Complete Stories and Poems of Edgar Allen Poe

by Edgar Allan Poe

  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.

  ELDORADO

  Gaily bedight,

  A gallant knight,

  In sunshine and in shadow,

  Had journeyed long,

  Singing a song,

  In search of Eldorado.

  But he grew old—

  This knight so bold—

  And o’er his heart a shadow

  Fell as he found

  No spot of ground

  That looked like Eldorado.

  And, as his strength

  Failed him at length,

  He met a pilgrim shadow—

  “Shadow,” said he,

  “Where can it be—

  This land of Eldorado?”

  “Over the Mountains

  Of the Moon,

  Down the Valley of the Shadow,

  Ride, boldly ride,”

  The shade replied,—

  “If you seek for Eldorado.”

  A DREAM WITHIN A DREAM

  Take this kiss upon the brow!

  And, in parting from you now,

  Thus much let me avow—

  You are not wrong, who deem

  That my days have been a dream;

  Yet if hope has flown away

  In a night, or in a day,

  In a vision, or in none,

  Is it therefore the less gone?

  All that we see or seem

  Is but a dream within a dream.

  I stand amid the roar

  Of a surf-tormented shore,

  And I hold within my hand

  Grains of the golden sand—

  How few! yet how they creep

  Through my fingers to the deep,

  While I weep—while I weep!

  O God! can I not grasp

  Them with a tighter clasp?

  O God! can I not save

  One from the pitiless wave?

  Is all that we see or seem

  But a dream within a dream?

  STANZAS

  How often we forget all time, when lone

  Admiring Nature’s universal throne;

  Her woods—her wilds—her mountains—the intense

  Reply of HERS to our intelligence!

  [—BYRON: The Island.]

  1

  In youth have I known one with whom the Earth

  In secret communing held—as he with it,

  In daylight, and in beauty from his birth:

  Whose fervid, flickering torch of life was lit

  From the sun and stars, whence he had drawn forth

  A passionate light—such for his spirit was fit—

  And yet that spirit knew not, in the hour

  Of its own fervour, what had o’er it power.

  2

  Perhaps it may be that my mind is wrought

  To a fever by the moonbeam that hangs o’er,

  But I will half believe that wild light fraught

  With more of sovereignty than ancient lore

  Hath ever told;—or is it of a thought

  The unembodied essence, and no more,

  That with a quickening spell doth o’er us pass

  As dew of the night-time o’er the summer grass?

  3

  Doth o’er us pass, when as th’ expanding eye

  To the loved object,—so the tear to the lid

  Will start, which lately slept in apathy?

  And yet it need not be—(that object) hid

  From us in life—but common—which doth lie

  Each hour before us—but then only, bid

  With a strange sound, as of a harp-string broken,

  To awake us—’T is a symbol and a token.

  4

  Of what in other worlds shall be—and given

  In beauty by our God, to those alone

  Who otherwise would fall from life and Heaven

  Drawn by their heart’s passion, and that tone,

  That high tone of the spirit which hath striven,

  Tho’ not with Faith—with godliness—whose throne

  With desperate energy ’t hath beaten down;

  Wearing its own deep feeling as a crown.

  A DREAM

  In visions of the dark night

  I have dreamed of joy departed—

  But a waking dream of life and light

  Hath left me broken-hearted.

  Ah! what is not a dream by day

  To him whose eyes are cast

  On things around him with a ray

  Turned back upon the past?

  That holy dream—that holy dream,

  While all the world were chiding,

  Hath cheered me as a lovely beam

  A lonely spirit guiding.

  What though that light, thro’ storm and night,

  So trembled from afar—

  What could there be more purely bright

  In Truth’s day-star?

  “THE HAPPIEST DAY, THE HAPPIEST HOUR”

  The happiest day—the happiest hour

  My seared and blighted heart hath known,

  The highest hope of pride and power,

  I feel hath flown.

  Of power! said I? yes! such I ween;

  But they have vanish’d long, alas!

  The visions of my youth have been—

  But let them pass.

  And, pride, what have I now with thee?

  Another brow may even inherit

  The venom thou hast pour’d on me—

  Be still, my spirit!

  The happiest day—the happiest hour

  Mine eyes shall see—have ever seen,

  The brightest glance of pride and power,

  I feel—have been:

  But were that hope of pride and power

  Now offer’d, with the pain

  Even then I felt—that brightest hour

  I would not live again:

  For on its wing was dark alloy,

  And as it flutter’d—fell

  An essence—powerful to destroy

  A soul that knew it well.

  THE LAKE: TO —

  In spring of youth it was my lot

  To haunt of the wide world a spot

  The which I could not love the less—

  So lovely was the loneliness

  Of a wild lake, with black rock bound,

  And the tall pines that towered around.

  But when the Night had thrown her pall

  Upon that spot, as upon all,

  And the mystic wind went by

  Murmuring in melody—

  Then—ah then I would awake

  To the terror of the lone lake.

  Yet the terror was not fright,

  But a tremulous delight—

  A feeling not the jewelled mine

  Could teach or bribe me to define—

  Nor Love—although the Love were thine.

  Death was in that poisonous wave,

  And in its gulf a fitting grave

  For him who thence could solace bring

  To his lone imagining—

  Whose solitary soul could make

  An Eden of that dim lake.

  SONNET—TO SCIENCE

  Science! true daughter of Old Time thou art!

  Who alterest all things with thy peering eyes.

  Why preyest thou thus upon the poet’s heart,

  Vulture, whose wings are dull realities?

  How should he love thee? or how deem thee wise,

  Who wouldst not leave him in his wandering

  To seek for treasure in th
e jewelled skies,

  Albeit he soared with an undaunted wing?

  Hast thou not dragged Diana from her car?

  And driven the Hamadryad from the wood

  To seek a shelter in some happier star?

  Hast thou not torn the Naiad from her flood,

  The Elfin from the green grass, and from me

  The summer dream beneath the tamarind tree?

  AL AARAAF

  PART I

  O! Nothing earthly save the ray

  (Thrown back from flowers) of Beauty’s eye,

  As in those gardens where the day

  Springs from the gems of Circassy—

  O! nothing earthly save the thrill

  Of melody in woodland rill—

  Or (music of the passion-hearted)

  Joy’s voice so peacefully departed

  That like the murmur in the shell,

  Its echo dwelleth and will dwell—

  Oh, nothing of the dross of ours—

  Yet all the beauty—all the flowers

  That list our Love, and deck our bowers—

  Adorn yon world afar, afar—

  The wandering star.

  ’T was a sweet time for Nesace—for there

  Her world lay lolling on the golden air,

  Near four bright suns—a temporary rest—

  An oasis in desert of the blest.

  Away—away—’mid seas of rays that roll

  Empyrean splendour o’er th’ unchained soul—

  The soul that scarce (the billows are so dense)

  Can struggle to its destin’d eminence—

  To distant spheres, from time to time, she rode,

  And late to ours, the favour’d one of God—

  But, now, the ruler of an anchor’d realm,

  She throws aside the sceptre—leaves the helm,

  And, amid incense and high spiritual hymns,

  Laves in quadruple light her angel limbs.

  Now happiest, loveliest in yon lovely Earth,

  Whence sprang the “Idea of Beauty” into birth,

  (Falling in wreaths thro’ many a startled star,

  Like woman’s hair ’mid pearls, until, afar,

  It lit on hills Achaian, and there dwelt)

  She look’d into Infinity—and knelt.

  Rich clouds, for canopies, about her curled—

  Fit emblems of the model of her world—

  Seen but in beauty—not impeding sight

  Of other beauty glittering thro’ the light—

  A wreath that twined each starry form around,

  And all the opal’d air in colour bound.

  All hurriedly she knelt upon a bed

  Of flowers: of lilies such as rear’d the head

  On the fair Capo Deucato, and sprang

  So eagerly around about to hang

  Upon the flying footsteps of—deep pride—

  Of her who lov’d a mortal—and so died.

  The Sephalica, budding with young bees,

  Uprear’d its purple stem around her knees:

  And gemmy flower, of Trebizond misnam’d—

  Inmate of highest stars, where erst it sham’d

  All other loveliness: its honied dew

  (The fabled nectar that the heathen knew)

  Deliriously sweet, was dropp’d from Heaven,

  And fell on gardens of the unforgiven

  In Trebizond—and on a sunny flower

  So like its own above that, to this hour,

  It still remaineth, torturing the bee

  With madness, and unwonted reverie:

  In Heaven, and all its environs, the leaf

  And blossom of the fairy plant, in grief

  Disconsolate linger—grief that hangs her head,

  Repenting follies that full long have fled,

  Heaving her white breast to the balmy air,

  Like guilty beauty, chasten’d, and more fair:

  Nyctanthes too, as sacred as the light

  She fears to perfume, perfuming the night:

  And Clytia pondering between many a sun,

  While pettish tears adown her petals run:

  And that aspiring flower that sprang on earth—

  And died, ere scarce exalted into birth,

  Bursting its odorous heart in spirit to wing

  Its way to Heaven, from garden of a king:

  And Valisnerian lotus thither flown

  From struggling with the waters of the Rhone:

  And thy most lovely purple perfume, Zante!

  Isola d’oro!—Fior di Levante!

  And the Nelumbo bud that floats for ever

  With Indian Cupid down the holy river—

  Fair flowers, and fairy! to whose care is given

  To bear the Goddess’ song, in odors, up to Heaven:

  “Spirit! that dwellest where,

  In the deep sky,

  The terrible and fair,

  In beauty vie!

  Beyond the line of blue—

  The boundary of the star

  Which turneth at the view

  Of thy barrier and thy bar—

  Of the barrier overgone

  By the comets who were cast

  From their pride, and from their throne

  To be drudges till the last—

  To be carriers of fire

  (The red fire of their heart)

  With speed that may not tire

  And with pain that shall not part—

  Who livest—that we know—

  In Eternity—we feel—

  But the shadow of whose brow

  What spirit shall reveal?

  Tho’ the beings whom thy Nesace,

  Thy messenger hath known

  Have dream’d for thy Infinity

  A model of their own—

  Thy will is done, Oh, God!

  The star hath ridden high

  Thro’ many a tempest, but she rode

  Beneath thy burning eye;

  And here, in thought, to thee—

  In thought that can alone

  Ascend thy empire and so be

  A partner of thy throne—

  By winged Fantasy,

  My embassy is given,

  Till secrecy shall knowledge be

  In the environs of Heaven.”

  She ceas’d—and buried then her burning cheek

  Abash’d, amid the lilies there, to seek

  A shelter from the fervour of His eye;

  For the stars trembled at the Deity.

  She stirr’d not—breath’d not—for a voice was there

  How solemnly pervading the calm air!

  A sound of silence on the startled ear

  Which dreamy poets name “the music of the sphere.”

  Ours is a world of words: Quiet we call

  “Silence”—which is the merest word of all.

  All Nature speaks, and ev’n ideal things

  Flap shadowy sounds from visionary wings—

  But ah! not so when, thus, in realms on high

  The eternal voice of God is passing by,

  And the red winds are withered in the sky!

  “What tho’ in worlds which sightless cycles run,

  Link’d to a little system, and one sun—

  Where all my love is folly and the crowd

  Still think my terrors but the thunder cloud,

  The storm, the earthquake, and the ocean-wrath—

  (Ah! will they cross me in my angrier path?)

  What tho’ in worlds which own a single sun

  The sands of Time grow dimmer as they run,

  Yet thine is my resplendency, so given

  To bear my secrets thro’ the upper Heaven.

  Leave tenantless thy crystal home, and fly,

  With all thy train, athwart the moony sky—

  Apart—like fire-flies in Sicilian night,

  And wing to other worlds another light!

  Divulge the secrets of thy embassy

  To the
proud orbs that twinkle—and so be

  To ev’ry heart a barrier and a ban

  Lest the stars totter in the guilt of man!”

  Up rose the maiden in the yellow night,

  The single-mooned eve!—on Earth we plight

  Our faith to one love—and one moon adore—

  The birthplace of young Beauty had no more.

  As sprang that yellow star from downy hours

  Up rose the maiden from her shrine of flowers,

  And bent o’er sheeny mountain and dim plain

  Her way—but left not yet her Therasæan reign.

  PART II

  High on a mountain of enamell’d head—

  Such as the drowsy shepherd on his bed

  Of giant pasturage lying at his ease,

  Raising his heavy eyelid, starts and sees

  With many a mutter’d “hope to be forgiven”

  What time the moon is quadrated in Heaven—

  Of rosy head, that towering far away

  Into the sunlit ether, caught the ray

  Of sunken suns at eve—at noon of night,

  While the moon danc’d with the fair stranger light—

  Uprear’d upon such height arose a pile

  Of gorgeous columns on th’ unburthen’d air,

  Flashing from Parian marble that twin smile

  Far down upon the wave that sparkled there,

  And nursled the young mountain in its lair.

  Of molten stars their pavement, such as fall

  Thro’ the ebon air, besilvering the pall

  Of their own dissolution, while they die—

  Adorning then the dwellings of the sky.

  A dome, by linked light from Heaven let down,

  Sat gently on these columns as a crown—

  A window of one circular diamond, there,

  Look’d out above into the purple air,

  And rays from God shot down that meteor chain

  And hallow’d all the beauty twice again,

  Save when, between th’ Empyrean and that ring,

  Some eager spirit flapp’d his dusky wing.

  But on the pillars Seraph eyes have seen

  The dimness of this world; that greyish green

  That Nature loves the best for Beauty’s grave