Helen, thy beauty is to me
    Like those Nic�an barks of yore,
That gently, o�er a perfumed sea,
   The weary, way‑worn wanderer bore
  To his own native shore.

On desperate seas long wont to roam,
    Thy hyacinth hair, thy classic face,
Thy Naiad airs have brought me home
    To the glory that was Greece,
   And the grandeur that was Rome.

Lo! in yon brilliant window‑niche
     How statue‑like I see thee stand,
     The agate lamp within thy hand!
Ah, Psyche, from the regions which
    Are Holy Land!

And the angel Israfel, whose heart‑strings are a lute,
and who has the sweetest voice of all God's creatures.�� K 0 R A N

In Heaven a spirit doth dwell
     �Whose heart‑strings are a lute�;
None sing so wildly well
As the angel Israfel,
And the giddy stars (so legends tell)
Ceasing their hymns, attend the spell
     Of his voice, all mute.

Tottering above
     In her highest noon,
    The enamoured moon
Blushes with love,
     While, to listen, the red levin
     (With the rapid Pleiads, even,
     Which were seven,)
     Pauses in Heaven.

And they say (the starry choir
     And the other listening things)
That Israfeli�s fire
Is owing to that lyre
    By which he sits and sings��
The trembling living wire
    Of those unusual strings.

But the skies that angel trod,
    Where deep thoughts are a duty��
Where Love�s a grown‑up God��
    Where the Houri glances are
Imbued with all the beauty
    Which we worship in a star.

Therefore, thou art not wrong,
    Israfeli, who despisest
An unimpassioned song;
To thee the laurels belong,
    Best bard, because the wisest!
Merrily live, and long!

The ecstasies above
    With thy burning measures suit��
Thy grief, thy joy, thy hate, thy love,
    With the fervour of thy lute��
    Well may the stars be mute!

Yes, Heaven is thine; but this
     Is a world of sweets and sours;
     Our flowers are merely�� flowers,
And the shadow of thy perfect bliss
     Is the sunshine of ours.

If I could dwell
Where Israfel
    Hath dwelt, and he where I,
He might not sing so wildly well
   A mortal melody,
While a bolder note than this might swell
    From my lyre within the sky.

Lo! Death has reared himself a throne
In a strange city lying alone
Far down within the dim West,
Where the good and the bad and the worst and the best
Have gone to their eternal rest.
There shrines and palaces and towers
(Time - eaten towers that tremble not!)
Resemble nothing that is ours.
Around, by lifting winds forgot,
Resignedly beneath the sky
The melancholy waters lie.

No rays from the holy heaven come down
On the long night-time of that town;
But light from out the lurid sea
Streams up the turrets silently��
Gleams up the pinnacles far and free��
Up domes ��up spires ��up kingly halls��
Up fanes ��up Babylon-likes walls��
Up shadowy long-forgotten bowers
Of sculptured ivy and stone flowers��
Up many and many a marvellous shrine
Whose wreath�d friezes intertwine
The viol, the violet, and the vine.

Resignedly beneath the sky
The melancholy waters lie.
So blend the turrets and shadows there
That all seem pendulous in air,
While from a proud tower in the town
Death looks gigantically down.

There open fanes and gaping graves
Yawn level with the luminous waves;
But not the riches there that lie
In each idol�s diamond eye��
Not the gaily-jewelled dead
Tempt the waters from their bed;
For no ripples curl, alas!
Along that wilderness of glass��
No swellings tell that winds may be
Upon some far-off happier sea��
No heavings hint that winds have been
On seas less hideously serene.

But lo, a stir is in the air!
The wave�� there us a movement there!
As if the towers had thrust aside,
In slightly sinking, the dull tide��
As if their tops had feebly given
A void within the filmy Heaven.
The waves have now a redder glow��
The hours are breathing faint and low��
And when, amid no earthly moans,
Down, down that town shall settle hence,
Hell, rising from a thousand thrones,
Shall do it reverence.

At midnight, in the month of June,
I stand beneath the mystic moon.
An opiate vapor, dewy, dim,
Exhales from out her golden rim,
And, softly dripping, drop by drop,
Upon the quiet mountain top,
Steals drowsily and musically
Into the universal valley.
The rosemary nods upon the grave;
The lily lolls upon the wave;
Wrapping the fog about its breast,
The ruin moulders into rest;
Looking like Lethe, see! the lake
A conscious slumber seems to take,
And would not, for the world, awake.
All Beauty sleeps! ��and lo! where lies
Irene, with her Destinies!

Oh, lady bright! can it be right��
This window open to the night?
The wanton airs, from the tree‑top,
Laughingly through the lattice drop��
The bodiless airs, a wizard rout,
Flit through thy chamber in and out,
And wave the curtain canopy
So fitfully�� so fearfully��
Above the closed and fring�d lid
�Neath which thy slumb�ring soul lies hid,
That, o�er the floor and down the wall,
Like ghosts the shadows rise and fall!
Oh, lady dear, hast thou no fear?
Why and what art thou dreaming here?
Sure thou art come o�er far‑off seas,
A wonder to these garden trees!
Strange is thy pallor! strange thy dress!
Strange, above all, thy length of tress,
And this all solemn silentness!

The lady sleeps! Oh, may her sleep,
Which is enduring, so be deep!
 Heaven have her in its sacred keep!
This chamber changed for one more holy,
This bed for one more melancholy,
I pray to God that she may lie
Forever with unopened eye,
While the pale sheeted ghosts go by!

My love, she sleeps! Oh, may her sleep,
As it is lasting, so be deep!
Soft may the worms about her creep!
Far in the forest, dim and old,
For her may some tall vault unfold��
Some vault that oft hath flung its black
And wing�d pannels fluttering back,
Triumphant, o�er the crested palls,
Of her grand family funerals��

Some sepulchre, remote, alone,
Against whose portals she hath thrown,
In childhood, many an idle stone��
Some tomb from out whose sounding door
She ne�er shall force an echo more,
Thrilling to think, poor child of sin!
It was the dead who groaned within. 

How shall the burial rite be read?
   The solemn song be sung?
The requiem for the loveliest dead,
  That ever died so young?