They braced my aunt against a board,
    To make her straight and tall;
  They laced her up, they starved her down,
    To make her light and small;
  They pinched her feet, they singed her hair,
    They screwed it up with pins;
  O, never mortal suffered more
    In penance for her sins.

  So when my precious aunt was done,
    My grandsire brought her back
  (By daylight, lest some rabid youth
    Might follow on the track);
  “Ah!” said my grandsire, as he shook
    Some powder in his pan,
  “What could this lovely creature do
    Against a desperate man?”

  Alas! nor chariot, nor barouche,
    Nor bandit cavalcade,
  Tore from the trembling father’s arms
    His all-accomplished maid. 
  For her how happy had it been! 
    And Heaven had spared to me
  To see one sad ungathered rose
    On my ancestral tree.

  EDGAR ALLAN POE.

  TO HELEN.

  Helen, thy beauty is to me
    Like those Nicean barks of yore,
  That gently, o’er a perfumed sea,
    The weary, wayworn wanderer bore
    To his own native shore.

  On desperate seas long wont to roam,
    Thy hyacinth hair, thy classic face,
  Thy Naiad airs have brought me home
    To the glory that was Greece
    And the grandeur that was Rome.

  Lo! in yon brilliant window-niche
    How statue-like I see thee stand,
  The agate lamp within thy hand! 
    Ah!  Psyche, from the regions which
    Are Holy Land!

  TO ONE IN PARADISE.

  Thou wast that all to me, love,
    For which my soul did pine: 
  A green isle in the sea, love,
    A fountain and a shrine
  All wreathed with fairy fruits and flowers,
    And all the flowers were mine.

  Ah, dream too bright to last! 
    Ah, starry hope! that did’st arise
  But to be overcast! 
    A voice from out the future cries
  On! on!  But o’er the past
    (Dim gulf!) my spirit hovering lies,
  Mute, motionless, aghast!

  For, alas! alas! with me
    The light of life is o’er. 
  “No more—­no more—­no more—­”
    (Such language holds the solemn sea
  To the sands upon the shore)
    Shall bloom the thunder-blasted tree,
  Or the stricken eagle soar!

  And all my days are trances,
    And all my nightly dreams
  Are where thy dark eye glances,
    And where thy footstep gleams,—­
  In what ethereal dances,
    By what eternal streams!

FROM “THE FALL OP THE HOUSE OF USHER.”