Forgetting, or never
Regretting, its roses
Its old agitations

Of myrtles and roses :

For now, while so quietly
Lying, it fancies

A holier odor

About it, of pansies A rosemary odor,

Commingled with pansies With rue and the beautiful Puritan pansies.

And so it lies happily,
Bathing in many

A dream of the truth

And the beauty of Annie Drowned in a bath

Of the tresses of Annie.

She tenderly kissed me,
She fondly caressed,
And then I fell gently

To sleep on her breast

Deeply to sleep

From the heaven of her breast.

When the light was extinguished,

She covered me warm, And she prayed to the angels To keep me from harm To the queen of the angels To shield me from harm. VOL. VII. -8

114

A VALENTINE.1

Το

FOR her this rhyme is penned, whose luminous eyes,
Brightly expressive as the twins of Leda,

Shall find her own sweet name, that, nestling lies
Upon the page, enwrapped from every reader.
Search narrowly the lines!-- they hold a treasure

a talisman

an amulet

That must be worn at heart. Search well the

measure

The words - the syllables! Do not forget
The trivialest point, or you may lose your labor!
And yet there is in this no Gordian knot
Which one might not undo without a sabre,
If one could merely comprehend the plot.
Enwritten upon the leaf where now are peering
Eyes scintillating soul, there lie perdus

Three eloquent words oft uttered in the hearing
Of poets, by poets as the name is a poet's, too.
Its letters, although naturally lying

Like the knight Pinto Mendez Ferdinando Still form a synonym for Truth. Cease trying!

You will not read the riddle, though you do the best you can do.

1 The MS. in the possession of Mrs. W. M. Griswold, dated "Valentine's Eve, 1848," differs only in punctuation from the Union Magazine text here given. An earlier form will be found in the Notes. - ED.

TO MY MOTHER.

BECAUSE I feel that, in the Heavens above,
The angels, whispering to one another,
Can find, among their burning terms of love,
None so devotional as that of "Mother,"
Therefore by that dear name I long have called you-
You who are more than mother unto me,

And fill my heart of hearts, where Death installed you,
In setting my Virginia's spirit free.

My mother

my own mother, who died early,

Was but the mother of myself; but you Are mother to the one I loved so dearly,

And thus are dearer than the mother I knew

By that infinity with which my wife

Was dearer to my soul than its soul-life.

ANNABEL LEE.

Ir was many and many a year ago,

In a kingdom by the sea

That a maiden there lived whom you may know
By the name of ANNABEL LEE ;

And this maiden she lived with no other thought
Than to love and be loved by me.

I was a child and she was a child,

In this kingdom by the sea,

But we loved with a love that was more than love -
I and my ANNABEL LEE

With a love that the winged seraphs of heaven
Coveted her and me.

And this was the reason that, long ago,
In this kingdom by the sea,

A wind blew out of a cloud, chilling
My beautiful Annabel Lee;

So that her highborn kinsmen came
And bore her away from me,

To shut her up in a sepulchre

In this kingdom by the sea.

The angels, not half so happy in heaven,

Went envying her and me

Yes! that was the reason (as all men know,
In this kingdom by the sea)

That the wind came out of the cloud by night,
Chilling and killing my ANNABEL LEE.