Ah, broken is the golden bowl!

The spirit flown forever!

Let the bell toll!

A saintly soul!

Floats on 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 lov'd her for her wealth,

And hated her for her pride,

And, when she fell in feeble health,

Ye bless'd 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 [column 7:]

And debonair,

That now so lowly lies —

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 hallow'd mirth

Should catch the note,

As it doth float

Up from the damnéd 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![[”]]