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| AH, broken is the golden bowl! the spirit flown forever! | |
| Let the bell toll!—a saintly soul floats on the Stygian river; | |
| And, Guy De Vere, hast thou no tear?—weep now or never more! | |
| See! on yon drear and rigid bier low lies thy love, Lenore! | |
| Come! let the burial rite be read—the funeral song be sung!— | 5 |
| An anthem for the queenliest dead that ever died so young— | |
| A dirge for her the doubly dead in that she died so young. | |
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| ‘Wretches! ye loved her for her wealth and hated her for her pride, | |
| ‘And when she fell in feeble health, ye blessed her—that she died! | |
| ‘How shall the ritual, then, be read?—the requiem how be sung | 10 |
| ‘By you—by yours, the evil eye,—by yours, the slanderous tongue | |
| ‘That did to death the innocence that died, and died so young?’ | |
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| Peccavimus; but rave not thus! and let a Sabbath song | |
| Go up to God so solemnly the dead may fee! no wrong! | |
| The sweet Lenore hath ‘gone before,’ with Hope, that flew beside, | 15 |
| Leaving thee wild for the dear child that should have been thy | |
| For her, the fair and debonair, that now so lowly lies, [bride— | |
| The life upon her yellow hair but not within her eyes— | |
| The life still there, upon her hair—the death upon her eyes. | |
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| ‘Avaunt! to-night my heart is light. No dirge will I upraise. | 20 |
| ‘But waft the angel on her flight with a paean of old days! | |
| ‘Let no bell toll!—lest her sweet soul, amid its hallowed mirth, | |
| ‘Should catch the note, as it doth float up from the damnèd Earth. | |
| ‘To friends above, from fiends below, the indignant ghost is riven— | |
| ‘From Hell unto a high estate far up within the Heaven— | 25 |
| ‘From grief and groan, to a golden throne, beside the King of Heaven.’ | |
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