_Looking like Lethe, see! the lake_
A conscious slumber seems to take,
And would not for the world awake. "_The Sleepers_." POE.

There is a lake whose lilies lie
Like maidens in the lap of death,
So pale, so cold, so motionless
Its Stygian breast they press;
They breathe, and toward the purple sky
The pallid perfumes of their breath
Ascend in spiral shapes, for there
No wind disturbs the voiceless air--
No murmur breaks the oblivious mood
Of that tenebrean solitude--
No Djinn, no Ghoul, no Afrit laves
His giant limbs within its waves
Beneath the wan Saturnian light
That swoons in the omnipresent night;
But only funeral forms arise,
With arms uplifted to the skies,
And gaze, with blank, cavernous eyes
In whose dull glare no Future lies,--
The shadows of the dead--the Dead
Of whom no mortal soul hath read,
No record come, in prose or rhyme,
Down from the dim Primeval Time!
A moment gazing--they are gone--
Without a sob--without a groan--
Without a sigh--without a moan--
And the lake again is left alone--
Left to that undisturbed repose
Which in an ebon vapor flows
Among the cypresses that stand
A stone-cast from the sombre strand--
Among the trees whose shadows wake,
But not to life, within the lake,
That stand, like statues of the Past,
And will, while that ebony lake shall last.

But when the more than Stygian night
Descends with slow and owl-like flight,
Silent as Death (who comes--we know--
Unheard, unknown of all below;)
Above that dark and desolate wave,
The reflex of the eternal grave--
Gigantic birds with flaming eyes
Sweep upward, onward through the skies,
Or stalk, without a wish to fly,
Where the reposing lilies lie;
While, stirring neither twig nor grass,
Among the trees, in silence, pass
Titanic animals whose race
Existed, but has left no trace
Of name, or size, or shape, or hue--
Whom ancient Adam never knew.

At midnight, still without a sound,
Approaching through the black Profound,
Shadows, in shrouds of pallid hue,
Come slowly, slowly, two by two,
In double line, with funeral march,
Through groves of cypress, yew and larch,
Descending in those waves that part,
Then close, above each silent heart;
While, in the distance, far ahead,
The shadows of the Earlier Dead
Arise, with speculating eyes,
Forgetful of their destinies,
And gaze, and gaze, and gaze again
Upon the long funereal train,
Undreaming their Descendants come
To