mbodied is, of course, "Ulalume." Like this, there is nothing; in
Literature--nothing in the whole field of human art. Here he is, from
beginning to end, a supreme artist; dealing with the subject for
which he was born! That undertone of sardonic, cynical _humour_--for
it can be called nothing else--which grins at us in the background
like the grin of a Skull; how extraordinarily characteristic it is! And
the touches of "infernal colloquialism," so deliberately fitted in, and
making us remember--many things!--is there anything in the world
like them?

"And now as the night was senescent,
And 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 be-diamonded crescent,
Distinct with its duplicate horn!"

"And I said"--but let us pass to his Companion. The cruelty of this
conversation with "Psyche" is a thing that may well make us
shudder. The implication is, of course, double. Psyche is his own
soul; the soul in him which would live, and grow, and change, and
know the "Vita Nuova." She is also "the Companion," to whom he
has turned for consolation. She is the Second One, the Other One, in
whose living caresses he would forget, if it might be, that which lies
down there in the darkness!

"Then Psyche, uplifting her finger,
Said, 'sadly this star I mistrust,
Its pallor I strangely mistrust.
O hasten! O let us not linger!
O fly! Let us fly! for we must!'"

Thus the Companion; thus the Comrade; thus the "Vita Nuova"!

Now mark what follows:

"Then 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 a 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!"

The end of the poem is like the beginning, and who can utter the
feelings it excites? That "dark tarn of Auber," those "Ghoul-haunted
woodlands of Weir" convey, more thrillingly than a thousand words
of description, what we have actually felt, long ago, far off, in that
strange country of our forbidden dreams.

What a master he is! And if you ask about his "ph