RICHARD MONCKTON MILNES. 1809. ["Poems of Many Years." 1846.] THE words that trembled on your lips Were little more than others won, And yet you are not wholly true, Nor wholly just what you have done. You know, at least you might have known, Your voice's somewhat lowered tone, Your hand's faint shake, or parting wave, Your every sympathetic look At words that chanced your soul to touch, You might have seen, perhaps you saw, And higher raised my venturous head, May be, without a further thought, And thus when fallen, faint, and bruised, I see another's glad success, I may have wrongfully accused I cannot deem you wholly true, EDGAR ALLAN POE. 1811-1849. TO HELEN. I SAW thee once, once only, years ago: I must not say how many, but not many. It was a July midnight, and from out A full-orbed moon, that, like thine own soul, soaring, There fell a silvery-silken veil of light, With quietude, and sultriness, and slumber, Upon the upturned faces of a thousand Roses that grew in an enchanted garden, Where no wind dared to stir, unless on tiptoe; Fell on the upturned faces of these roses, That gave out, in return for the love-light, I saw thee half reclining; while the moon Was it not Fate, that, on this July midnight, No footstep stirred: the hated world all slept, Upon those crystalline, celestial spheres! How dark a woe! yet how sublime a hope! How silently serene a sea of pride How daring an ambition! yet how deep, How fathomless a capacity for love! But now, at length, dear Dian sank from sight, Into a western couch of thunder-cloud; And thou, a ghost, amid the entombing trees Didst glide away. Only thine eyes remained. They would not go-they never yet have gone. Lighting my lonely pathway home that night, They have not left me (as my hopes have) since. They follow me—they lead me through the years. They are my ministers, yet I their slave. Their office is to illumine and enkindle, My duty, to be saved by their bright light, And purified in their electric fire, And sanctified in their elysian fire. They fill my soul with Beauty (which is Hope,) In the sad, silent watches of my night; While even in the meridian glare of day I see them still-two sweetly scintillant Venuses, unextinguished by the sun! TO ONE IN PARADISE. Thou wast all that to me, love, A green isle in the sea, love, A fountain and a shrine, All wreathed with fairy fruits and flowers, And all the flowers were mine. Ah, dream too bright to last! Ah, starry Hope! that didst arise But to be overcast! A voice from out the Future cries, "On! On!" but o'er the Past (Dim gulf!) my spirit hovering lies, Mute, motionless, aghast! "No more-no more-no more (Such language holds the solemn sea To the sands upon the shore) Shall bloom the thunder-blasted tree, Or the stricken eagle soar! And all my days are trances, And all my nightly dreams Are where thy dark eye glances, And where thy footstep gleams, In what ethereal dances, By what eternal streams. |