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| 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, | 5 |
| 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; | 10 |
| 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. | 15 |
| All beauty sleeps!—and lo! where lies | |
| Irene, with her destinies! | |
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| O lady bright! can it be right, | |
| This window open to the night? | |
| The wanton airs, from the tree-top, | 20 |
| 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, | 25 |
| Above the closed and fringëd 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. | |
| O lady dear, hast thou no fear? | 30 |
| 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, | 35 |
| And this all solemn silentness! | |
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| 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, | 40 |
| 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. | |
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| My love, she sleeps. Oh, may her sleep, | 45 |
| 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 | 50 |
| And wingëd panels fluttering back, | |
| Triumphant, o’er the crested palls | |
| Of her grand family funerals: | |
| Some sepulchre, remote, alone, | |
| Against whose portal she hath thrown, | 55 |
| 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! | 60 |
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