By
Edgar Allan Poe

Ah, broken is the golden bowl !  --- the spirit flown forever !

Let the bell toll !  --- a saintly soul floats on the Stygian river: ---

And, Guy De Vere, hast thou no tear ?  ---  weep now or never more !

See !    on you drear and rigid bier low lies thy love, Lenore !

Come, let the burial rite be read --- the funeral song be sung ! ---

An anthem for the queenliest dead that ever died so young ---

A dirge for her the doubly dead in that she died so young.
 

"Wretches !    ye loved her for her wealth and ye hated her for her pride;

And, when she fell in feeble health, ye blessed her --- that she died: ---

How shall  the ritual then be read --- the requiem how be sung

By you --- by yours, the evil eye --- by yours the slanderous tongue

That did to death the innocence that died and died so young ? "
 

Peccavimus: --- yet rave not thus!  but let a Sabbath song

Go up to God so solemnly the dead may feel no wrong !

The sweet Lenore hath gone before, with Hope that flew beside,

Leaving thee wild for the dear child that should have been thy bride ---

For her, the fair and debonair, that now so lowly lies,

The life upon her yellow hair, but not within her eyes ---

The life still there upon her hair, the death upon her eyes.
 

"Avaunt !  ---  avaunt !    to friends from fiends the indignant ghost is riven ---

From Hell unto a high estate within the utmost Heaven ---

From moan and groan to a golden throne beside the King of Heaven: ---

Let no bell toll, then, lest her soul, amid its hallowed mirth

Should catch the note as it doth float up from the damned Earth !

And I --- tonight my heart is light: --- no dirge will I upraise,

But waft the angel on her flight with a Pæan of old days ! "

&/\&/\&