THE family of Mr. PoE is one of the oldest and most respectable in Baltimore. DAVID POE, his paternal grandfather, was a quartermaster-general in the Maryland line during the Revolution, and the intimate friend of LAFAYETTE, who, during his last visit to the United States, called personally upon the general's widow, and tendered her his acknowledgments for the services rendered to him by her husband. His great-grandfather, Jonx POE, married, in England, JANE, a daughter of Admiral JAMES MCBRIDE, noted in British naval history, and claiming kindred with some of the most illustrious English families. His father and mother died within a few weeks of each other, of consumption, leaving him an orphan, at two years of age. Mr. JOHN ALLAN, a wealthy gentleman of Richmond, Virginia, took a fancy to him, and persuaded General PoE, his grandfather, to suffer him to adopt him. He was brought up in Mr. ALLAN'S family; and as that gentleman had no other children, he was regarded as his son and heir. In 1816 he accompanied Mr. and Mrs. ALLAN to Great Britain, visited every portion of it, and afterward passed four or five years in a school kept at Stoke Newington, near London, by the Reverend Doctor BRANSBY. He returned to America in 1822, and in 1825 went to the Jefferson University, at Charlottesville, in Virginia, where he led a very dissipated life, the manners of the college being at that time extremely dissolute. He took the first honours, however, and went home greatly in debt. Mr. ALLAN refused to pay some of his debts of honour, and he hastily quitted the country on a Quixotic expedition to join the Greeks, then struggling for liberty. He did not reach his original destination, however, but made his way to St. Petersburg, in Russia, where he became involved in difficulties, from which he was extricated by the late Mr. HENRY MIDDLETON, the American minister at that capital. He returned home in 1829, and immediately afterward entered the military academy at West Point. In about eighteen months from that time, Mr. ALLAN, who had lost his first wife while Mr PoE was in Russia, married again. He was sixty-five years of age, and the lady was young; Po quarrelled with her, and the veteran husband, taking the part of his wife, addressed him an angry letter, which was answered in the same spirit. He died soon after, leaving an infant son the heir to his property, and bequeathed Poɛ nothing.

The army, in the opinion of the young cadet, was not a place for a poor man; so he left West Point abruptly, and determined to maintain himself by authorship. He had printed, while in the military academy, a small volume of poems,

most of which were written in early youth. They illustrated the character of his abilities, and justified his anticipations of success. For a considerable time, however, his writings attracted but little attention. At length, in 1831, the proprietor of a weekly literary gazette in Baltimore offered two premiums, one for the best story in prose, and the other for the best poem. In due time our author sent in two articles, both of which were successful with the examining committee, and popular upon their appearance before the public. The late Mr. THOMAS W. WHITE had then recently established "The Southern Literary Messenger," at Richmond, and upon the warm recommendation of Mr. JOHN P. KENNEDY, who was a member of the committee that has been referred to, Mr. Pox was engaged by him to be its editor. He continued in this situation about a year and a half, in which he wrote many brilliant articles, and raised the "Messenger" to the first rank of literary periodicals.

He next removed to Philadelphia, to assist Mr. W. E. BURTON in the editorship of the "Gentleman's Magazine," a miscellany that in 1840 was merged in "Graham's Magazine," of which Mr. Poɛ became one of the principal writers, particularly in criticism, in which his papers attracted much attention, by their careful and skilful analysis, and generally caustic severity. At this period, however, he appears to have been more ambitious of securing distinction in romantic fiction, and a collection of his compositions in this department, published in 1841, under the title of "Tales of the Grotesque and the Arabesque," established his reputation for ingenuity, imagination, and extraordinary power in tragical narration.

Near the end of 1844 Mr. PoE removed to New York, where he conducted for several months a literary miscellany called "The Broadway Journal." In 1845 he published a volume of Tales, in WILEY and PUTNAM's "Library of American Books," and in the same series, a collection of his Poems, including "The Raven," of which Mr. N. P. WILLIS observes, that in his opinion "it is the most effective single example of fugitive poetry ever published in this country, and is unsurpassed in English poetry for subtle conception, masterly ingenuity of versification, and consistent sustaining of imaginative lift." Ulalume," "Annabel Lee," and "To" quoted in the following pages, have been written since the appearance of Mr. PoE'S volume. In poetry, as in prose, he is most successful in the metaphysical treatment of the passions. His poems are constructed with wonderful ingenuity, and finished with consummate art. They illustrate a morbid sensitiveness of feeling, a shadowy and gloomy imagination, and a taste

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almost faultless in the apprehension of that sort of beauty most agreeable to his temper.

Besides the volumes I have mentioned, Mr. POE is the author of " Arthur Gordon Pym," a romance; "A New Theory of English Versification;" "Eureka," an essay on the material and spiritual universe: a work which he wishes to have "judged as a poem;" and several extended series of papers in the periodicals, the most noticeable of which are Marginalia," embracing opinions of books and

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THE CITY IN THE SEA.

Lo! Death has rear'd himself a throne

In a strange city lying alone

Far down within the dim west,

Where the good and the bad and the worst and

the best

Have gone to their eternal rest.

There shrines, and palaces, and towers,
(Time-eaten towers that tremble not!)
Resemble nothing that is ours.
Around, by lifting winds forgot,
Resignedly beneath the sky
The melancholy waters lie.

No rays from the holy heaven come down
On the long night-time of that town;
But light from out the lurid sea
Streams up the turrets silently-
Gleams up the pinnacles far and free-
Up domes-up spires-up kingly halls—
Up fanes-up Babylon-like walls-
Up shadowy, long-forgotten bowers
Of sculptured ivy and stone flowers-
Up many and many a marvellous shrine
Whose wreathed friezes intertwine
The viol, the violet, and the vine.
Resignedly beneath the sky
The melancholy waters lie.

So blend the turrets and shadows there
That all seem pendulous in air,
While from a proud tower in the town
Death looks gigantically down.

There open fanes and gaping graves
Yawn level with the luminous waves;
But not the riches there that lie
In each idol's diamond eye-
Not the gayly-jewell'd dead
Tempt the waters from their bed;
For no ripples curl, alas!
Along that wilderness of glass-
No swellings tell that winds may be
Upon some far-off happier sea-
No heavings hint that winds have been
On seas less hideously serene.

But lo, a stir is in the air!
The wave-

e-there is a movement there!
As if the towers had thrust aside,
In slightly sinking, the dull tide-
As if their tops had feebly given
A void within the filmy heaven.
The waves have now a redder glow-
The hours are breathing faint and low-

authors; "Secret Writing," "Autography," and "Sketches of the Literati of New York." He is still an industrious magazinist, and is one of the few of this class of writers among us who have any real skill in literary art. A more full account of his contributions to general literature may be found in my "Prose Writers of America."

Mr. PoE died suddenly in Baltimore, on the seventh of October, 1849.

And when, amid no earthly moans, Down, down that town shall settle hence, Hell, rising from a thousand thrones, Shall do it reverence.

ANNABEL LEE.

Ir was many and many a year ago,
In a kingdom by the sea,

That a maiden there lived whom you may know
By the name of ANNABEL LEe;

And this maiden she lived with no other thought Than to love and be loved by me.

I was a child and she was a child,

In this kingdom by the sea;

But we loved with a love that was more than love

I and my ANNABEL LEE

With a love that the winged seraphs of heaven
Coveted her and me.

And this was the reason that, long ago,
In this kingdom by the sea,

A wind blew out of a cloud, chilling
My beautiful ANNABEL LEE;
So that her highborn kinsmen came
And bore her away from me,
To shut her up in a sepulchre,

In this kingdom by the sea.
The angels, not half so happy in heaven,
Went envying her and me-
Yes! that was the reason (as all men know,
In this kingdom by the sea),

That the wind came out of the cloud by night,
Chilling and killing my ANNABEL LEE.
But our love it was stronger by far than the love
Of those who were older than we—
Of many far wiser than we

And neither the angels in heaven above,
Nor the demons down under the sea,
Can ever dissever my soul from the soul
Of the beautiful ANNABEL LEE:

For the moon never beams, without bringing me dreams

Of the beautiful ANNABEL LEE; And the stars never rise, but I feel the bright eyes Of the beautiful ANNABEL LEE: And so, all the night-tide, I lie down by the side Of my darling-my darling-my life and my bride, In her sepulchre there by the seaIn her tomb by the sounding sea.

ULALUME: A BALLAD.

THE skies they were ashen and sober;
The leaves they were crispéd and sere—
The leaves they were withering and sere;
It was night in the lonesome October

Of my most immemorial year;
It was hard by the dim lake of Auber,
In the misty mid region of Weir-
It was down by the dank tarn of Auber.
In the ghoul-haunted woodland of Weir.
Here once, through an alley Titanic,

Of cypress, I roamed with my soul-
Of cypress, with Psyché, my soul.
These were days when my heart was volcanic
As the scoriac rivers that roll-
As the lavas that restlessly roll
Their sulphurous currents down Yaanek
In the ultimate climes of the pole-

That

groan as they roll down Mount Yaanek In the realms of the boreal pole.

Our talk had been serious and sober,

But our thoughts they were palsied and sereOur memories were treacherous and sere For we knew not the month was October, And we marked not the night of the year(Ah, night of all nights in the year!) We noted not the dim lake of Auber, (Though once we had journeyed down here)Remember'd not the dank tarn of Auber, Nor the ghoul-haunted woodland of Weir. And now, as the night was senescent, And star-dials pointed to mornAs the star-dials hinted of mornAt the end of our path a liquescent

And nebulous lustre was born, Out of which a miraculous crescent Arose with a duplicate hornAstarte's bediamonded crescent

Distinct with its duplicate horn.

And I said " She is warmer than Dian:
She rolls through an ether of sighs—
She revels in a region of sighs:
She has seen that the tears are not dry on
These cheeks, where the worm never dies,
And has come past the stars of the Lion

To point us the path to the skies-
To the Lethean peace of the skies-
Come up, in despite of the Lion,

To shine on us with her bright eyes-
Come up through the lair of the Lion,
With love in her luminous eyes."
But Psyché, uplifting her finger,

Said "Sadly this star I mistrust-
Her pallor I strangely mistrust:
Oh, hasten!-oh, let us not linger!

Oh, fly!-let us fly!-for we must."
In terror she spoke, letting sink her

Wings till they trailed in the dust-
In agony sobbed letting sink her

Plumes till they trailed in the dust-
Till they sorrowfully trailed in the dust.

I replied "This is nothing but dreaming:
Let us on by this tremulous light-
Let us bathe in this crystalline light!

Its sybilic splendor is beaming

With hope and in beauty to-night:

See, it flickers up the sky through the night! Ah, we safely may trust to its gleaming, And be sure it will lead us arightWe safely may trust to a gleaming

That cannot but guide us aright,

Since it flickers up to heaven through the night."

Thus I pacified Psyché and kissed her,

And tempted her out of her gloom-
And conquered her scruples and gloom;
And we passed to the end of the vista,

But were stopped by the door of a tomb-
By the door of a legended tomb;
And I said, "What is written, sweet sister,
On the door of this legended tomb?"
She replied, "Ulalume-Ulalume-
'Tis the vault of thy lost Ulalume!"
Then my heart it grew ashen and sober

As the leaves that were crisped and sere-
As the leaves that were withering and sere,
And I cried, "It was surely October

On this very night of last year,
That I journeyed-I journeyed down here—
That I brought a dread burden down here-
On this night of all nights in the year

Oh, what demon has tempted me here?
Well I know, now, this dim lake of Auber,
This misty mid region of Weir-
Well I know, now, this dank tarn of Auber,

In the ghoul-haunted woodland of Weir."
Said we then the two, then-"Ah, can it
Have been that the woodlandish ghouls-
The pitiful, the merciful ghouls-

To bar up our way and to ban it

From the secret that lies in these woldsFrom the thing that lies hidden in these woldsHave drawn up the spectre of a planet

From the limbo of lunary souls

This sinfully scintillant planet

From the hell of the planetary souls ?"

TO ZANTE.

FAIR isle, that from the fairest of all flowers
Thy gentlest of all gentle names dost take!
How many memories of what radiant hours

At sight of thee and thine at once awake!
How many scenes of what departed bliss!
How many thoughts of what entombed hopes!
How many visions of a maiden that is

No more no more upon thy verdant slopes! No more! alas, that magical sad sound Transforming all! Thy charms shall please no

more

Thy memory no more!

Accursed ground Henceforth I hold thy flower-enamelled shore, O hyacinthine isle! O purple Zante! "Isola d'oro! Fior di Levante !"

ΤΟ

I SAW thee once-once only-years ago:
I must not say how many-but not many.
It was a July midnight; and from out

A full-orbed moon that, like thine own soul, soaring,
Sought a precipitant pathway up through heaven,
There fell a silvery-silken veil of light,
With quietude, and sultriness, and slumber,
Upon the upturned faces of a thousand
Roses that grew in an enchanted garden,
Where no wind dared to stir, unless on tiptoe-
Fell on the upturned faces of these roses
That gave out, in return for the love-light,
Their odorous souls in an ecstatic death-
Fell on the upturned faces of these roses
That smiled and died in this parterre, enchanted
By thee and by the poetry of thy presence.

Clad all in white, upon a violet bank
I saw thee half reclining; while the moon
Fell on the upturned faces of the roses,
And on thine own, upturned-alas! in sorrow.

Was it not Fate that, on this July midnightWas it not Fate (whose name is also Sorrow) That bade me pause before that garden-gate To breathe the incense of those slumbering roses? No footstep stirred: the hated world all slept, Save only thee and me. I paused-I lookedAnd in an instant all things disappeared. (Ah, bear in mind this garden was enchanted!) The pearly lustre of the moon went out: The mossy banks and the meandering paths, The happy flowers and the repining trees, Were seen no more: the very roses' odors Died in the arms of the adoring airs. All, all expired save thee-save less than thou: Save only the divine light in thine eyesSave but the soul in thine uplifted eyes. I saw but them-they were the world to me. I saw but them-saw only them for hoursSaw only them until the moon went down. What wild heart-histories seemed to lie enwritten Upon those crystalline, celestial spheres! How dark a wo, yet how sublime a hope! How silently serene a sea of pride! How daring an ambition! yet how deepHow fathomless a capacity for love!

But now, at length, dear Dian sank from sight Into a western couch of thunder-cloud, And thou, a ghost, amid the entombing trees Didst glide away. Only thine eyes remained. They would not go-they never yet have gone. Lighting my lonely pathway home that night, They have not left me (as my hopes have) since. They follow me, they lead me through the years; They are my ministers-yet I their slave. Their office is to illumine and enkindle-My duty, to be saved by their bright light, And purified in their electric fire

And sanctified in their elysian fire.

They fill my soul with beauty (which is hope),

And are far up in heaven, the stars I kneel to
In the sad, silent watches of my night;

While even in the meridian glare of day I see them still-two sweetly scintillant Venuses, unextinguished by the sun!

DREAM-LAND.

Br a route obscure and lonely,
Haunted by ill angels only,
Where an Eidolon, named Night,
On a black throne reigns upright,
I have reached these lands but newly
From an ultimate dim Thul?—
From a wild, weird clime that lieth, sublime,
Out of space-out of time.

Bottomless vales and boundless floods,
And chasms, and caves, and Titan woods,
With forms that no man can discover
For the dews that drip all over;
Mountains toppling evermore
Into seas without a shore;
Seas that restlessly aspire,
Surging, unto skies of fire;
Lakes that endlessly outspread
Their lone waters-lone and dead-
Their still waters-still and chilly
With the snows of the lolling lily.
By the lakes that thus outspread
Their lone waters, lone and dead—
Their sad waters, sad and chilly
With the snows of the lolling lily-
By the mountains, near the river
Murmuring lowly, murmuring ever-
By the gray woods-by the swamp
Where the toad and the newt encamp--
By the dismal tarns and pools

Where dwell the ghouls-
By each spot the most unholy,
In each nook most melancholy-
There the traveller meets aghast
Sheeted memories of the past;
Shrouded forms that start and sigh
As they pass the wanderer by;
White-robed forms of friends long given,
In agony, to earth-and heaven!
For the heart whose woes are legion
'Tis a peaceful, soothing region;
For the spirit that walks in shadow
'Tis-oh, 't is an Eldorado!
But the traveller, travelling through it,
May not, dare not openly view it;
Never its mysteries are exposed
To the weak human eye unclosed;
So wills its King, who hath forbid
The uplifting of the fringed lid;
And thus the sad soul that here passes
Beholds it but through darken'd glasses.
By a route obscure and lonely,
Haunted by ill angels only,
Where an Eidolon, named Night,
On a black throne reigns upright,
I have wander'd home but newly
From this ultimate dim Thulé.

The funeral-song be sung!An anthem for the queenliest dead That ever died so youngA dirge for her the doubly dead, In that she died so young! "Wretches! ye loved her for her wealth, And hated her for her pride; And when she fell in feeble health,

Ye bless'd her-that she died!
How shall the ritual, then, be read?

The requiem how be sung
By you by yours, the evil eye-

By yours, the slanderous tongue
That did to death the innocence

That died, and died so young?"

ISRAFEL.*

In heaven a spirit doth dwell
"Whose heart-strings are a lute;"
None sing so wildly well

As the angel ISRAFEL,
And the giddy stars (so legends tell)
Ceasing their hymns, attend the spell
Of his voice, all mute.

Tottering above

In her highest noon,
The enamour'd moon
Blushes with love,

While, to listen, the red levin
(With the rapid Pieiads, even,
Which were seven)
Pauses in heaven.

And they say (the starry choir
And the other listening things)
That ISRAFELI's fire

Is owing to that lyre

By which he sits and sings-
The trembling living wire
Of those unusual strings.

But the skies that angel trod,

Where deep thoughts are a dutyWhere Love's a grown-up god

Where the Houri glances are Imbued with all the beauty

Which we worship in a star.

Therefore, thou art not wrong,
ISRAFELI, who despisest
An unimpassion'd song;
To thee the laurels belong,

Best bard, because the wisest!
Merrily live, and long!

The ecstasies above

With thy burning measures suitThy grief, thy joy, thy hate, thy love, With the fervour of thy lute-We'l may the stars be mute! Yes, heaven is thine; but this

Is a world of sweets and sours; Our flowers are merely-flowers, And the shadow of thy perfect bliss Is the sunshine of ours.

If I cou'd dwell Where ISRAFEL

Hath dwelt, and he where I, He might not sing so wildly well

A mortal melody,

While a bolder note than this might swell
From my lyre within the sky.

"And the angel ISRAFEL, whose heart strings are a lute and who has the sweetest voice of all God's creatures." KORAN.