming wet,

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

That ever died so young?”

 

Peccavimus!

But rave not thus!

And let the solemn song

Go up to God so mournfully that she may feel no wrong!

The sweet Lenore

Hath “gone before”

With young hope at her side,

And thou art wild

For the dear child

That should have been thy bride —

For her, the fair

And debonair,

That now so lowly lies —

The life still there

Upon her hair,

The death upon her eyes. [page 61:]

 

“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 hallow'd mirth,

Should catch the note

As it doth float

Up from the damned earth —

To friends above, from fiends below, th’ indignant ghost is riven —

From grief and moan

To a gold throne

Beside the King of Heaven?[[!]]”