The skies they were ashen and sober:
  The leaves they were crisped 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 ghoul-haunted woodland of weir.

Here once, through an alley Titanic,
  Of cypress, I roamed with my Soul-
  Of cypress, with Psyche, 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 sere-
  Our 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 of the year!)
We noted not the dim lake of Auber-
  (Though once we had journeyed down here)-
Remembered not the dank tarn of Auber,
  Nor the ghoul-haunted woodland of Weir.

And now, as the night was senescent
  And the star-dials pointed to morn-
  As the star-dials hinted of morn-
At the end of our path a liquescent
  And nebulous lustre was born,
Out of which a miraculous crescent
  Arose with a duplicate horn-
Astarte'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 Psyche, 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 until 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 Sibyllic 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 aright-
We safely may trust to a gleaming
  That cannot but guide us aright,
  Since it flickers up to Heaven through the night."

Thus I pacified Psyche 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-
  'T is 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,
  Ah, 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,
  This 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 wolds--
  From the thing that lies hidden in these wolds--
Had drawn up the spectre of a planet
  From the limbo of lunary souls--
This sinfully scintillant planet
  From the Hell of the planetary souls?" 

sere: withered

Weir: the noun means "waterway trap to catch fish".

dank tarn: small, unpleasant-smelling mountain lake with high banks

ghoul-haunted: frequented by grave-robbing evil spirits

alley Titanic: the Titans were giants of ancient Greek myth.

Psyche: Greek term for "soul", and the spouse of Cupid.

scoriac: presumably, black as scoria, a cindery lava

Mount Yaanek: perhaps the only active volcano in either Arctic or Antarctic regions, Mount Erebus (="hell"), first discovered in 1840 (Mabbott, I, 421).

boreal pole: northern (or southern, in French usage) pole (Mabbott, I, 421).

senescent: rapidly aging, approaching the end

night of all nights: all Hallows' Eve, Halloween, the night of all souls

Astarte: Phoenician goddess of sexual love, evidently a star here (52; Venus?) rather than the crescent moon

Dian: Diana, the moon goddess

Lethean peace: the river in ancient Hades that enables the damned to forget

the Lion: the sign of Leo in the zodiac

Sybilic: prophetic, like the Greek Sibyl

Ulalume: Poe pronounced this "You-la-loom," according to Susan Ingram, who heard his reading of the poem (Collected Work of Edgar Allan Poe, ed. Thomas Ollive Mabbott [Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1969]: 419).

wolds: regions of open hilly countryside

limbo: a tepid hell for those who have not, in Christian belief, been baptised

scintillant: sparkling