Thus I pacified Psyche and kissed her, And tempted her out of her gloom, And conquered her scruples and gloom; And we passed to the end of the vista, 75 But were stopped by the door of a tomb, By the door of a legended tomb; And I said--"What is written, sweet sister, On the door of this legended tomb?" She replied--"Ulalume--Ulalume-- 80 'T is the vault of thy lost Ulalume!" Then my heart it grew ashen and sober As the leaves that were crisped and sere, As the leaves that were withering and sere, And I cried--"It was surely October 85 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? 90 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 ---- Not long ago the writer of these lines, In the mad pride of intellectuality, Maintained "the power of words"--denied that ever A thought arose within the human brain Beyond the utterance of the human tongue: 5 And now, as if in mockery of that boast, Two words, two foreign soft dissyllables, Italian tones, made only to be murmured By angels dreaming in the moonlit "dew That hangs like chains of pearl on Hermon hill," 10 Have stirred from out the abysses of his heart Unthought-like thoughts, that are the souls of thought,-- Richer, far wilder, far diviner visions Than even the seraph harper, Israfel (Who has "the sweetest voice of all God's creatures"), 15 Could hope to utter. And I--my spells are broken; The pen falls powerless from my shivering hand; With thy dear name as text, though hidden by thee, I cannot write--I cannot speak or think-- Alas, I cannot feel; for't is not feeling,-- 20 This standing motionless upon the golden Threshold of the wide-open gate of dreams, Gazing entranced adown the gorgeous vista, And thrilling as I see, upon the right, Upon the left, and all the way along, 25 Amid empurpled vapors, far away To where the prospect terminates--thee only. AN ENIGMA "Seldom we find," says Solomon Don Dunce, "Half an idea in the profoundest sonnet. Through all the flimsy things we see at once As easily as through a Naples bonnet-- Trash of all trash! how can a lady don it? 5 Yet heavier far than your Petrarchan stuff, Owl-downy nonsense that the faintest puff Twirls into trunk-paper the while you con it." And, veritably, Sol is right enough. The general tuckermanities are arrant 10 Bubbles, ephemeral and _so_ transparent; But _this_ is, now, you may depend upon it, Stable, opaque, immortal--all by dint Of the dear names that lie concealed within 't. TO HELEN.