Therefore, to thee this night
         I will no requiem raise,
     But waft thee on thy flight,
         With a Pæan of old days. NOTES


      30. On the “Poems written in Youth” little comment is needed. This section
      includes the pieces printed for first volume of 1827 (which was
      subsequently suppressed), such poems from the first and second published
      volumes of 1829 and 1831 as have not already been given in their revised
      versions, and a few others collected from various sources. “Al Aaraaf”
       first appeared, with the sonnet “To Silence” prefixed to it, in 1829, and
      is, substantially, as originally issued. In the edition for 1831, however,
      this poem, its author’s longest, was introduced by the following
      twenty-nine lines, which have been omitted in—all subsequent
      collections:

     AL AARAAF
     Mysterious star! Thou wert my dream
     All a long summer night—
     Be now my theme! By this clear stream,
     Of thee will I write;
     Meantime from afar
     Bathe me in light I
     Thy world has not the dross of ours,
     Yet all the beauty-all the flowers
     That list our love or deck our bowers
     In dreamy gardens, where do lie
     Dreamy maidens all the day;
     While the silver winds of Circassy
     On violet couches faint away. Little—oh “little dwells in thee”
      Like unto what on earth we see:
     Beauty’s eye is here the bluest
     In the falsest and untruest—On the sweetest
     air doth float
     The most sad and solemn note—
     If with thee be broken hearts,
     Joy so peacefully departs,
     That its echo still doth dwell,
     Like the murmur in the shell. Thou! thy truest type of grief
     Is the gently falling leaf! Thy framing is so holy
     Sorrow is not melancholy. 31. The earliest version of “Tamerlane” was included in the suppressed
      volume of 1827, but differs very considerably from the poem as now
      published. The present draft, besides innumerable verbal alterations and
      improvements upon the original, is more carefully punctuated, and, the
      lines being indented, presents a more pleasing appearance, to the eye at
      least. 32. “To Helen” first appeared in the 1831 volume, as did also “The Valley
      of Unrest” (as “The Valley Nis”), “Israfel,” and one or two others of the
      youthful pieces. The poem styled “Romance,” constituted the Preface of the
      1829 volume, but with the addition of the following lines:

     Succeeding years, too wild for song,
     Then rolled like tropic storms along,
     Where, through the garish lights that fly
     Dying along the troubled sky,
     Lay bare, through vistas thunder-riven,
     The blackness of the general Heaven,
     That very blackness yet doth Ring
     Light on the lightning’s silver wing. For being an idle boy lang syne;
     Who read Anacreon and drank wine,
     I early found Anacreon rhymes
     Were almost passionate sometimes—
     And by strange alchemy of brain
     His pleasures always turned to pain—
     His naiveté to wild desire—
     His wit to love-his wine to fire—
     And so, being young and dipt in folly,
     I fell in love with melancholy,
     And used to throw my earthly rest
     And quiet all away in jest—
     I could not love except where Death
     Was mingling his with Beauty’s breath—
     Or Hymen, Time, and Destiny,
     Were stalking between her and me. But now my soul hath too much room—
     Gone are the glory and the gloom—
     The black hath mellow’d into gray,
     And all the fires are fading away. My draught of passion hath been deep—
     I revell’d, and I now would sleep
     And after drunkenness of soul
     Succeeds the glories of the bowl
     An idle longing night and day
     To dream my very life away. But dreams—of those who dream as I,
     Aspiringly, are damned, and die:
     Yet should I swear I mean alone,
     By notes so very shrilly blown,
     To break upon Time’s monotone,
     While yet my vapid joy and grief
     Are tintless of the yellow leaf—
     Why not an imp the graybeard hath,
     Will shake his shadow in my path—
     And e’en the graybeard will o’erlook
     Connivingly my dreaming-book. DOUBTFUL POEMS




ALONE


     From childhood’s hour I have not been
     As others were—I have not seen
     As others saw—I could not bring
     My passions from a common spring—
     From the same source I have not taken
     My sorrow—I could not awaken
     My heart to joy at the same tone—
     And all I lov’d—_I_ lov’d alone—
     _Then_—in my childhood—in the dawn
     Of a most stormy life—was drawn
     From ev’ry depth of good and ill
     The mystery which binds me still—
     From the torrent, or the fountain—
     From the red cliff of the mountain—
     From the sun that ‘round me roll’d
     In its autumn tint of gold—
     From the lightning in the sky
     As it pass’d me flying by—
     From the thunder, and the storm—
     And the cloud that took the form
     (When the rest of Heaven was blue)
     Of a demon in my view—

      {This poem is no longer considered doubtful as it was in 1903. Liberty has
      been taken to replace the book version with an earlier, perhaps more
      original manuscript version—Ed}




TO ISADORE


             I
     Beneath the vine-clad eaves,
         Whose shadows fall before
         Thy lowly cottage door
     Under the lilac’s tremulous leaves—
     Within thy snowy claspeèd hand
         The purple flowers it bore. Last eve in dreams, I saw thee stand,
     Like queenly nymphs from Fairy-land—
     Enchantress of the flowery wand,
         Most beauteous Isadore! II
     And when I bade the dream
         Upon thy spirit flee,
         Thy violet eyes to me
     Upturned, did overflowing seem
     With the deep, untold delight
         Of Love’s serenity;
     Thy classic brow, like lilies white
     And pale as the Imperial Night
     Upon her throne, with stars bedight,
         Enthralled my soul to thee! III
     Ah I ever I behold
         Thy dreamy, passionate eyes,
         Blue as the languid skies
     Hung with the sunset’s fringe of gold;
     Now strangely clear thine image grows,
         And olden memories
     Are startled from their long repose
     Like shadows on the silent snows
     When suddenly the night-wind blows
         Where quiet moonlight ties. IV
     Like music heard in dreams,
         Like strains of harps unknown,
         Of birds forever flown
     Audible as the voice of streams
     That murmur in some leafy dell,
         I hear thy gentlest tone,
     And Silence cometh with her spell
     Like that which on my tongue doth dwell,
     When tremulous in dreams I tell
         My love to thee alone! V
     In every valley heard,
         Floating from tree to tree,
         Less beautiful to, me,
     The music of the radiant bird,
     Than artless accents such as thine
         Whose echoes never flee! Ah!