Lenore
Eerste publicatie: Februari 1843 (Pioneer)
Annotatie: Poe schreef dit gedicht al in 1831, destijds met als titel ‘A Pæan’. Het werd in januari 1836 gepubliceerd in de Southern Literary Messenger. Echter bestond het uit 11 kwatrijnen en verschilde het significant met het gedicht dat in 1843 onder de nieuwe titel ‘Lenore’ werd gepubliceerd.
Vertalingen en bewerkingen:
1993: Lenoor (Verzamelde gedichten, Hendrik de Vries)
1945: Lenoor (Eros op den Parnassus. Minnepoëzie uit alle tijden, Contact)
1939: Lenoor (Romantische rhapsodie, Hendrik de Vries)
LENORE
Ah, broken is the golden bowl!
The spirit flown forever!
Let the bell toll!
A saintly soul!
Floats on the Stygian river!
And let the burial rite be read! —
The funeral song be sung —
A dirge for the most lovely dead
That ever died so young!
And, Guy De Vere,
Hast thou no tear?
Weep now or nevermore!
See! on yon drear
And rigid bier
Low lies thy love, Lenore!
“Yon heir, whose cheeks of pallid hue
With tears are streaming wet,
Sees only, through
Their crocodile dew,
A vacant coronet —
False friends! ye lov’d 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
For her, most wrong’d of all the dead
That ever died so young?”
Peccavimus;
But rave not thus!
And let the solemn song
Go up to God so mournfully that she
may feel no wrong!
The sweet Lenore
Hath “gone before”
With young Hope at her side,
And thou art wild
For the dear child
That should have been thy bride —
For her, the fair
And debonair,
That now so lowly lies —
The life still there,
Upon her hair,
The death upon her eyes.
“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 hallow’d mirth
Should catch the note,
As it doth float
Up from the damnéd earth.
To friends above, from fiends below, th’
indignant ghost is riven —
From grief and moan
To a gold throne
Beside the King of Heaven![[”]]
