Page:The Works of the Late Edgar Allan Poe (Volume II).djvu/130

And boyhood is a summer sun
Whose waning is the dreariest one—
For all we live to know is known
And all we seek to keep hath flown—
Let life, then, as the day-flower, fall
With the noon-day beauty—which if all.
 
I reach'd my home—my home no more—
For all had flown who made it so.
I pass'd from out its mossy door,
And, tho' my tread was soft and low,
A voice came from the threshold stone
Of one whom I had earlier known—
O, I defy thee, Hell, to show
On beds of fire that bum below.
An humbler heart—a deeper wo.
 
Father, I firmly do believe—
I know—for Death who comes for me
From regions of the blest afar,
Where there is nothing to deceive.
Hath left his iron gate ajar,
And rays of truth you cannot see
Are flashing thro' Eternity——
I do believe that Eblis hath
A snare in every human path—
Else how, when in the holy grove
I wandered of the idol. Love,
Who daily scents his snowy wings
With incense of burnt offerings
From the most unpolluted things.
Whose pleasant bowers are yet so riven
Above with trellic'd rays from Heaven