Poem of the Week: Lenore

by Edgar Allan Poe

Yep, it's Poe again. However, there's a good reason. You may've noticed Lenore mentioned in last week's poem. Well, here's an earlier poem by Poe that may or may not bear some relation...

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! —
An anthem for the queenliest dead that ever died so young —
A dirge for her the doubly dead in that she died so young.

"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
"By you — by yours, the evil eye, — by yours, the slanderous tongue
"That did to death the innocence that died, and died so young?"

Peccavimus; but rave not thus! and let a Sabbath song
Go up to God so solemnly the dead may feel no wrong!
The sweet Lenore hath "gone before," with Hope, that flew beside,
Leaving thee wild for the dear child that should have been thy bride —
For her, the fair and debonair, that now so lowly lies,
The life upon her yellow hair but not within her eyes —
The life still there, upon her hair — the death upon her eyes.

"Avaunt! to-night my heart is light. No dirge will I upraise,
"But waft the angel on her flight with a Pæan 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 damnéd Earth.
"To friends above, from fiends below, the indignant ghost is riven —
"From Hell unto a high estate far up within the Heaven —
"From moan and groan, to a golden throne, beside the King of Heaven."

Lenore was revised many times throughout Poe's life, and consequently there an unbelievably large number of variations out there. This, to the best of my knowledge, is his final version, published in August 1845. For the first, published February 1843, look here.

In fact, the very first version was published in 1831, as A Pæan, and is considered so different from the finished product that they're both usually published in anthologies.

You can learn even more about Lenore over at the ever-reliable Wikipedia.