After Paradise or Legends of Exile :: :: University of Virginia Library

Wall'd round it was by mountains bare and vast,
And thro' them one thin perilous pathway curl'd
Into an unknown land of ice and snow,
Where nothing lived, nor aught was left to freeze
But frost. There was a heap of bones below;
Above, a flock of vultures. Under these,
Hard by a stream that long had ceased to flow,
A miserable, squalid, lean old man,
Nursing a broken harp upon his knees,
Sat in the frozen pass. His eyes were wan,
But full of spiteful looks. She my soul loved,
Fair as a skyward Seraph on the wing,
Before me up that perilous pathway moved,
Calling me from above, and beckoning.
But he that sat before the pass began
To twang his harp, which had but one shrill string,
(Whose notes like icy needles thro' me ran)
And with a crack'd and creaking voice to sing

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“O fool, infatuated fool, forbear!
For yonder is the Land of Ice and Snow,
And She is dead that beckoneth to thee there,
And dead forever are the dead I know.”

Whilst thus that lean old man, with eyes aglare,
Sang to his broken harp's one string below,
The vultures scream'd above in the bleak air
“Dead are the dead forever!”