pitiless pain— Have ceased, with the fever That maddened my brain— With the fever called “Living” That burned in my brain.
And oh! of all tortures That torture the worst Has abated—the terrible Torture of thirst, For the naphthaline river Of Passion accurst:— I have drank of a water That quenches all thirst:—
Of a water that flows, With a lullaby sound, From a spring but a very few Feet under ground— From a cavern not very far Down under ground.
And ah! let it never Be foolishly said That my room it is gloomy And narrow my bed— For man never slept In a different bed; And, to sleep, you must slumber In just such a bed.
My tantalized spirit Here blandly reposes, Forgetting, or never Regretting its roses— Its old agitations Of myrtles and roses:
For now, while so quietly Lying, it fancies A holier odor About it, of pansies— A rosemary odor, Commingled with pansies— With rue and the beautiful Puritan pansies.
And so it lies happily, Bathing in many A dream of the truth And the beauty of Annie— Drowned in a bath Of the tresses of Annie.
She tenderly kissed me, She fondly caressed, And then I fell gently To sleep on her breast— Deeply to sleep From the heaven of her breast.
When the light was extinguished, She covered me warm, And she prayed to the angels To keep me from harm— To the queen of the angels To shield me from harm.
And I lie so composedly, Now in my bed, (Knowing her love) That you fancy me dead— And I rest so contentedly, Now in my bed, (With her love at my breast) That you fancy me dead— That you shudder to look at me, Thinking me dead.
But my heart it is brighter Than all of the many Stars in the sky, For it sparkles with Annie— It glows with the light Of the love of my Annie— With the thought of the light Of the eyes of my Annie.
Because I feel that, in the Heavens above, The angels, whispering to one another, Can find, among their burning terms of love, None so devotional as that of “Mother,” Therefore by that dear name I long have called you— You who are more than mother unto me, And fill my heart of hearts, where Death installed you, In setting my Virginia’s spirit free. My mother—my own mother, who died early, Was but the mother of myself; but you Are mother to the one I loved so dearly, And thus are dearer than the mother I knew By that infinity with which my wife Was dearer to my soul than its soul-life.
Thou wouldst be loved?—then let thy heart From its present pathway part not; Being everything which now thou art, Be nothing which thou art not. So with the world thy gentle ways, Thy grace, thy more than beauty, Shall be an endless theme of praise, And love a simple duty.
Endnotes
The earliest version of “Tamerlane” was included in the suppressed volume of , 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. ↩
It was a saying of this philosopher “that one’s own name should never appear in one’s own book.” ↩
A star was discovered by Tycho Brahe which appeared suddenly in the heavens attained, in a few days, a brilliancy surpassing that of Jupiter—then as suddenly disappeared, and has never been seen since.
“Al Aaraaf” first appeared, with the sonnet “To Silence” prefixed to it, in , and is, substantially, as originally issued. In the edition for , 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!
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— Thou! thy framing is so holy Sorrow is not melancholy.
This flower is much noticed by Lewenhoeck and Tournefort. The bee, feeding upon its blossom, becomes intoxicated. ↩
Clytia—The Chrysanthemum Peruvianum, or, to employ a better-known term, the turnsol—which continually turns towards the sun, covers itself, like Peru, the country from which it comes, with dewy clouds which cool and refresh its flowers during the most violent heat of the day. —B. de St. Pierre ↩
There is cultivated in the king’s garden at Paris, a species of serpentine aloes without prickles, whose large and beautiful flower exhales a strong odor of the vanilla, during the time of its expansion, which is very short. It does not blow till towards the month of July—you then perceive it gradually open its petals—expand them—fade and die. —St. Pierre ↩
There is found, in the Rhone, a beautiful lily of the Valisnerian kind. Its stem will stretch to the length of three or four feet—thus preserving its head above water in the swellings of the river. ↩
