prophet still, if bird or

"Prophet!" said I, "thing of evil

devil!

By that Heaven that bends above us, by that God we both

adore,

Tell this soul with sorrow laden if, within the distant Aidenn, It shall clasp a sainted maiden whom the angels name Lenore : Clasp a rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name Lenore!"

Quoth the Raven, "Nevermore."

"Be that word our sign of parting, bird or fiend!" I shrieked, upstarting :

"Get thee back into the tempest and the Night's Plutonian shore !

Leave no black plume as a token of that lie thy soul hath spoken!

Leave my

loneliness unbroken! quit the bust above my door! Take thy beak from out my heart, and take thy form from off my door!"

Quoth the Raven, "Nevermore."

And the Raven, never flitting, still is sitting, still is sitting On the pallid bust of Pallas just above my chamber door; And his eyes have all the seeming of a demon's that is dreaming,

And the lamp-light o'er him streaming throws his shadow on the floor:

And

my soul from out that shadow that lies floating on the floor

THE skies they were ashen and sober;
The leaves they were crispèd and sere,
The leaves they were withering and sere;

It was night in the lonesome October
Of my most immemorial year;
It was hard by the dim lake of Auber,
In the misty mid region of Weir:
It was down by the dank tarn of Auber,

In the ghoul-haunted woodland of Weir.

Here once,

through an alley Titanic

Of cypress, I roamed with my Soul -
Of cypress, with Psyche, my Soul.
These were days when my heart was volcanic
As the scoriac rivers that roll,
As the lavas that restlessly roll
Their sulphurous currents down Yaanek
In the ultimate climes of the pole,
That groan as they roll down Mount Yaanek
In the realms of the boreal pole.

Our talk had been serious and sober,

But our thoughts they were palsied and sere, Our memories were treacherous and sere, For we knew not the month was October, And we marked not the night of the year, (Ah, night of all nights in the year!) We noted not the dim lake of Auber

(Though once we had journeyed down here), Remembered not the dank tarn of Auber

Nor the ghoul-haunted woodland of Weir.
And now, as the night was senescent
And star-dials pointed to morn,
As the star-dials hinted of morn,
At the end of our path a liquescent
And nebulous lustre was born,
Out of which a miraculous crescent
Arose with a duplicate horn,
Astarte's bediamonded crescent

Distinct with its duplicate horn.

And I said "She is warmer than Dian:

She rolls through an ether of sighs,

She revels in a region of sighs:

She has seen that the tears are not dry on

These cheeks, where the worm never dies,

And has come past the stars of the Lion
To point us the path to the skies,
To the Lethean peace of the skies :
Come up, in despite of the Lion,

To shine on us with her bright eyes :
Come up through the lair of the Lion,

With love in her luminous eyes."

But Psyche, uplifting her finger,

Said 66

Sadly this star I mistrust,

Her pallor I strangely mistrust: Oh, hasten! - oh, let us not linger!

-

Oh, fly! let us fly!- for we must."
In terror she spoke, letting sink her
Wings until they trailed in the dust;
In agony sobbed, letting sink her

Plumes till they trailed in the dust,
Till they sorrowfully trailed in the dust.
"This is nothing but dreaming:

I replied

Let us on by this tremulous light!
Let us bathe in this crystalline light!

Its sibyllic splendor is beaming

With hope and in beauty to-night:

See, it flickers up the sky through the night!

Ah, we safely may trust to its gleaming,

And be sure it will lead us aright:

We safely may trust to a gleaming

That cannot but guide us aright,

Since it flickers up to Heaven through the night."

Thus I pacified Psyche and kissed her,

And tempted her out of her gloom,

And conquered her scruples and gloom;

And we passed to the end of the vista,

But were stopped by the door of a tomb,
By the door of a legended tomb;

And I said "What is written, sweet sister,
On the door of this legended tomb?"
She replied "Ulalume- Ulalume
'Tis the vault of thy lost Ulalume!”

Then

my heart it grew ashen and sober
As the leaves that were crispèd and sere,
As the leaves that were withering and sere,
And I cried - "It was surely October
On this very night of last year

That I journeyed I journeyed down here,
That I brought a dread burden down here:
On this night of all nights in the year,
Ah, what demon has tempted me here?

Well I know, now, this dim lake of Auber,

This misty mid region of Weir:

Well I know, now, this dank tarn of Auber,
This ghoul-haunted woodland of Weir."

TO MY MOTHER

BECAUSE I feel that, in the Heavens above,
The angels, whispering to one another,
Can find, among their burning terms of love,
None so devotional as that of "Mother,"
Therefore by that dear name I long have called
You who are more than mother unto me,

you

And fill my heart of hearts, where Death installed you, In setting my Virginia's spirit free.

My mother

my own mother, who died early,

Was but the mother of myself; but you

Are mother to the one I loved so dearly,

And thus are dearer than the mother I knew

By that infinity with which my wife

Was dearer to my soul than its soul-life.

P

XIV

WALT WHITMAN

(1819-1892)

OE and Whitman are the two American

poets whom foreigners have praised most

lavishly and American critics have in their lifetime seemed determined to keep out of the fold of the elect, however readily they may admit their various merits. Since death, both are coming to their own.

The first three editions of Whitman's "Leaves of Grass" either did not sell at all or produced very little impression on the public. Just as a small coterie of partisan adherents was gathering about this democratic poet whom the populace ignored, the Civil War intervened. Whitman went to the front as a nurse, and after the war published his "Drum-Taps." But it is on his "Leaves of Grass" that attention has been concentrated; and it is only after fifty years that it seems really established as an important part of American literature.

66

The fairest and most unprejudiced study of Whitman is perhaps Stevenson's essay in Familiar Studies."

"Not as a poet," says he, "but as what we must call (for lack of a more exact expression) a prophet, he occupies a curious and prominent position. Whether he may greatly influence the future or not, he is a notable symptom of the present. As a sign of the times it would