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And I cried, "It was surely October,

On this very night of last year,

That I journeyed—I journeyed down here, That I brought a dread burden down here! On this night of all nights in the year,

Ah, what demon has tempted me here? Well I know, now, this dim lake of Auber, This misty mid region of Weir,

Well, I know, now, this dank tarn of Auber,

This ghoul-haunted woodland of Weir."

TO F S S. O—D.

THOU wouldst be loved?—then let thy heart
From its present pathway part not;
Being everything which now thou art,
Be nothing which thou art not.
So with the world thy gentle ways,

Thy grace, thy more than beauty,
Shall be an endless theme of praise,
And love a simple duty.

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Ar midnight, in the month of June,
I stand beneath the mystic moon:
An opiate vapour, dewy, dim,
Exhales from out her golden rim;
And, softly dripping, drop by drop,
Upon the quiet mountain-top,
Steals drowsily and musically
Into the universal valley.

The rosemary nods upon the grave;
The lily lolls upon the wave;
Wrapping the fog about its breast,
The ruin moulders into rest;
Looking like Lethe, see, the lake
A conscious slumber seems to take,
And would not, for the world, awake.
All beauty sleeps !—and, lo, where lies
(Her casement open to the skies)
Irene, with her destinies !

II.

O lady bright, can it be right,
This window open to the night?
The wanton airs from the tree-top
Laughingly through the lattice drop;
The bodiless airs, a wizard rout,
Flit through thy chamber in and out,
And wave the curtain canopy
So fitfully, so fearfully,

Above the closed and fringed lid

'Neath which thy slumb'ring soul lies hid,
That, o'er the floor and down the wall,
Like ghosts the shadows rise and fall!
O lady dear, hast thou no fear?
Why and what art thou dreaming here?
Sure thou art come o'er far-off seas,
A wonder to these garden-trees.

Strange is thy pallor, strange thy dress,
Strange, above all, thy length of tress,
And this all-solemn silentness!

III.

The lady sleeps! O, may her sleep,
Which is enduring, so be deep!
Heaven have her in its sacred keep!
This chamber changed for one more holy,
This bed for one more melancholy,

I pray to God that she may lie
For ever with unopened eye,

While the dim sheeted ghosts go by!

IV.

My love, she sleeps! O may her sleep,
As it is lasting, so be deep!

Soft may the worms about her creep!
Far in the forest, dim and old,

For her may some tall vault unfold

Some vault that oft hath flung its black
And winged panels fluttering back
Triumphant o'er the crested palls
Of her grand family funerals;
Some sepulchre remote, alone,

Against whose portal she had thrown,

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