And now they vanish, from my sight they go. Farewell ye loved ones, we shall meet again As oft we've met, at the dim twilight's wane;-- In dreams and visions which shall brightly show Your sunny faces, and shall bring the glow Of by-gone joys, back to my soul again. For the Southern Literary Messenger. TO MARY. Mary, amid the cares--the woes Crowding around my earthly path, (Sad path, alas! where grows Not ev'n one lonely rose,) My soul at least a solace hath In dreams of thee, and therein knows An Eden of sweet repose. And thus thy memory is to me Like some enchanted, far-off isle, In some tumultuous sea-- Some lake beset as lake can be With storms--but where, meanwhile, Serenest skies continually Just o'er that one bright island smile. E. A. P. For the Southern Literary Messenger. THE VISIONARY--A TALE. BY EDGAR A. POE. Stay for me there! I will not fail To meet thee in that hollow vale. [_Exequy on the death of his wife, by Henry King, Bishop of Chichester_. Ill-fated and mysterious man! Bewildered in the brilliancy of thine own imagination, and fallen in the flames of thine own youth! Again in fancy I behold thee! Once more thy form hath risen before me!--not--oh not as thou art--in the cold valley and shadow--but as thou _shouldst be_--squandering away a life of magnificent meditation in that city of dim visions, thine own Venice--which is a star-beloved elysium of the sea, and the wide windows of whose Palladian palaces look down with a deep and bitter meaning upon the secrets of her silent waters. Yes! I repeat it--as thou _shouldst be_. There are surely other worlds than this--other thoughts than the thoughts of the multitude--other speculations than the speculations of the sophist. Who then shall call thy conduct into question? Who blame thee for thy visionary hours, or denounce those occupations as a wasting away of life, which were but the overflowings of thine everlasting energies? It was at Venice, beneath the covered archway there called the _Ponte di Sospiri_, that I met for the third or fourth time the person of whom I speak. It is with a confused recollection that I bring to mind the circumstances of that meeting. Yet I remember--ah! how should I forget?--the deep midnight, the Bridge of Sighs, the beauty of woman, and the demon of romance, who stalked up and down the narrow canal.