But the skies that angel trod,
Where deep thoughts are a duty,
Where Love's a grown-up God,

Where the Houri glances are
Imbued with all the beauty

Which we worship in a star.

Therefore thou art not wrong,
Israfeli, who despisest
An unimpassioned song;

To thee the laurels belong,

Best bard, because the wisest:

Merrily live, and long!

The ecstasies above

With thy burning measures suit:
Thy grief, thy joy, thy hate, thy love,
With the fervor of thy lute:

Well may the stars be mute!

Yes, Heaven is thine; but this
Is a world of sweets and sours;
Our flowers are merely flowers,
And the shadow of thy perfect bliss
Is the sunshine of ours.

If I could dwell

Where Israfel

Hath dwelt, and he where I,

He might not sing so wildly well

A mortal melody,

While a bolder note than this might swell

From my lyre within the sky.

I

THE HAUNTED PALACE

N the greenest of our valleys

By good angels tenanted, Once a fair and stately palace

Radiant palace-reared its head.
In the monarch Thought's dominion,
It stood there;

Never seraph spread a pinion
Over fabric half so fair.

Banners yellow, glorious, golden,
On its roof did float and flow

(This all this

was in the olden

Time long ago),

And every gentle air that dallied,

In that sweet day,

Along the ramparts plumed and pallid,
A winged odor went away.

Wanderers in that happy valley

Through two luminous windows saw

Spirits moving musically,

To a lute's well-tunèd law,

Round about a throne where, sitting,

Porphyrogene,

In state his glory well befitting,

The ruler of the realm was seen.

And all with pearl and ruby glowing

Was the fair palace door,

Through which came flowing, flowing, flowing,

And sparkling evermore,

A troop of Echoes, whose sweet duty Was but to sing,

In voices of surpassing beauty,

The wit and wisdom of their king.

But evil things, in robes of sorrow,
Assailed the monarch's high estate;
(Ah, let us mourn, for never morrow
Shall dawn upon him desolate!)
And round about his home the glory
That blushed and bloomed,
Is but a dim-remembered story
Of the old time entombed.

And travellers now within that valley
Through the red-litten windows see
Vast forms that move fantastically
To a discordant melody;
While, like a ghastly rapid river,
Through the pale door

A hideous throng rush out forever,
And laugh- but smile no more.

THE CONQUEROR WORM

O! 't is a gala night

Within the lonesome latter years.
An angel throng, bewinged, bedight
In veils, and drowned in tears,
Sit in a theatre to see

A play of hopes and fears,
While the orchestra breathes fitfully
The music of the spheres.

Mimes, in the form of God on high,

Mutter and mumble low,

And hither and thither fly;

Mere puppets they, who come and go At bidding of vast formless things

That shift the scenery to and fro, Flapping from out their condor wings Invisible Woe.

That motley drama - oh, be sure
It shall not be forgot!

With its Phantom chased for evermore
By a crowd that seize it not,

Through a circle that ever returneth in To the self-same spot;

And much of Madness, and more of Sin, And Horror the soul of the plot.

But see amid the mimic rout

A crawling shape intrude:

The mimes become its food,

And seraphs sob at vermin fangs
In human gore imbued.

And over each quivering form

The curtain, a funeral pall,

Comes down with the rush of a storm,
While the angels, all pallid and wan,
Uprising, unveiling, affirm

That the play is the tragedy, "Man,"
And its hero, the Conqueror Worm.