O’er the garden walks neglected Crawl’d the toad, the worm, the snail; Droop’d the young buds unrespected: Loving care could not avail. For the poet-soul, the master, Could alone that place Make beautiful, and from disaster Free――as Aidenn――by God’s grace. When he the palace left, and garden,―― The moment that he would depart―― * * * * * Speech is vain, and tears but harden On the world’s ice heart. ―――――――― [*] THE HAUNTED PALACE. I. In the greenest of our valleys By good angels tenanted, Once a fair and stately palace, Radiant palace, reared its head. In the Monarch Thought’s dominion, It stood there; Never seraph spread a pinion Over fabric half so fair! II. Banners――yellow, glorious, golden―― On its roof did float and flow (This, all this, was in the olden Time, long ago); And every gentle air that dallied, In that sweet day, Along the ramparts plumed and pallid, A wingèd odour went away. * * * * * E. A. POE. ――――:o:―――― DREAM-MERE. On a root, knobbed, gnarl’d, and lonely. Overstruck with toadstools only, Sits an Eidolon named NIGHT,―― On a toadstool half upright. I have seen this sprite but newly, And I look’d at him quite throughly, In his ultimate dim Thulè As he sate there half upright. In a wild, weird clime, and singing sublime, Out of TUNE――out of TIME. Bottomless hollows and roaring floods, And caves and chasms and haunted woods, Forms that no man can discover For the dews that drip all over; Mountains toppling evermore Into seas without a shore; Shoreless seas that still aspire, Surging to hellish heavens of fire; Boundless lakes all lone and dead, Where sometimes Night lies outspread In the waters still and chilly, With his nose in a lolling lily. By these shoreless lakes outspread, These lone waters, lone and dead, These lone waters, still and chilly (Night’s nose in the lolling lily); By these toppling crags,――no river Murmurs near, no leaflets quiver―― All so dark and dead and chilly; By these dank woods, by the swamp, Where the toad and bull-frog romp; By these dismal tarns, by the holes Where dwell the Ghouls―― Poor damp souls! By each corner most unjolly, By each crevice melancholy, By my own poetic folly―― Frenzy of poetic drift, In an unexpected rift, There, I swear, I met aghast In a sheet the unmemoried Past, In a shroud a Ghost, whose eye Looking into vacancy Made me shudder, start, and sigh,―― One forgotten, from thought outdriven, I know not whether on Earth or in Heaven.