Page 25 of 172 ULALUME. - Complete Poetical Works

Its Sibyllic splendor is beaming

With Hope and in Beauty to-night:--

See!--it flickers up the sky through the night!

Ah, we safely may trust to its gleaming,

And be sure it will lead us aright--

We safely may trust to a gleaming

That cannot but guide us aright,

Since it flickers up to Heaven through the night."

Thus I pacified Psyche and kissed her,

And tempted her out of her gloom--

And conquered her scruples and gloom;

And we passed to the end of a vista,

But were stopped by the door of a tomb--

By the door of a legended tomb;

And I said--"What is written, sweet sister,

On the door of this legended tomb?"

She replied--"Ulalume--Ulalume--

'Tis the vault of thy lost Ulalume!"

Then my heart it grew ashen and sober

As the leaves that were crisped and sere--

As the leaves that were withering and sere;

And I cried--"It was surely October

On _this_ very night of last year

That I journeyed--I journeyed down here--

That I brought a dread burden down here!

On this night of all nights in the year,

Ah, what demon has tempted me here?

Well I know, now, this dim lake of Auber--

This misty mid region of Weir--

Well I know, now, this dank tarn of Auber,--

This ghoul-haunted woodland of Weir."

1847.

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		The counsel given to a fool is like pearls thrown to the dungheap. Esopo