Читать книгу Continental Monthly , Vol. 5, No. 6, June, 1864 - Various - Страница 3

Upon the 'pallid bust of Pallas' sat

The Raven from the 'night's Plutonian shore;'

His burning glance withered my wasting life,

His ceaseless cry still tortured as before:

'Lenore! Lenore! ah! never—nevermore!'

The weary moments dragged their crimson sands

Slow through the life-blood of my sinking heart.

I counted not their flow; I only knew

Time and Eternity were of one hue;

That immortality were endless pain

To one who the long lost could ne'er regain—

There was no hope that Death would Love restore:

'Lenore! Lenore! ah! never—nevermore!'

Early one morn I left my sleepless couch,

Seeking in change of place a change of pain.

I leaned my head against the casement, where

The rose she planted wreathed its clustering flowers.

How could it bloom when she was in the grave?

The birds were carolling on every spray,

And every leaf glittered with perfumed dew;

Nature was full of joy, but, wretched man!

Does God indeed bless only birds and flowers?

As thus I stood—the glowing morn without,

Within, the Raven with its blighting cry,

All light the world, all gloom the hopeless heart—

I prayed in agony, if not in faith;

Yet still my saddened heart refused to soar,

And even summer winds the burden bore:

'Lenore! Lenore! ah! never—nevermore!'

With these wild accents ringing through my heart,

There was no hope in prayer! Sadly I rose,

Gazing on Nature with an envious eye,

When, lo! a snowy Dove, weaving her rings

In ever-lessening circles, near me came;

With whirring sound of fluttering wings, she passed

Into the cursed and stifling, haunted room,

Where sat the Raven with his voice of doom—

His ceaseless cry from the Plutonian shore:

'Lenore! Lenore! ah! never—nevermore!'

The waving of the whirring, snowy wings,

Cooled the hot air, diffusing mystic calm.

Again I shuddered as I marked the glare

Which shot from the fell Raven's fiendish eye,

The while he measured where his pall-like swoop

Might seize the Dove as Death had seized Lenore:

'Lenore!' he shrieked, 'ah, never—nevermore!'

Hovered the Dove around an antique cross,

Which long had stood afront the pallid bust

Of haughty Pallas o'er my chamber door:

Neglected it had been through all the storm

Of maddening doubts born from the demon cry

Reëchoing from the night's Plutonian shore:

'Lenore! Lenore! ah! never—nevermore!'

I loved all heathen, antique, classic lore,

And thus the cross had paled before the brow

Of Pallas, radiant type of Reason's power.

But human reason fails in hours of woe,

And wisdom's goddess ne'er reopes the grave.

What knows chill Pallas of corruption's doom?

Upon her massive, rounded, glittering brow

The Bird of Doubt had chos'n a fitting place

To knell into my heart forever more:

'Ah I never, nevermore! Lenore! Lenore!'

The Raven's plumage, in the kindling rays,

Shone with metallic lustre, sombre fire;

His fiendish eye, so blue, and fierce, and cold,

Froze like th' hyena's when she tears the dead.

The sculptured beauty of the marble brow

Of Pallas glittered, as though diamond-strewn:

Haughty and dazzling, yet no voice of peace,

But words of dull negation darkly fell

From Reason's goddess in her brilliant sheen!

No secret bears she from the silent grave;

She stands appalled before its dark abyss,

And shudders at its gloom with all her lore,

All powerless to ope its grass-grown door.

Can Pallas e'er the loved and lost restore?

Hear her wild Raven shriek: 'Lenore! no more!'

With gloomy thoughts and thronging dreams oppressed,

I sank upon the 'violet velvet chair,

Which she shall press, ah, never, nevermore!'

And gazed, I know not why, upon the cross,

On which the Dove was resting its soft wings,

Glowing and rosy in the morn's warm light.

I cannot tell how long I dreaming lay,

When (as from some old picture, shadowy forms

Loom from a distant background as we gaze,

So bright they gleam, so soft they melt away,

We scarcely know whether 'tis fancy's play

Or artist's skill that wins them to the day)

There grew a band of angels on my sight,

Wreathing in love around the slighted cross.

One swung a censer, hung with bell-like flowers,

Whence tones and perfumes mingling charmed the air;

Thick clouds of incense veiled their shadowy forms,

Yet could I see their wings of rainbow light,

The wavings of their white arms, soft and bright.

Then she who swung the censer nearer drew—

The perfumed tones were silent—lowly bent

(The long curls pouring gold adown the wings),

She knelt in prayer before the crucifix.

Her eyes were deep as midnight's mystic stars,

Freighted with love they trembling gazed above,

As pleading for some mortal's bitter pain:

When answered—soft untwined the clasping hands,

The bright wings furled—my heart stood still to hear

'The footfalls tinkle on the tufted floor'—

The eyes met mine—O God! my lost Lenore!

Too deeply awed to clasp her to my heart,

I knelt and gasped—'Lenore! my lost Lenore!

Is there a home for Love beyond the skies?

In pity answer!—shall we meet again?'

Her eyes in rapture floated; solemn, calm,

Then softest music from her lips of balm

Fell, as she joined the angels in the air!

Her words forever charmed away despair!

'Above all pain,

We meet again!

'Kneel and worship humbly

Round the slighted cross!

Death is only seeming—

Love is never loss!

In the hour of sorrow

Calmly look above!

Trust the Holy Victim—

Heaven is in His love!

'Above all pain,

We meet again!

'Never heed the Raven—

Doubt was born in hell!

How can heathen Pallas

Faith of Christian tell?

With the faith of angels,

Led by Holy Dove,

Kneel and pray before Him—

Heaven is in His love!

'Above all pain,

We meet again!'

Then clouds of incense veiled the floating forms;

I only saw the gleams of starry wings,

The flash from lustrous eyes, the glittering hair,

As chanting still the Sanctus of the skies,

Clear o'er the Misereres of earth's graves,

Enveloped in the mist of perfumed haze,

In music's spell they faded from my gaze.

Gone—gone the vision! from my sight it bore

My lost, my found, my ever loved Lenore!

Forgotten scenes of happy infant years,

My mother's hymns around my cradle-bed,

Memories of vesper bell and matin chimes,

Of priests and incensed altars, dimly waked.

The fierce eye of the Raven dimmed and quailed,

His burnished plumage drooped, yet, full of hate,

Began he still his 'wildering shriek—'Lenore!'

When, lo! the Dove broke in upon his cry—

She, too, had found a voice for agony;

Calmly it fell from heaven's cerulean shore:

'Lenore! Lenore! forever—evermore!'

Soon as the Raven heard the silvery tones,

Lulling as gush of mountain-cradled stream,

With maddened plunge he fell to rise no more,

And, in the sweep of his Plutonian wings,

Dashed to the earth the bust of Pallas fair.

The haughty brow lay humbled in the dust,

O'ershadowed by the terror-woven wings

Of that wild Raven, as by some dark pall.

Lift up poor Pallas! bathe her fainting brow

With drops of dewy chrism! take the beak

Of the false Raven from her sinking soul!

Oh, let the Faith Dove nestle in her heart,

Her haughty reason low at Jesu's feet,

While humble as a child she cons the lore:

'The loved, the lost, forever—evermore!'

As if to win me to the crucifix,

The Dove would flutter there, then seek my breast.

The heart must feel its utter orphanage,

Before it makes the cross its dearest hope!

I knelt before the holy martyred form,

The perfect Victim given in perfect love,

The highest symbol of the highest Power,

Self-abnegation perfected in God!

Circling the brow like diadem, there shone

Each letter pierced with thorns and dyed in blood,

Yet dazzling vision with the hopes of heaven:

'I am the Resurrection and the Life!'

Upon the outstretched hands, mangled and torn,

I found that mighty truth the heart divines,

Which strews our midnight thick with stars, solves doubts,

And makes the chasm of the yawning grave

The womb of higher life, in which the lost

Are gently rocked into their angel forms—

That truth of mystic rapture—'God is Love!'

Still chants the snowy Dove from heaven's shore:

'Lenore! Lenore! forever! evermore!'