ir!

'Above all pain,
We meet again!

'Kneel and worship humbly
Round the slighted cross!
Death is only seeming--
Love is never loss!
In the hour of sorrow
Calmly look above!
Trust the Holy Victim--
Heaven is in His love!

'Above all pain,
We meet again!

'Never heed the Raven--
Doubt was born in hell!
How can heathen Pallas
Faith of Christian tell?
With the faith of angels,
Led by Holy Dove,
Kneel and pray before Him--
Heaven is in His love!

'Above all pain,
We meet again!'

Then clouds of incense veiled the floating forms;
I only saw the gleams of starry wings,
The flash from lustrous eyes, the glittering hair,
As chanting still the _Sanctus_ of the skies,
Clear o'er the _Misereres_ of earth's graves,
Enveloped in the mist of perfumed haze,
In music's spell they faded from my gaze.
Gone--gone the vision! from my sight it bore
My lost, my found, my ever loved Lenore!

Forgotten scenes of happy infant years,
My mother's hymns around my cradle-bed,
Memories of vesper bell and matin chimes,
Of priests and incensed altars, dimly waked.
The fierce eye of the Raven dimmed and quailed,
His burnished plumage drooped, yet, full of hate,
Began he still his 'wildering shriek--'Lenore!'
When, lo! the Dove broke in upon his cry--
She, too, had found a voice for agony;
Calmly it fell from heaven's cerulean shore:
'Lenore! Lenore! forever--evermore!'

Soon as the Raven heard the silvery tones,
Lulling as gush of mountain-cradled stream,
With maddened plunge he fell to rise no more,
And, in the sweep of his Plutonian wings,
Dashed to the earth the bust of Pallas fair.
The haughty brow lay humbled in the dust,
O'ershadowed by the terror-woven wings
Of that wild Raven, as by some dark pall.
Lift up poor Pallas! bathe her fainting brow
With drops of dewy chrism! take the beak
Of the false Raven from her sinking soul!
Oh, let the Faith Dove nestle in her heart,
Her haughty reason low at Jesu's feet,
While humble as a child she cons the lore:
'The loved, the lost, forever--evermore!'

As if to win me to the crucifix,
The Dove would flutter there, then seek my breast.
The heart must feel its utter orphanage,
Before it makes the cros