The Bells

HEAR the sledges with the bells--

    Silver bells--

What a world of merriment their melody foretells!

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;

Keeping time, time, time,

In a sort of Runic rhyme,

To the tintinnabulation that so musically wells

From the bells, bells, bells, bells,

    Bells, bells, bells,--

   From the jingling and the tinkling of the bells.

Hear the mellow wedding-bells,

    Golden bells!

What a world of happiness their harmony foretells!

Through the balmy air of night

How they ring out their delight

  From the molten-golden notes!

      And all in tune,

    What a liquid ditty floats

   To the turtle-dove that listens, while she gloats

      On the moon!

  Oh, from out the sounding cells,

What a gust of euphony voluminously wells!

      How it swells!

      How it dwells

    On the Future!

how it tells

    Of rapture that impels

  To the swinging and the ringing

    Of the bells, bells, bells--

  Of the bells, bells, bells, bells,

    Bells, bells, bells--

   To the rhyming and the chiming of the bells!

Hear the loud alarum bells--

    Brazen bells!

What a tale of terror, now, their turbulancy tells!

In the startled ear of night

How they scream out their affright!

  Too much horrified to speak,

  They can only shriek, shriek,

    Out of tune,

In a clamorous appealing to the mercy of the fire,

In a mad expostulation with the deaf and frantic fire

Leaping higher, higher, higher

With a desperate desire,

     And a resolute endeavor,

     Now--now to sit or never,

   By the side of the pale-faced moon.

Oh, the bells, bells, bells!

What a tale their terror tells

    Of despair!

     How they clang, and clash, and roar!

     What a horror they outpour

On the bosom of the palpitating air!

Yet the ear, it fully knows,

  By the twanging

  And the clanging,

How the danger ebbs and flows;

Yet the ear distinctly tells,

    In the jangling

    And the wrangling,

How the danger sinks and swells,

By the sinking of the swelling in the anger of the bells--

    Of the bells--

Of the bells, bells, bells, bells,

  Bells, bells, bells,--

 In the clamor and the clangor of the bells!

Hear the tolling of the bells--

    Iron bells!

What a world of solemn thought their monody compels!

     In a silence of the night

     How we shiver with affright

   At the meloncholy menace of their tone!

     For every sound that floats

     From the rust within their throats,

    Is a groan:

     And the people--ah, the people--

     They that dwell up in the steeple,

    All alone,

     And who, tolling, tolling, tolling,

In that muffled monotone,

     Feel a glory in so rolling

On the human heart a stone--

     They are neither man nor woman--

     They are neither brute nor human--

    They are Ghouls!

     And their king it is who tolls;

     And he rolls, rolls, rolls, rolls,

A paean from the bells!

     And his merry bosom swells

With the paean of the bells!

     And he dances and he yells;

     Keeping time, time, time

     In a sort of Runic rhyme,

To the paean of the bells--

    Of the bells;

     Keeping time, time, time,

     In a sort of Runic rhyme,

To the throbbing of the bells--

     Of the bells, bells, bells,

To the sobbing of the bells;

     Keeping time, time, time,

As he knells, knells, knells,

     In a happy Runic rhyme,

To the rolling of the bells,--

     Of the bells, bells, bells--

To the tolling of the bells,

   Of the bells, bells, bells, bells,

    Bells, bells, bells,--

To the moaning and the groaning of the bells.

Edgar Allan Poe

The Conqueror Worm

LO! 'tis a gala night

Within the lonesome latter years.

An angel throng, bewinged, bedight

In veils, and drowned in tears,

Sit in a theatre to see

A play of hopes and fears

While the orchestra breathes fitfully

The music of the spheres.

Mimes, in the form of God on high,

Mutter and mumble low,

And hither and thither fly;

Mere puppets they, who come and go

At bidding of vast formless things

That shift the scenery to and fro,

Flapping from out their condor wings

Invisible Woe.

That motley drama--oh, be sure

It shall not be forgot!

With its Phantom chased for evermore

By a crowd that seize it not,

Through a circle that ever returneth in

To the self-same spot;

And much of Madness, and more of Sin,

And Horror the soul of the plot.

But see amid the mimic rout

A crawling shape intrude:

A blood-red thing that writhes from out

The scenic solitude!

It writhes--it writhes!--with mortal pangs

The mimes become its food,

And seraphs sob at vermin fangs

In human gore imbued.

Out--out are the lights--out all!

And over each quivering form

The curtain, a funeral pall,

Comes down with the rush of a storm,

While the angels, all pallid and wan,

Uprising, unveiling, affirm

That the play is the tragedy, ``Man,''

And the hero, the Conqueror Worm.

Edgar Allan Poe

Ulalume--A Ballad

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 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)

We 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--"Sadly this star I mistrust--

  Her pallor I strangely mistrust--

Ah, hasten!--ah, let us not linger!

  Ah,fly!--let us fly!--for we must."

In terror she spoke; letting sink her

  Wings till 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.

I replied--"This is nothing but dreaming.

  Let us on, by this tremulous light!

  Let us bathe in this crystalline light!

Its Sybillic 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 surely 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 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 hath 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."

Said we, then--the two, then--"Ah, can it

  Have been that the woodlandish ghouls--

  The pitiful, the merciful ghouls,

To bar up our way and to ban it

  From the secret that lies in these wolds--

  From the thing that lies hidden in these wolds--

Have drawn up the spectre of a planet

  From the limbo of lunary souls--

This sinfully scintillant planet

  From the Hell of the planetary souls?"

Edgar Allan Poe