Page:Edgar Allan Poe - how to know him.djvu/246

 226 EDGAR ALLAN POE �morning. But Psyche, his deeper soul-nature, sees an omen of ill. Hardly has he allayed the foreboding of Psyche when he comes abruptly upon the grave. Memory returns now with an added pang because of the interim of forgetfulness. A stanza from Alfred Noyes' Iron Crown touches upon the psychology of Ulalume : �Not memory of vanished bliss, �But suddenly to know I had forgotten! This, O this �With iron crowned my woe. �Compare also Wordsworth's sonnet Desideria, and the tenth stanza of The Portrait, written by Rossetti in 1847.] �The skies they were ashen and sober; �The leaves they were crisped 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 scoriae 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!) ��� �