| |
| HERE lived the soul enchanted | |
| By melody of song; | |
| Here dwelt the spirit haunted | |
| By a demoniac throng; | |
| Here sang the lips elated; | 5 |
| Here grief and death were sated; | |
| Here loved and here unmated | |
| Was he, so frail, so strong. | |
| |
| Here wintry winds and cheerless | |
| The dying firelight blew, | 10 |
| While he whose song was peerless | |
| Dreamed the drear midnight through, | |
| And from dull embers chilling | |
| Crept shadows darkly filling | |
| The silent place, and thrilling | 15 |
| His fancy as they grew. | |
| |
| Here, with brow bared to heaven, | |
| In starry night he stood, | |
| With the lost star of seven | |
| Feeling sad brotherhood. | 20 |
| Here in the sobbing showers | |
| Of dark autumnal hours | |
| He heard suspected powers | |
| Shriek through the stormy wood. | |
| |
| From visions of Apollo | 25 |
| And of Astarte’s bliss, | |
| He gazed into the hollow | |
| And hopeless vale of Dis, | |
| And though earth were surrounded | |
| By heaven, it still was mounded | 30 |
| With graves. His soul had sounded | |
| The dolorous abyss. | |
| |
| Proud, mad, but not defiant, | |
| He touched at heaven and hell, | |
| Fate found a rare soul pliant | 35 |
| And wrung her changes well. | |
| Alternately his lyre, | |
| Stranded with strings of fire, | |
| Led earth’s most happy choir, | |
| Or flashed with Israfel. | 40 |
| |
| No singer of old story | |
| Luting accustomed lays, | |
| No harper for new glory, | |
| No mendicant for praise, | |
| He struck high chords and splendid, | 45 |
| Wherein were fiercely blended | |
| Tones that unfinished ended | |
| With his unfinished days. | |
| |
| Here through this lowly portal, | |
| Made sacred by his name, | 50 |
| Unheralded immortal | |
| The mortal went and came. | |
| And fate that then denied him, | |
| And envy that decried him, | |
| And malice that belied him, | 55 |
| Have cenotaphed his fame. | |
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