Page:Edgar Allan Poe - how to know him.djvu/248

 228 EDGAR ALLAN POE �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 crisped 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 \Veir." �THE BELLS (1849) �[Echoic verse is not at best a high order of poetry but by common consent The Bells is, as Edwin Mark- ham calls it, "the finest example in our language of the suggestive power of rhyme and of the echo of sound to sense." The poem grew by many revisions and augmentations from a slight thing of two unequal stanzas, celebrating, respectively, wedding bells and funeral bells.] �I �Hear the sledges with the bells �Silver bells ! �What a world of merriment their melody foretells I How they tinkle, tinkle, tinkle, �In the icy air of night ! While the stars that oversprinkle All the heavens, seem to twinkle With a crystalline delight; ��� �