TO HELEN. Helen, thy beauty is to me Like those Nicean barks of yore, That gently, o'er a perfumed sea, The weary, wayworn wanderer bore To his own native shore. On desperate seas long wont to roam, Thy hyacinth hair, thy classic face, Thy Naiad airs have brought me home To the glory that was Greece And the grandeur that was Rome. Lo! in yon brilliant window-niche How statue-like I see thee stand, The agate lamp within thy hand! Ah! Psyche, from the regions which Are Holy Land! TO ONE IN PARADISE. Thou wast that all to me, love, For which my soul did pine: A green isle in the sea, love, A fountain and a shrine All wreathed with fairy fruits and flowers, And all the flowers were mine. Ah, dream too bright to last! Ah, starry hope! that did'st arise But to be overcast! A voice from out the future cries On! on! But o'er the past (Dim gulf!) my spirit hovering lies, Mute, motionless, aghast! For, alas! alas! with me The light of life is o'er. "No more--no more--no more--" (Such language holds the solemn sea To the sands upon the shore) Shall bloom the thunder-blasted tree, Or the stricken eagle soar! And all my days are trances, And all my nightly dreams Are where thy dark eye glances, And where thy footstep gleams,-- In what ethereal dances, By what eternal streams! FROM "THE FALL OP THE HOUSE OF USHER." At the termination of this sentence I started, and for a moment paused; for it appeared to me (although I at once concluded that my excited fancy had deceived me)--it appeared to me that, from some very remote portion of the mansion there came, indistinctly, to my ears what might have been, in its exact similarity of character, the echo (but a stifled and dull one certainly) of the very cracking and ripping sound which Sir Launcelot had so particularly described. It was, beyond doubt, the coincidence alone which had arrested my attention; for amid the rattling of the sashes of the casements, and, the ordinary commingled noises of the still-increasing storm, the sound, in itself, had nothing, surely, which should have interested or disturbed me. I continued the story. * * * * * * * *