Lenore (1885)

by Edgar Allan Poe

For other versions of this work, see Lenore (Poe).

LENORE

 

LENORE

 

L E N O R E.

 

BY

EDGAR ALLAN POE.

 

ILLUSTRATED.

 

BOSTON:
PUBLISHED BY ESTES AND LAURIAT.
1886.

 

Copyright, 1885,
By Charles E. Wentworth.

 

University Press:
John Wilson and Son, Cambridge.

 

INTRODUCTION

 

Edgar Allan Poe was born in Baltimore in 1811. He graduated at the University of Virginia in 1826; and having spent a year in Europe, he returned to America, and was for a number of years editor of different magazines, among which was the "Broadway Journal." The poem of Lenore was always his favorite, and above his desk always hung the romantic picture of his loved and lost Lenore. He died in Baltimore in 1849.

 

ILLUSTRATIONS

By Hy. Sandham, A. R. A.

Drawn and Engraved under the supervision of
George T. Andrew.

 

 

LENORE.

Ah, broken

is the golden bowl!

the spirit flown forever!

 

 

Let the bell toll! —

a saintly soul floats on the Stygian river;

 

 

And, Guy De Vere, hast thou no tear? —

weep now or nevermore!

 

 

See! on yon drear

and rigid bier

low lies thy love,

Lenore!

Come! let the burial

rite be read,

the funeral song

be sung! —

 

An anthem for the queenliest dead

that ever died so young, —

 

 

A dirge for her, the doubly dead,

in that she died so young.

 

 

"Wretches! ye loved her for her wealth

and hated her for her pride,

 

"And when she fell in feeble health,

ye blessed her — that she died!

"How shall the ritual, then, be read? —

the requiem how be sung

 

 

"By you — by yours, the evil eye, —

by yours, the slanderous tongue

"That did to death the innocence

that died, and died so young?"

 

Peccavimus! but rave not thus,

and let a Sabbath song

Go up to God so solemnly

the dead may feel no wrong!

 

 

The sweet Lenore hath "gone before,"

with Hope, that flew beside,

 

 

Leaving thee wild for the dear child

that should have been thy bride, —

 

 

For her, the fair and debonair,

that now so lowly lies,

 

The life upon her yellow hair but not within her eyes, —

The life still there, upon her hair;

the death upon her eyes.

 

 

"Avaunt! to-night my heart is light.

No dirge will I upraise,

"But waft the angel on her flight

with a Pæan of old days!

"Let no bell toll!

lest her sweet soul, amid its hallowed mirth,

"Should catch the note

as it doth float up from the damnèd Earth.

"To friends above, from fiends below,

the indignant ghost is riven, —

"From Hell unto a high estate

far up within the Heaven, —

 

 

"From grief and groan to a golden throne,

beside the King of Heaven."