Edgar Allan Poe
Great Tales and Poems
Edgar Allan Poe was a poet, short-story writer, editor, and literary critic. He was one of the earliest American practitioners of the short story and is considered the inventor of the detective-fiction genre. Born Edgar Poe in Boston in 1809, he was raised in Virginia by foster parents named Allan who gave him his middle name. Poe died of unknown causes in Baltimore in 1849.
FIRST VINTAGE CLASSICS EDITION, SEPTEMBER 2009
Compilation copyright © 2009 by Vintage Books, a division of Random House, Inc.
All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Vintage Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto.
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Poe, Edgar Allan, 1809–1849.
[Selections. 2009]
Great tales and poems / by Edgar Allan Poe.—1st Vintage classics ed.
p. cm.—(Vintage classics)
eISBN: 978-0-307-78140-6
1. Fantasy literature, American. 2. Horror tales, American. I. Title.
PS2603 2009
818’.309—dc22
2009021005
www.vintagebooks.com
v3.1
CONTENTS
Cover
About the Author
Title Page
Copyright
Poems
The Bells
The City in the Sea
Annabel Lee
Ulalume – A Ballad
To Helen (I)
To Helen (II)
Sonnet – To Science
The Raven
Tales
The Tell-Tale Heart
The Fall of the House of Usher
The Purloined Letter
Ligeia
The Pit and the Pendulum
The Masque of the Red Death
The Black Cat
The Cask of Amontillado
The Murders in the Rue Morgue
William Wilson
The Mystery of Marie Rogêt
The Philosophy of Composition
Poems
The Bells
1
Hear the sledges with the bells –
Silver bells!
What a world of merriment their melody foretells!
How they tinkle, tinkle, tinkle,
In the icy air of night!
While the stars that oversprinkle
All the Heavens, seem to twinkle
With a crystalline delight;
Keeping time, time, time,
In a sort of Runic rhyme,
To the tintinabulation that so musically wells
From the bells, bells, bells, bells,
Bells, bells, bells –
From the jingling and the tinkling of the bells.
2
Hear the mellow wedding bells –
Golden bells!
What a world of happiness their harmony foretells!
Through the balmy air of night
How they ring out their delight! –
From the molten-golden notes
And all in tune,
What a liquid ditty floats
To the turtle-dove that listens while she gloats
On the moon!
Oh, from out the sounding cells
What a gush of euphony voluminously wells!
How it swells!
How it dwells
On the Future! – how it tells
Of the rapture that impels
To the swinging and the ringing
Of the bells, bells, bells! –
Of the bells, bells, bells, bells,
Bells, bells, bells –
To the rhyming and the chiming of the bells!
3
Hear the loud alarum bells –
Brazen bells!
What tale of terror, now, their turbulency tells!
In the startled ear of Night
How they scream out their affright!
Too much horrified to speak,
They can only shriek, shriek,
Out of tune,
In a clamorous appealing to the mercy of the fire –
In a mad expostulation with the deaf and frantic fire,
Leaping higher, higher, higher,
With a desperate desire
And a resolute endeavor
Now – now to sit, or never,
By the side of the pale-faced moon.
Oh, the bells, bells, bells!
What a tale their terror tells
Of despair!
How they clang and clash and roar!
What a horror they outpour
In the bosom of the palpitating air!
Yet the ear, it fully knows,
By the twanging
And the clanging,
How the danger ebbs and flows: –
Yes, the ear distinctly tells,
In the jangling
And the wrangling,
How the danger sinks and swells,
By the sinking or the swelling in the anger of the bells –
Of the bells –
Of the bells, bells, bells, bells,
Bells, bells, bells –
In the clamor and the clangor of the bells.
4
Hear the tolling of the bells –
Iron bells!
What a world of solemn thought their monody compels!
In the silence of the night
How we shiver with affright
At the melancholy meaning of the tone!
For every sound that floats
From the rust within their throats
Is a groan.
And the people – ah, the people
They that dwell up in the steeple
All alone,
And who, tolling, tolling, tolling,
In that muffled monotone,
Feel a glory in so rolling
On the human heart a stone –
They are neither man nor woman –
They are neither brute nor human,
They are Ghouls: –
And their king it is who tolls: –
And he rolls, rolls, rolls, rolls
A Pæan from the bells!
And his merry bosom swells
With the Pæan of the bells!
And he dances and he yells;
Keeping time, time, time,
In a sort of Runic rhyme,
To the Pæan of the bells –
Of the bells: –
Keeping time, time, time,
In a sort of Runic rhyme,
To the throbbing of the bells: –
Of the bells, bells, bells –
To the sobbing of the bells: –
Keeping time, time, time,
As he knells, knells, knells,
In a happy Runic rhyme,
To the rolling of the bells –
Of the bells, bells, bells: –
To the tolling of the bells –
Of the bells, bells, bells, bells,
Bells, bells, bells –
To the moaning and the groaning of the bells.
The City in the Sea
Lo! Death has reared 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 wreathéd 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 gaily-jewelled 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 – 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 –
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
It 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.
She was a child and I 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 wingéd 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 by night
Chilling my Annabel Lee;
So that her high-born 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, 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 see 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 the sepulchre there by the sea –
In 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 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 in the year!)
We noted not the dim lake of Auber,
(Though once we had journeyed down here)
We remembered 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 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 –
Ah, hasten! – ah, let us not linger!
Ah, 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 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 surely 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! –
‘Tis the vault of thy lost Ulalume!”
Then my heart it grew ashen and sober
As the leaves that were crispéd 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 hath 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 –
Have 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 Helen (I)
Helen, thy beauty is to me
Like those Nicéan barks of yore,
That gently, o’er a perfumed sea,
The weary, way-worn 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 Helen (II)
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
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