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THE CONQUEROR WORM.

Lo! 'tis a gala night

Within the lonesome latter years!
An angel throng, bewinged, bedight
In veils, and drowned in tears,
Sit in a theatre, to see

A play of hopes and fears,
While the orchestra breathes fitfully
The music of the spheres.

Mimes, in the form of God on high,
Mutter and mumble low,
And hither and thither fly-

Mere puppets they, who come and go
At bidding of vast formless things
That shift the scenery to and fro,
Flapping from out their Condor wings
Invisible Woe!

That motley drama-oh, be sure
It shall not be forgot!

With its Phantom chased for evermore,
By a crowd that seize it not,

Through a circle that ever returneth in
To the self-same spot,

And much of Madness, and more of Sin,
And Horror the soul of the plot.

But see, amid the mimic rout

A crawling shape intrude!

A blood-red thing that writhes from out
The scenic solitude!

It writhes!-it writhes!—with mortal pangs
The mimes become its food,

. And the angels sob at vermin fangs

In human gore imbued.

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Out-out are the lights-out all!
And, over each quivering form,
The curtain, a funeral pall,

Comes down with the rush of a storm, And the angels, all pallid and wan, Uprising, unveiling, affirm

That the play is the tragedy, "Man,"
And its hero the Conqueror Worm.

TO ONE IN PARADISE.

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(Such language holds the solemn sea To the sands upon the shore) Shall bloom the thunder-blasted tree Or the stricken eagle soar!

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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.

THE VALLEY OF UNREST.

Once it smiled a silent dell
Where the people did not dwell;
They had gone unto the wars,
Trusting to the mild-eyed stars,
Nightly, from their azure towers,
To keep watch above the flowers,
In the midst of which all day
The red sun-light lazily lay.
Now each visitor shall confess
The sad valley's restlesness.
Nothing there is motionless-
Nothing save the airs that brood
Over the magic solitude.

Ah, by no wind are stirred those trees
That palpitate like the chill seas
Around the misty Hebrides!

Ah, by no wind those clouds are driven
That rustle through the unquiet Heaven
Uneasily, from morn till even,

Over the violets there that lie
In myriad types of the human eye-
Over the lilies there that wave
And weep above a nameless grave!

They wave-from out their fragrant tops
Eternal dews come down in drops.

They weep from off their delicate stems Perennial tears descend in gems.

THE SLEEPER.

AT midnight, in the month of June,
I stand beneath the mystic moon.
An opiate vapour, dewy, dim,
Exhales from out her golden rim,
And, softly dripping, drop by drop,
Upon the quiet mountain top,
Steals drowsily and musically
Into the universal valley.

The rosemary nods upon the grave;
The lily lolls upon the wave;
Wrapping the fog about its breast,
The ruin moulders into rest;
Looking like Lethe, see! the lake
A conscious slumber seems to take,
And would not, for the world, awake.
All Beauty sleeps!-and lo! where lies
(Her casement
open to the skies)
Irene, with her Destinies!

Oh, lady bright! can it be right-
This window open to the night?
The wanton airs, from the tree-top,
Laughingly through the lattice drop-
The bodiless airs, a wizard rout,
Flit through thy chamber in and out,
And wave the curtain canopy

So fitfully-so fearfully

Above the closed and fringed lid

"Neath which thy slumb'ring soul lies hid,
That, o'er the floor and down the wall,
Like ghosts the shadows rise and fall!
Oh, lady dear, hast thou no fear?
Why and what art thou dreaming here?
Sure thou art come o'er far-off seas,

A wonder to these garden trees!
Strange is thy pallor! strange thy dress!
Strange, above all, thy length of tress,
And this all solemn silentness!

The lady sleeps! Oh, may her sleep,
Which is enduring, so be deep!
Heaven have her in its sacred keep!
This chamber changed for one more holy,
This bed for one more melancholy,

I

pray to God that she may lie

For ever with unopened eye,

While the dim sheeted ghosts go by!

My love, she sleeps! Oh, may her sleep,
As it is lasting, so be deep!

Soft may the worms about her creep!
Far in the forest, dim and old,

For her may some tall vault unfold-
Some vault that oft hath flung its black
And winged pannels fluttering back,
Triumphant, o'er the crested palls
Of her grand family funerals-
Some sepulchre, remote, alone,
Against whose portal she hath thrown,
In childhood, many an idle stone-
Some tomb from out whose sounding door
She ne'er shall force an echo more,
Thrilling to think, poor child of sin!
It was the dead who groaned within.

SILENCE.

THERE are some qualities-some incorporate things That have a double life, which thus is made

A type of that twin entity which springs

From matter and light, evinced in solid and shade.

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