Ocean, earth, and air could utter words that made thy spirit flutter—
Words that stirred the hidden fountain swelling in the bosom's core ;
Stirred it till its wavelets, sighing, wakened to a wild replying,
And in numbers never dying sung the heart's unwritten lore—
Sung in wild, bewitching numbers, thy sad heart's unwritten lore, Now unwritten nevermore.
* * * * *
Thou did'st see the sunlight quiver over many a fabled river,
Thou did'st wander with the shadows of the mighty dead of yore,
And thy songs to us came ringing, like the wild, unearthly singing
Of the viewless spirits winging over the night's Plutonian shore—
Of the weary spirits wandering by the gloomy Stygian shore— Sighing dirges evermore.
Thou did'st seem like one benighted—one whose hopes were crushed and blighted—
Mourning for the lost and lovely that the world could not restore ;
But an endless rest is given to thy heart, so wrecked and riven—
Thou hast met again in heaven with the lost and loved Lenore—
With the "rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name Lenore ;" She will leave thee nevermore.
