THE CONQUEROR WORM,

I.

Lo! 'tis a gala night

Within the lonesome latter years !
An angel throng, bewinged, bedight
In veils, and drowned in tears,
Sit in a theatre, to see

A play of hopes and fears,

While the orchestra breathes fitfully

The music of the spheres.

II.

Mimes, in the form of God on high,
Mutter and mumble low,.

And hither and thither fly;

Mere puppets they, who come and go

At bidding of vast formless things That shift the scenery to and fro, Flapping from out their Condor wings Invisible Wo!

III.

That motley drama-oh, be sure

It shall not be forgot!

With its Phantom chased for evermore,
By a crowd that seize it not,

Through a circle that ever returneth in
To the self-same spot;

And much of Madness, and more of Sin,
And Horror the soul of the plot.

IV.

But, see, amid the mimic rout

A crawling shape intrude!

A blood-red thing that writhes from out

The scenic solitude!

It writhes!-it writhes !-with mortal pangs

The mimes become its food,

And the angels sob at vermin fangs

In human gore imbued.

V.

Out-out are the lights—out all!

And, over each quivering form,

The curtain, a funeral pall,

Comes down with the rush of a storm;

And the angels, all pallid and wan,
Uprising, unveiling, affirm

That the play is the tragedy, "Man,"

And its hero the Conqueror Worm.

A DREAM WITHIN A DREAM.

I.

TAKE this kiss upon the brow!
And, in parting from you now,
Thus much let me avow:-
You are not wrong, who deem
That my days have been a dream;
Yet if hope has flown away
In a night, or in a day,

In a vision, or in none,

Is it, therefore, the less gone?

All that we see or seem

Is but a dream within a dream.

II.

I stand amid the roar
Of a surf-tormented shore,
And I hold within my hand
Grains of the golden sand:
How few! yet how they creep
Through my fingers to the deep,
While I weep-while I weep!

O God! can I not grasp
Them with a tighter clasp?
O God! can I not save.
One from the pitiless wave?
Is all that we see or seem

But a dream within a dream?

TO ZANTE.

FAIR isle, that from the fairest of all flowers,
Thy gentlest of all gentle names dost take!
How
many memories of what radiant hours
At sight of thee and thine at once awake!
How many scenes of what departed bliss!
How many thoughts of what entombed hopes !
How many visions of a maiden that is

No more

-no more upon thy verdant slopes !

No more! alas! that magical sad sound

Transforming all! Thy charms shall please no more,

Thy memory no more! Accursed ground

Henceforth I hold thy flower-enamelled shore,

O hyacinthine isle! O purple Zante !

By a route obscure and lonely,
Haunted by ill angels only,

Where an Eidolon, namèd NIGHT,
On a black throne reigns upright,

I have reached these lands but newly
From an ultimate dim Thule-

From a wild weird clime that lieth, sublime,

Out of SPACE-out of TIME.