Triumphant, o'er the crested palls,
Of her grand family funerals,—
Some sepulchre, remote, alone,

Against whose portal she hath thrown,
In childhood many an idle stone,—
Some tomb from out whose sounding door
She ne'er shall force an echo more,
Thrilling to think, poor child of sin !
It was the dead who groaned within.

THE VALLEY OF UNREST.

ONCE it smiled a silent dell
Where the people did not dwell;
They had gone unto the wars,
Trusting to the mild-eyed stars,
Nightly, from their azure towers,
To keep watch above the flowers,
In the midst of which all day
The red sunlight lazily lay.
Now each visitor shall confess
The sad valley's restlessness,

Nothing there is motionless,
Nothing save the airs that brood
Over the magic solitude.

Ah, by no wind are stirred those trees
That palpitate like the chill seas
Around the misty Hebrides!

Ah, by no wind those clouds are driven

That rustle through the unquiet Heaven

Uneasily, from morn till even,

Over the violets there that lie

In myriad types of the human eye,–
Over the lilies there that wave

And weep above a nameless grave!
They wave-from out their fragrant tops
Eternal dews come down in drops.
They weep-from off their delicate stems
Perennial tears descend in gems.

A DREAM WITHIN A DREAM.

TAKE this kiss upon the brow!
And, in parting from you now,
Thus much let me avow:

You are not wrong, who deem
That my days have been a dream;
Yet if Hope has flown away
In a night, or in a day,

In a vision, or in none,

Is it therefore the less gone?

All that we see or seem

Is but a dream within a dream.

I stand amid the roar
Of a surf-tormented shore,
And I hold within my hand
Grains of the golden sand:

Bad

How few! yet how they creep
Through my fingers to the deep,
While I weep,-while I weep!
Oh, God! can I not grasp
Them with a tighter clasp?
Oh, God! can I not save
One from the pitiless wave ?
Is all that we see or seem

But a dream within a dream?

DREAM-LAND.

By a route obscure and lonely,
Haunted by ill angels only,

Where an Eidolon, named NIGHT,
On a black throne reigns upright,

I have reached these lands but newly,
From an ultimate dim Thule,--

From a wild weird clime that lieth, sublime,
Out of SPACE—out of TIME.

Bottomless vales and boundless floods,

And chasms, and caves, and Titan woods,

With forms that no man can discover
For the dews that drip all over;

Mountains toppling evermore

Into seas without a shore;
Seas that restlessly aspire,
Surging, into skies of fire;
Lakes that endlessly outspread

Their lone waters-lone and dead,—

Their still waters-still and chilly

With the snows of the lolling lily.

By the lakes that thus outspread

Their lone waters, lone and dread,-
Their sad waters, sad and chilly
With the snows of the lolling lily,—
By the mountains-r
-near the river
Murmuring lowly, murmuring ever,—
By the gray woods,-by the swamp
Where the toad and the newt encamp,—
By the dismal tarns and pools
Where dwell the Ghouls,-

By each spot the most unholy,-
In each nook most melancholy,—
There the traveller meets aghast
Sheeted Memories of the Past,--
Shrouded forms that start and sigh
As they pass the wanderer by,-
White-robed forms of friends long given
In agony, to the Earth, and Heaven.

For the heart whose woes are legion
'Tis a peaceful, soothing region,-
For the spirit that walks in shadow
'Tis-oh, 'tis an Eldorado!
But the traveller, travelling through it,
May not dare not-openly view it;
Never its mysteries are exposed
To the weak human eye unclosed ;
So wills its King, who hath forbid
The uplifting of the fringed lid;
And thus the sad Soul that here passes
Beholds it but through darkened glasses.