Yes! it is a Raven surely, Though he does look so demurely Like a doctor come to assure me I am drunk: Not so,――I swore. Drunk? I drunk? I’ve not been drinking; I’m but overcome with thinking; There I saw that Raven winking In the middle of the floor. Doctor! there’s the Raven rampant In the middle of the floor; He has hopp’d straight through the door. Look! his curst wings brush the dust off That fallen, broken, batter’d bust of Psyche,――where it lies in the shadow, Shatter’d flung down on the floor. See! he spurns the broken pieces. Catch him, Doctor! When he ceases He will rend me. Past release is―― Nothing! Nothing on the floor? Yes! The Psyche lies in the shadow, Lieth shatter’d on the floor―― To be lifted nevermore. ――――:o:―――― THE MONSTER MAGGOT.[17] A Poet! With never a single theme Of glory or delight; He folds his wings for a gloomy dream Of death, despair, bedight; And, willing not that Beauty use His wilderness of soul, He chooseth, for his daintier muse Raven or Ghoul. And now a “Conqueror Worm” he sings, A blood-red crawling shape, Invisible woe from its condor wings Out-flapping, all agape; While angels bewing’d, bedight in veils, Watch mumbling mimes, with tears, In a play, where a maniac, Horror, wails To the music of the spheres. The play is the play of Human Woes, Of Madness, Sin, and Death! There is nothing else the Poet knows God’s azure sky beneath, But Madness, Horror, and Sin Death and Sorrow, and Wrong: Even so doth the singer begin, So ends his song. “It writhes”――the Worm――“with mortal pangs “The mimes become its food; “And the angels sob at vermin fangs “In human gore imbued,” This monster terrible, formless, huge, Means――put in plainest terms: Our Poet needs a vermifuge. The child’s disease is _worms_. POETIC FRAGMENTS. PART OF AN UNFINISHED GHOUL――POEM―― Said _we_ then――the two, then――Ah! can it Have been that the woodlandish Ghouls―― The pitiful, the merciful Ghouls, To bar up our way and to ban it From the secret that lies in these wolds―― From the thing that lies hidden in these wolds―― Have drawn up the spectre of a planet, From the limbo of lunary souls―― This sinfully scintillant planet From the hell of the planetary souls? ――――:o:―――― POT-POURRI. “A Rosemary odour “Commingled with pansies―― “With rue:”―― Your poet has fancies. But methinks such an odour Were odious to more than a few. ――――:o:―――― UNDER LINES. _On a Poet’s Tomb._