| 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 dear 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 bride- |
| For her, the fair and debonnaire, that now so lowly lies, |
| 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 pæan 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 dammed 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." |
