Ten livid lips said, heavenly blue, I asked a matron which she deemed I asked a maiden; back she flung The locks that round her forehead hung, And turned her eye a glorious one, Ah! many lids Love lurks between, Well, both might make a martyr break DEPARTED DAYS. YES, dear, departed, cherished days, But, like a child in ocean's arms, Where life's young fountains gleam – The mist grows dark-the sun goes down Mr. Poe belonged to one of the oldest and most respectable families in Baltimore. When he was about two years of age, his father and mother both died. He was adopted by a Mr. Allan, of Richmond, Va., with whom he visited Great Britain, where he passed four or five years at a school near London. On returning to this country, he went to Jefferson University, and took the highest honors, though dissipated in his habits. He joined an expedition in aid of Greece, but went to St. Petersburg, where he was involved in many difficulties. On coming back to this country, he entered the Military Academy, at West Point. Dissatisfied with this, he left, and determined to devote himself to authorship. His poems are few, but some of them evince high poetic genius. His prose writings are more numerous. He married his cousin, whose mother seems to have loved him as her own son, and who, in all his erratic courses, followed him with the tenderest interest, and the most touching devotedness. THE BELLS. HEAR the sledges with the bells Silver bells! What a world of merriment their melody foretells! How they tinkle, tinkle, tinkle, In a sort of Runic rhyme, To the tintinabulation that so musically wells From the jingling and the tinkling of the bells. Hear the mellow wedding bells, What a world of happiness their harmony foretells! What a liquid ditty floats To the turtle-dove that listens, while she gloats O, from out the sounding cells, How it dwells On the Future! how it tells Of the rapture that impels, To the rhyming and the chiming of the bells! Hear the loud alarum bells. What a tale of terror, now, their turbulency tells! How they scream out their affright! Too much horrified to speak, In a clamorous appealing to the mercy of the fire, By the side of the pale-faced moon! O, the bells, bells, bells! What a tale their terror tells How they clang, and clash, and roar ! And the clanging, How the danger ebbs and flows; Yet the ear distinctly tells, In the jangling And the wrangling How the danger sinks and swells, By the sinking or the swelling in the anger of the bellsOf the bells In the clamor and the clangor of the bells! Hear the tolling of the bells What a world of solemn thought their monody compels! In the silence of the night, How we shiver with affright, At the melancholy menace of their tone! For every sound that floats From the rust within their throats Is a groan. To the pean of the bells Keeping time, time, time, To the throbbing of the bells Of the bells, bells, bells To the sobbing of the bells; As he knells, knells, knells, To the tolling of the bells To the moaning and the groaning of the bells! |