Black against the shadow grey;
Dame mouse patters
Grey against the black.

Hear the bed-time bell!
Sleep forthwith, good prisoners;
Hear the bed-time bell!
You must go to sleep.

No disturbing dream!
Think of nothing but your loves:
No disturbing dream,
Of the fair ones think!

Moonlight clear and bright!
Some one of the neighbors snores;
Moonlight clear and bright--
He is troublesome.

Comes a pitchy cloud
Creeping o'er the faded moon;
Comes a pitchy cloud--
See the grey dawn creep!

Dame mouse patters
Pink across an azure ray;
Dame mouse patters....
Sluggards, up! 'tis day!

Poemes Saturniens

PROLOGUE

The Sages of old time, well worth our own,
Believed--and it has been disproved by none--
That destinies in Heaven written are,
And every soul depends upon a star.
(Many have mocked, without remembering
That laughter oft is a misguiding thing,
This explanation of night's mystery.)
Now all that born beneath Saturnus be,--
Red planet, to the necromancer dear,--
Inherit, ancient magic-books make clear,
Good share of spleen, good share of wretchedness.
Imagination, wakeful, vigorless,
In them makes the resolves of reason vain.
The blood within them, subtle as a bane,
Burning as lava, scarce, flows ever fraught
With sad ideals that ever come to naught.
Such must Saturnians suffer, such must die,--
If so that death destruction doth imply,--
Their lives being ordered in this dismal sense
By logic of a malign Influence.

Melancholia

NEVERMORE

Remembrance, what wilt thou with me? The year
Declined; in the still air the thrush piped clear,
The languid sunshine did incurious peer
Among the thinned leaves of the forest sere.

We were alone, and pensively we strolled,
With straying locks and fancies, when, behold
Her turn to let her thrilling gaze enfold,
And ask me in her voice of living gold,

Her fresh young voice, "What was thy happiest day?"
I smiled discreetly for all answer, and
Devotedly I kissed her fair white hand.

--Ah, me! The earliest flowers, how sweet are they!
And in how exquisite a whisper slips