Complete Stories and Poems of Edgar Allen Poe

Home > Horror > Complete Stories and Poems of Edgar Allen Poe > Page 116
Complete Stories and Poems of Edgar Allen Poe Page 116

by Edgar Allan Poe


  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 the sepulchre there by the sea,

  In her tomb by the sounding sea.

  TO MY MOTHER

  Because I feel that, in the heavens above,

  The angels, whispering to one another,

  Can find, among their burning terms of love,

  None so devotional as that of “Mother,”

  Therefore by that dear name I long have called you,

  You who are more than mother unto me,

  And fill my heart of hearts, where Death installed you,

  In setting my Virginia’s spirit free.

  My mother—my own mother, who died early,

  Was but the mother of myself; but you

  Are mother to the one I loved so dearly,

  And thus are dearer than the mother I knew

  By that infinity with which my wife

  Was dearer to my soul than its soul-life.

  HYMN

  At morn—at noon—at twilight dim—

  Maria! thou hast heard my hymn!

  In joy and woe—in good and ill—

  Mother of God, be with me still!

  When the Hours flew brightly by,

  And not a cloud obscured the sky,

  My soul, lest it should truant be,

  Thy grace did guide to thine and thee;

  Now, when storms of Fate o’ercast

  Darkly my Present and my Past,

  Let my Future radiant shine

  With sweet hopes of thee and thine!

  A VALENTINE

  For her this rhyme is penned, whose luminous eyes,

  Brightly expressive as the twins of Lœda,

  Shall find her own sweet name, that, nestling lies

  Upon the page, enwrapped from every reader.

  Search narrowly the lines!–they hold a treasure

  Divine—a talisman—an amulet

  That must be worn at heart. Search well the measure—

  The words—the syllables! Do not forget

  The trivialest point, or you may lose your labor!

  And yet there is in this no Gordian knot

  Which one might not undo without a sabre,

  If one could merely comprehend the plot.

  Enwritten upon the leaf where now are peering

  Eyes’ scintillating soul, there lie perdus

  Three eloquent words oft uttered in the hearing

  Of poets, by poets—as the name is a poet’s too.

  Its letters, although naturally lying

  Like the knight Pinto–Mendez Ferdinando—

  Still form a synonym for Truth.–Cease trying!

  You will not read the riddle, though you do the best you can do.

  [To translate the address, read the first letter of the first line in connection with the second letter of the second line, the third letter of the third line, the fourth of the fourth, and so on to the end. The name will thus appear.]

  FAIRY-LAND

  Dim vales—and shadowy floods—

  And cloudy-looking woods,

  Whose forms we can’t discover

  For the tears that drip all over.

  Huge moons there wax and wane—

  Again—again—again—

  Every moment of the night—

  Forever changing places—

  And they put out the star-light

  With the breath from their pale faces.

  About twelve by the moon-dial

  One more filmy than the rest

  (A kind which, upon trial,

  They have found to be the best)

  Comes down—still down—and down

  With its centre on the crown

  Of a mountain’s eminence,

  While its wide circumference

  In easy drapery falls

  Over hamlets, over halls,

  Wherever they may be—

  O’er the strange woods—o’er the sea—

  Over spirits on the wing—

  Over every drowsy thing—

  And buries them up quite

  In a labyrinth of light—

  And then, how deep!–O, deep!

  Is the passion of their sleep.

  In the morning they arise,

  And their moony covering

  Is soaring in the skies,

  With the tempests as they toss,

  Like—almost any thing—

  Or a yellow Albatross.

  They use that moon no more

  For the same end as before—

  Videlicet a tent—

  Which I think extravagant:

  Its atomies, however,

  Into a shower dissever,

  Of which those butterflies,

  Of Earth, who seek the skies,

  And so come down again

  (Never-contented things!)

  Have brought a specimen

  Upon their quivering wings.

  TO HELEN

  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!

  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 enamoured moon

  Blushes with love,

  While, to listen, the red levin

  (With the rapid Pleiads, 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 duty—

  Where 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 unimpassioned song;

  To thee the laurels belong,

  Best bard, because the wisest!

  Merrily live, and long!

  The ecstasies above

  With thy burning measure suit—

  Thy grief, thy joy, thy hate, thy love,

  With the fervour of thy lute—

  Well 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 could dwell

  Where Israfel

  Hath dwelt, and he where I,

  He might not sing so wildly well

  A mortal melody,
r />   While a bolder note than this might swell

  From my lyre within the sky.

  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.

  THE SLEEPER

  At midnight, in the month of June,

  I stand beneath the mystic moon.

  An opiate vapour, dewy, dim,

  Exhales from out her golden rim,

  And, softly dripping, drop by drop,

  Upon the quiet mountain top,

  Steals drowsily and musically

  Into the universal valley.

  The rosemary nods upon the grave;

  The lily lolls upon the wave;

  Wrapping the fog about its breast,

  The ruin moulders into rest;

  Looking like Lethe, see! the lake

  A conscious slumber seems to take,

  And would not, for the world, awake.

  All Beauty sleeps!–and lo! where lies

  Irene, with her Destinies!

  Oh, lady bright! can it be right—

  This window open to the night?

  The wanton airs, from the tree-top,

  Laughingly through the lattice drop—

  The bodiless airs, a wizard rout,

  Flit through thy chamber in and out,

  And wave the curtain canopy

  So fitfully—so fearfully—

  Above the closed and fringéd lid

  ’Neath which thy slumb’ring soul lies hid,

  That, o’er the floor and down the wall,

  Like ghosts the shadows rise and fall!

  Oh, lady dear, hast thou no fear?

  Why and what are thou dreaming here?

  Sure thou art come o’er far-off seas,

  A wonder to these garden trees!

  Strange is thy pallor! strange thy dress!

  Strange, above all, thy length of tress,

  And this all solemn silentness!

  The lady sleeps! Oh, may her sleep,

  Which is enduring, so be deep!

  Heaven have her in its sacred keep!

  This chamber changed for one more holy,

  This bed for one more melancholy,

  I pray to God that she may lie

  Forever with unopened eye,

  While the pale sheeted ghosts go by!

  My love, she sleeps! Oh, may her sleep,

  As it is lasting, so be deep!

  Soft may the worms about her creep!

  Far in the forest, dim and old,

  For her may some tall vault unfold—

  Some vault that oft hath flung its black

  And wingéd panels fluttering back,

  Triumphant, o’er the crested palls,

  Of her grand family funerals—

  Some sepulchre, remote, alone,

  Against whose portal she hath thrown,

  In childhood, many an idle stone—

  Some tomb from out whose sounding door

  She ne’er shall force an echo more,

  Thrilling to think, poor child of sin!

  It was the dead who groaned within.

  LENORE

  Ah, broken is the golden bowl! the spirit flown forever!

  Let the bell toll!–a saintly soul floats on the Stygian river;

  And, Guy De Vere, hast thou no tear?–weep now or never more!

  See! on yon drear and rigid bier low lies thy love, Lenore!

  Come! let the burial rite be read—the funeral song be sung!–

  An anthem for the queenliest dead that ever died so young—

  A 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 blessed 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?”

  Peccavimus; but rave not thus! and let a Sabbath song

  Go up to God so solemnly the dead may feel no wrong!

  The sweet Lenore hath “gone before,” with Hope, that flew beside,

  Leaving thee wild for the dear child that should have been thy bride—

  For her, the fair and debonair, that now so lowly lies,

  The life upon her yellow hair but not within her eyes—

  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 hallowed mirth,

  “Should catch the note, as it doth float up from the damnéd Earth.

  “To friends above, from fiends below, the indignant ghost is riven—

  “From Hell unto a high estate far up within the Heaven—

  “From grief and groan, to a golden throne, beside the King of Heaven.”

  THE VALLEY OF UNREST

  Once it smiled a silent dell

  Where the people did not dwell;

  They had gone unto the wars,

  Trusting to the mild-eyed stars,

  Nightly, from their azure towers,

  To keep watch above the flowers,

  In the midst of which all day

  The red sun-light lazily lay.

  Now each visiter shall confess

  The sad valley’s restlessness.

  Nothing there is motionless—

/>   Nothing save the airs that brood

  Over the magic solitude.

  Ah, by no wind are stirred those trees

  That palpitate like the chill seas

  Around the misty Hebrides!

  Ah, by no wind those clouds are driven

  That rustle through the unquiet Heaven

  Uneasily, from morn till even,

  Over the violets there that lie

  In myriad types of the human eye—

  Over the lilies there that wave

  And weep above a nameless grave!

  They wave:–from out their fragrant tops

  Eternal dews come down in drops.

  They weep:–from off their delicate stems

  Perennial tears descend in gems.

  THE COLISEUM

  Type of the antique Rome! Rich reliquary

  Of lofty contemplation left to Time

  By buried centuries of pomp and power!

  At length—at length—after so many days

  Of weary pilgrimage and burning thirst,

  (Thirst for the springs of lore that in thee lie,)

  I kneel, an altered and an humble man,

  Amid thy shadows, and so drink within

  My very soul thy grandeur, gloom, and glory!

  Vastness! and Age! and Memories of Eld!

  Silence! and Desolation! and dim Night!

  I feel ye now–I feel ye in your strength—

  O spells more sure than e’er Judæan king

  Taught in the gardens of Gethsemane!

  O charms more potent than the rapt Chaldee

  Ever drew down from out the quiet stars!

  Here, where a hero fell, a column falls!

  Here, where the mimic eagle glared in gold,

  A midnight vigil holds the swarthy bat!

  Here, where the dames of Rome their gilded hair

  Waved to the wind, now wave the reed and thistle!

  Here, where on golden throne the monarch lolled,

  Glides, spectre-like, unto his marble home,

  Lit by the wan light of the hornéd moon,

  The swift and silent lizard of the stones!

  But stay! these walls—these ivy-clad arcades—

  These mouldering plinths—these sad and blackened shafts—

  These vague entablatures—this crumbling frieze—

 

‹ Prev