| At midnight, in the month of June,
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| I stand beneath the mystic moon.
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| An opiate vapor, dewy, dim,
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| Exhales from out her golden rim,
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| And, softly dripping, drop by drop,
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| Upon the quiet mountain top,
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| Steals drowsily and musically
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| Into the universal valley.
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| The rosemary nods upon the grave;
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| The lily lolls upon the wave;
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| Wrapping the fog about it’s breast,
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| The ruin molders into rest;
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| Looking like Lethe, see! |
| the lake
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| A conscious slumber seems to take,
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| And would not, for the world, awake.
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| All Beauty sleeps!- and lo! |
| where lies
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| Irene, with her Destinies!
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| O, lady bright! |
| can it be right-
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| This window open to the night?
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| The wanton airs, from the tree-top,
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| Laughingly through the lattice drop-
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| The bodiless airs, a wizard rout,
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| Flit through thy chamber in and out,
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| And wave the curtain canopy
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| So fitfully- so fearfully-
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| Above the closed and fringed lid
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| 'Neath which thy slumb’ring soul lies hid,
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| That, o’er the floor and down the wall,
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| Like ghosts the shadows rise and fall!
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| Oh, lady dear, hast thou no fear?
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| Why and what art thou dreaming here?
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| Sure thou art come O’er far-off seas,
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| A wonder to these garden trees!
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| Strange is thy pallor! |
| strange thy dress,
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| Strange, above all, thy length of tress,
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| And this all solemn silentness!
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| The lady sleeps! |
| Oh, may her sleep,
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| Which is enduring, so be deep!
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| Heaven have her in it’s sacred keep!
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| This chamber changed for one more holy,
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| This bed for one more melancholy,
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| I pray to God that she may lie
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| For ever with unopened eye,
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| While the pale sheeted ghosts go by!
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| My love, she sleeps! |
| Oh, may her sleep
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| As it is lasting, so be deep!
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| Soft may the worms about her creep!
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| Far in the forest, dim and old,
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| For her may some tall vault unfold-
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| Some vault that oft has flung it’s black
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| And winged panels fluttering back,
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| Triumphant, o’er the crested palls,
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| Of her grand family funerals-
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| Some sepulchre, remote, alone,
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| Against whose portal she hath thrown,
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| In childhood, many an idle stone-
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| Some tomb from out whose sounding door
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| She ne’er shall force an echo more,
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| Thrilling to think, poor child of sin!
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| It was the dead who groaned within. |