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LenoreLenore
Lenore
[See Edgar Allan Poe]
Ah, broken is the golden bowl! the spirit flown forever!
Let the bell toll! - a saintly soul floats on the Stygian river;
And, Guy De Vere, hast thou no tear? - weep now or never more!
See! on yon drear and rigid bier low lies thy love, Lenore!
Come! let the burial rite be read - the funeral song be sung! -
An anthem for the queenliest dead that ever died so young -
A dirge for her the doubly dead in that she died so young.
`Wretches! ye loved her for her wealth and hated her for her pride,
`And when she fell in feeble health, ye blessed her - that she died!
`How shall the ritual, then, be read? - the requiem how be sung
`By you - by yours, the evil eye, - by yours, the slanderous tongue
`That did to death the innocence that died, and died so young?`
Peccavimus; but rave not thus! and let a Sabbath song
Go up to God so solemnly the dead may feel no wrong!
The sweet Lenore hath `gone before,` with Hope, that flew beside,
Leaving thee wild for the dear child that should have been thy
For her, the fair and debonair, that now so lowly lies, [bride -
The life upon her yellow hair but not within her eyes -
The life still there, upon her hair - the death upon her eyes.
`Avaunt! to - night my heart is light. No dirge will I upraise.
`But waft the angel on her flight with a paean of old days!
`Let no bell toll! - lest her sweet soul, amid its hallowed mirth,
`Should catch the note, as it doth float up from the damned Earth.
`To friends above, from fiends below, the indignant ghost is riven -
`From Hell unto a high estate far up within the Heaven -
`From grief and groan, to a golden throne, beside the King of Heaven.`
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