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 !

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.

Y a route obscure and lonely,
Haunted by ill angels only,
Where an Eidolon, named NIGHT,
On a black throne reigns upright,

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,-

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,
Where an Eidolon, named NIGHT,
On a black throne reigns upright,
I have wandered home but newly
From this ultimate dim Thule.

HYMN.

T morn-at noon--at twilight dim-
Maria! thou hast heard my hymn!
In joy and woe-in good and ill-
Mother of God, be with me still!
When the Hours flew brightly by,
And not a cloud obscured the sky,
My soul, lest it should truant be,
Thy grace did guide to thine and thee;

Now, when storms of Fate o'ercast

Darkly my Present and my Past,
Let my Future radiant shine

With sweet hopes of thee and thine!