| See'st thou yon withered tree, Which stretches towards the sea, Its long and ghastly arms— Does it not say to thee, How speedily shall flee, Thy now so envied charms. That forehead high In the dust shall lie, And that soft dark eye Shall be shrivelled and dry; And those pearly teeth, Shall be trodden beneath, The foot of the idle passer-by. |
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Change the subject, change the measure, Sing not of death—let life and pleasure Be the theme of Poet's lay; Our earth contains full many a treasure— Let us seek them while we may. Fill the glass with yellow juice, Of Rhine's old banks, the rich produce; Or let the ruby claret flow, Or Portugal's dark streams unloose— They all bring joy and banish woe. Let not woman enter here, Woman brings but pain and care, Woman smiles but to deceive, In woman's tears let none believe. Love is folly—fill the glass, In mirth and glee, the hours we'll pass. The smiling vine alone is true, The grape's pure tears none ever rue. |
For the Southern Literary Messenger.
BERENICE—A TALE.
BY EDGAR A. POE.
Misery is manifold. The wretchedness of earth is multiform. Overreaching the wide horizon like the rainbow, its hues are as various as the hues of that arch, as distinct too, yet as intimately blended. Overreaching the wide horizon like the rainbow! How is it that from Beauty I have derived a type of unloveliness?—from the covenant of Peace a simile of sorrow? But thus is it. And as, in ethics, Evil is a consequence of Good, so, in fact, out of Joy is sorrow born. Either the memory of past bliss is the anguish of to-day, or the agonies which are, have their origin in the ecstasies which might have been. I have a tale to tell in its own essence rife with horror—I would suppress it were it not a record more of feelings than of facts.
My baptismal name is Egæus—that of my family I will not mention. Yet there are no towers in the land more time-honored than my gloomy, grey, hereditary halls. Our line has been called a race of visionaries: and in many striking particulars—in the character of the family mansion—in the frescos of the chief saloon—in the tapestries of the dormitories—in the chiseling of some buttresses in the armory—but more especially in the gallery of antique paintings—in the fashion of the library chamber—and, lastly, in the very peculiar nature of the library's contents, there is more than sufficient evidence to warrant the belief.
The recollections of my earliest years are connected with that chamber, and with its volumes—of which latter I will say no more. Here died my mother. Herein was I born. But it is mere idleness to say that I had not lived before—that the soul has no previous existence. You deny it. Let us not argue the matter. Convinced myself I seek not to convince. There is, however, a remembrance of ærial forms—of spiritual and meaning eyes—of sounds musical yet sad—a remembrance which will not be excluded: a memory like a shadow, vague, variable, indefinite, unsteady—and like a shadow too, in the impossibility of my getting rid of it, while the sunlight of my reason shall exist.
In that chamber was I born. Thus awaking, as it were, from the long night of what seemed, but was not, nonentity at once into the very regions of fairy land—into a palace of imagination—into the wild dominions of monastic thought and erudition—it is not singular that I gazed around me with a startled and ardent eye—that I loitered away my boyhood in books, and dissipated my youth in reverie—but it is singular that as years rolled away, and the noon of manhood found me still in the mansion of my fathers—it is wonderful what stagnation there fell upon the springs of my life—wonderful how total an inversion took place in the character of my common thoughts. The realities of the world affected me as visions, and as visions only, while the wild ideas of the land of dreams became, in turn,—not the material of my every-day existence—but in very deed that existence utterly and solely in itself.