To heaven with that ungodly gloom!
Time-eaten towers that tremble not!
Around, by lifting winds forgot,
Resignedly beneath the sky
The melancholy waters lie.

A heaven that God doth not contemn
With stars is like a diadem

We liken our ladies' eyes to them -
But there! That everlasting pall!
It would be mockery to call
Such dreariness a heaven at all.

Yet tho' no holy rays come down
On the long night-time of that town,
Light from the lurid, deep sea
Streams up the turrets silently -

Up thrones

up long-forgotten bowers Of sculptur'd ivy and stone flowers

Up domes

up spires - up kingly halls

Up fanes up Babylon-like walls

Up many a melancholy shrine

Whose entablatures intertwine

The mask the viol- and the vine.

There open temples open graves
Are on a level with the waves

But not the riches there that lie
In each idol's diamond eye,
Not the gayly-jewell'd dead
Tempt the waters from their bed:
For no ripples curl, alas!

Along that wilderness of glass

No swellings hint that winds may be

Upon a far-off happier sea :

So blend the turrets and shadows there

That all seem pendulous in air,

While from the high towers of the town

Death looks gigantically down.

But lo! a stir is in the air!
The wave! there is a ripple there!
As if the towers had thrown aside,
In slightly sinking, the dull tide
As if the turret-tops had given
A vacuum in the filmy heaven :
The waves have now a redder glow-
The very hours are breathing low
And when, amid no earthly moans,
Down, down that town shall settle hence,
Hell rising from a thousand thrones

Shall do it reverence,

And Death to some more happy clime
Shall give his undivided time.

Variations of Southern Literary Messenger (Title, The City of Sea) from above.

Line 4 And (Where) 6 shrines (shrines,) 6 palaces (palaces,) 7 anything (any thing) 8 O! (Oh,) 8 O! (0) 20 Yet down (No holy rays from heaven come down) 22 Light sea (But light from out the lurid sea) 35 gayly (gaily) 46 wave! (—) 50 heaven: () 54 down (down,) 55 Hell rising (All Hades) 55 thrones (thrones,).

Variations of The American Whig Review from the text.

Line 3 Far . . West, (Far off in a region unblest) 12 heaven (cap.) 22 wreathed (wreathëd) 25 The melancholy (Around the mournful) 27 air, (.) 28-35 omit 36 For no (No murmuring) 39 some (a) 41 Seas less hideously (Oceans not so sad—) 47 Heaven. (.—) 49 bours (cap.).

EDITOR'S NOTE.

Death has a throne in a strange city by the edge of the It is ever night time and the only light is from

waters.

VOL. VII. — 12

the lurid sea. The city hangs in pendulous reflection, with Death on a high tower. The sea is hideously serene, but a stir comes and the city will slip in the sea.

The music of this poem is charming. The theme of the city sunk in the sea is not unknown to the German ballad-writers; cf. the kindred themes of the chapel lost in the woods (Uhland), “Die Versunkene Glocke" of Hauptmann, etc., and Al Aaraaf, II.

THE SLEEPER.

Page 51.

PHILADELPHIA SATURDAY MUSEUM, MARCH 4, 1843; 1845; BROADWAY JOURNAL, I. 18; 1831 (TItle IRENE); SOUTHERN LITERARY MESSENGER, May, 1836 (IRENE).

Text, 1845, with Lorimer Graham corrections.

The earliest version (1831) is as follows:

IRENE.

'Tis now (so sings the soaring moon)
Midnight in the sweet month of June,
When winged visions love to lie
Lazily upon beauty's eye,

Or worse

- upon her brow to dance

In panoply of old romance,

Till thoughts and locks are left, alas!
A ne'er-to-be untangled mass.

An influence dewy, drowsy, dim,
Is dripping from that golden rim ;
Grey towers are mouldering into rest,
Wrapping the fog around their breast:

Looking like Lethe, see! the lake
A conscious slumber seems to take,
And would not for the world awake:
The rosemary sleeps upon the grave
The lily lolls upon the wave-
And million bright pines to and fro,
Are rocking lullabies as they go,
To the lone oak that reels with bliss,
Nodding above the dim abyss.
All beauty sleeps: and lo! where lies
With casement open to the skies,
Irene, with her destinies !

Thus hums the moon within her ear,

"O lady sweet! how camest thou here?

"Strange are thine eyelids - strange thy dress! "And strange thy glorious length of tress! "Sure thou art come o'er far-off seas,

"A wonder to our desert trees!

"Some gentle wind hath thought it right
"To open thy window to the night,
"And wanton airs from the tree-top,
"Laughingly thro' the lattice drop,
"And wave this crimson canopy,
"Like a banner o'er thy dreaming eye!
"Lady, awake! lady awake!

"For the holy Jesus' sake!

"For strangely

fearfully in this hall

"My tinted shadows rise and fall !"

The lady sleeps: the dead all sleep
At least as long as Love doth weep:
Entranc'd, the spirit loves to lie
As long as tears on Memory's eye :
But when a week or two go by,

And the light laughter chokes the sigh,
Indignant from the tomb doth take
Its way to some remember'd lake,
Where oft in life

with friends it went

To bathe in the pure element,
And there, from the untrodden grass,
Wreathing for its transparent brow

Those flowers that say (ah hear them now!)
To the night-winds as they pass,

"Ai! ai! alas !

י ! alas

Pores for a moment, ere it go,

On the clear waters there that flow,

Then sinks within (weigh'd down by wo)
Th' uncertain, shadowy heaven below.

The lady sleeps: oh! may her sleep
As it is lasting so be deep-

No icy worms about her creep :

I

pray to God that she may lie

Forever with as calm an eye,

That chamber chang'd for one more holy —

That bed for one more melancholy.

Far in the forest, dim and old,

For her may some tall vault unfold,

Against whose sounding door she hath thrown,

In childhood, many an idle stone

Some tomb, which oft hath flung its black
And vampyre-winged pannels back,

Flutt'ring triumphant o'er the palls

Of her old family funerals.

Variations of Southern Literary Messenger from 1831.

Line 1-2 I stand beneath the soaring moon

At midnight in the month of June.

3-8 (omit S. L. M.) 10 that (yon) 10 rim; (.) 12 breast! (.) 13 awake : (.) 16 grave. (,) 17 wave() 18 bright pines (cedars) 18 fro, (o. c.) 19 go, (o. c.) 20 reels with bliss, (nodding hangs) 21 Nodding abyss (Above yon cataract of Serangs) 22