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. 66 II. 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 66 66 By you by yours, the evil eye-by yours, the slanderous tongue That did to death the innocence that died, and died so young?" III. 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 66 that flew beside, gone before," with Hope, 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. IV. "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." A VALENTINE. FOR her this rhyme is penned, whose luminous eyes, Brightly expressive as the twins of Loda, Shall find her own sweet name, that, nestling lies Upon the page, enwrapped from every reader. Search narrowly the lines!—they hold a treasure Divine-a talisman. an amulet That must be worn at heart. sure Search well the mea labour ! The words-the syllables! Do not forget The trivialest point, or you may lose your And yet there is in this no Gordian knot Which one might not undo without a sabre, If one could merely comprehend the plot. Enwritten upon the leaf where now are peering Eyes scintillating soul, there lie perdus Three eloquent words oft uttered in the hearing Of poets, by poets—as the name is a poet's, too. Its letters, although naturally lying Like the knight Pinto-Mendez FerdinandoStill form a synonym for Truth. — Cease trying! You will not read the riddle, though you do the best you can do.* *FRANCES SARGENT OSGOOD, the poetess-dead, since Poe. For her opinion of him, see Griswold's Memoir.-ED. AN ENIGMA. 66 66 SELDOM we find," says Solomon Don Dunce, Trash of all trash-how can a lady don it? The general tuckermanities are arrant But this is now -you may depend upon it Stable, opaque, immortal-all by dint Of the dear names that lie concealed within 't.* In the last two poems, read the first letter of the first line in connexion with the second letter of the second line, the third letter of the third line, the fourth of the fourth, and so on to the end. The name of the persons to whom addressed will thus appear. *See POE's" Literati," p. 242.-ED. |