THOU wast that all to me, love,

For which my soul did pine

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 !

For, alas alas! with me

The light of Life is o'er !

"No more-no more-no more- "9

(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.

I have reached these lands but newly

From an ultimate dim Thule

From a wild, weird clime that lieth sublime,

Out of SPACE-out of TIME.

Bottomless vales and boundless floods,

And chasms, and caves, and Titan woods,
With forms that no man can discover

For the dews that drip all over ;

Mountains toppling evermore

Into seas without a shore;

Seas that restlessly aspire,

Surging, unto skies of fire;

Lakes that endlessly outspread

Their lone waters-lone and dead,

Their still waters-still and chilly

With the snows of the lolling lily.
By the lakes that thus outspread
Their lone waters, lone and dead,—
Their sad waters, sad and chilly
With the snows of the lolling lily,-
By the mountains-near the river
Murmuring lowly, murmuring ever,-
By the grey woods,-by the swamp
Where the toad and the newt encamp,-

By the dismal tarns and pools

Where dwell the Ghouls,--
By each spot the most unholy—
In each nook most melancholy,—

There the traveller meets aghast
Sheeted Memories of the Past-
Shrouded forms that start and sigh
As they pass the wanderer by-
White-robed forms of friends long given,
In agony, to the Earth-and Heaven.
For the heart whose woes are legion
'Tis a peaceful, soothing region-
For the spirit that walks in shadow
'Tis-oh, 'tis an Eldorado !

But the traveller, travelling through it,
May not dare not openly view it;
Never its mysteries are exposed
To the weak human eye unclosed;
So wills its King, who hath forbid
The uplifting of the fringed lid;
And thus the sad Soul that here passes
Beholds it but through darkened glasses.

By a route obscure and lonely,
Haunted by ill angels only,