IV.
“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 damnèd earth.
To friends above, from fiends below, the indignant ghost is riven;
From hell unto a high estate far up within the heaven,
From grief and groan, to a golden throne beside the King of heaven.”
Edgar Allan Poe.
This poem was published in 1844, and it has been suggested that it was probably founded on the melancholy fate of Lady Flora Hastings. This lady, who was attached to the Royal Household, became the victim of rumours affecting her reputation, and was very severely treated by the Queen and the Duchess of Kent. Although the innocence of Lady Flora was subsequently clearly established, she was unable to survive the disgrace and injustice inflicted on her, and died in July, 1839. But Lenore although published in 1844 was merely a revision of a poem which had appeared in an early volume of Poe’s writings, before the Lady Flora Hastings scandal.