Complete Stories and Poems of Edgar Allen Poe

by Edgar Allan Poe

  We grew in age—and love—together—

  Roaming the forest, and the wild;

  My breast her shield in wintry weather—

  And, when the friendly sunshine smil’d,

  And she would mark the opening skies,

  I saw no Heaven—but in her eyes.

  Young Love’s first lesson is—the heart:

  For ’mid that sunshine, and those smiles,

  When, from our little cares apart,

  And laughing at her girlish wiles,

  I’d throw me on her throbbing breast,

  And pour my spirit out in tears—

  There was no need to speak the rest—

  No need to quiet any fears

  Of her—who ask’d no reason why,

  But turn’d on me her quiet eye!

  Yet more than worthy of the love

  My spirit struggled with, and strove,

  When, on the mountain peak, alone,

  Ambition lent it a new tone—

  I had no being—but in thee:

  The world, and all it did contain

  In the earth—the air—the sea—

  Its joy—its little lot of pain

  That was new pleasure—the ideal,

  Dim, vanities of dreams by night—

  And dimmer nothings which were real—

  (Shadows—and a more shadowy light!)

  Parted upon their misty wings,

  And, so, confusedly, became

  Thine image and—a name—a name!

  Two separate—yet most intimate things.

  I was ambitious—have you known

  The passion, father? You have not:

  A cottager, I mark’d a throne

  Of half the world as all my own,

  And murmur’d at such lowly lot—

  But, just like any other dream,

  Upon the vapor of the dew

  My own had past, did not the beam

  Of beauty which did while it thro’

  The minute—the hour—the day—oppress

  My mind with double loveliness.

  We walk’d together on the crown

  Of a high mountain which look’d down

  Afar from its proud natural towers

  Of rock and forest, on the hills—

  The dwindled hills! begirt with bowers

  And shouting with a thousand rills.

  I spoke to her of power and pride,

  But mystically—in such guise

  That she might deem it nought beside

  The moment’s converse; in her eyes

  I read, perhaps too carelessly—

  A mingled feeling with my own—

  The flush on her bright cheek, to me

  Seem’d to become a queenly throne

  Too well that I should let it be

  Light in the wilderness alone.

  I wrapp’d myself in grandeur then

  And donn’d a visionary crown—

  Yet it was not that Fantasy

  Had thrown her mantle over me—

  But that, among the rabble—men,

  Lion ambition is chain’d down—

  And crouches to a keeper’s hand—

  Not so in deserts where the grand—

  The wild—the terrible conspire

  With their own breath to fan his fire.

  Look ’round thee now on Samarcand!—

  Is she not queen of Earth? her pride

  Above all cities? in her hand

  Their destinies? in all beside

  Of glory which the world hath known

  Stands she not nobly and alone?

  Falling—her veriest stepping-stone

  Shall form the pedestal of a throne—

  And who her sovereign? Timour—he

  Whom the astonished people saw

  Striding o’er empires haughtily

  A diadem’d outlaw!

  O, human love! thou spirit given,

  On Earth, of all we hope in Heaven!

  Which fall’st into the soul like rain

  Upon the Siroc-wither’d plain,

  And, failing in thy power to bless,

  But leav’st the heart a wilderness!

  Idea! which bindest life around

  With music of so strange a sound

  And beauty of so wild a birth—

  Farewell! for I have won the Earth.

  When Hope, the eagle that tower’d, could see

  No cliff beyond him in the sky,

  His pinions were bent droopingly—

  And homeward turn’d his soften’d eye.

  ’T was sunset: when the sun will part

  There comes a sullenness of heart

  To him who still would look upon

  The glory of the summer sun.

  That soul will hate the ev’ning mist

  So often lovely, and will list

  To the sound of the coming darkness (known

  To those whose spirits harken) as one

  Who, in a dream of night, would fly

  But cannot from a danger nigh.

  What tho’ the moon—the white moon

  Shed all the splendor of her noon,

  Her smile is chilly—and her beam,

  In that time of dreariness, will seem

  (So like you gather in your breath)

  A portrait taken after death.

  And boyhood is a summer sun

  Whose waning is the dreariest one—

  For all we live to know is known

  And all we seek to keep hath flown—

  Let life, then, as the day-flower, fall

  With the noon-day beauty—which is all.

  I reach’d my home—my home no more—

  For all had flown who made it so.

  I pass’d from out its mossy door,

  And, tho’ my tread was soft and low,

  A voice came from the threshold stone

  Of one whom I had earlier known—

  O, I defy thee, Hell, to show

  On beds of fire that burn below,

  An humbler heart—a deeper wo.

  Father, I firmly do believe—

  I know—for Death who comes for me

  From regions of the blest afar,

  Where there is nothing to deceive,

  Hath left his iron gate ajar,

  And rays of truth you cannot see

  Are flashing thro’ Eternity—

  I do believe that Eblis hath

  A snare in every human path—

  Else how, when in the holy grove

  I wandered of the idol, Love,

  Who daily scents his snowy wings

  With incense of burnt offerings

  From the most unpolluted things,

  Whose pleasant bowers are yet so riven

  Above with trellic’d rays from Heaven

  No mote may shun—no tiniest fly—

  The light’ning of his eagle eye—

  How was it that Ambition crept,

  Unseen, amid the revels there,

  Till growing bold, he laughed and leapt

  In the tangles of Love’s very hair?

  TO — —

  I saw thee on thy bridal day—

  When a burning blush came o’er thee,

  Though happiness around thee lay,

  The world all love before thee:

  And in thine eye a kindling light

  (Whatever it might be)

  Was all on Earth my aching sight

  Of Loveliness could see.

  That blush, perhaps, was maiden shame—

  As such it well may pass—

  Though its glow hath raised a fiercer flame

  In the breast of him, alas!

  Who saw thee on that bridal day,

  When that deep blush would come o’er thee,

  Though happiness around thee lay,

  The world all love before thee.

  DREAMS

  Oh! that my young life were a lasting dream!

  My spirit not a
wakening, till the beam

  Of an Eternity should bring the morrow.

  Yes! tho’ that long dream were of hopeless sorrow,

  ’T were better than the cold reality

  Of waking life, to him whose heart must be,

  And hath been still, upon the lovely earth,

  A chaos of deep passion, from his birth.

  But should it be—that dream eternally

  Continuing—as dreams have been to me

  In my young boyhood—should it thus be given,

  ’T were folly still to hope for higher Heaven.

  For I have revell’d when the sun was bright

  I’ the summer sky, in dreams of living light,

  And loveliness,—have left my very heart

  In climes of mine imagining, apart

  From mine own home, with beings that have been

  Of mine own thought—what more could I have seen?

  ’T was once—and only once—and the wild hour

  From my remembrance shall not pass—some power

  Or spell had bound me—’t was the chilly wind

  Came o’er me in the night, and left behind

  Its image on my spirit—or the moon

  Shone on my slumbers in her lofty noon

  Too coldly—or the stars—howe’er it was

  That dream was as that night-wind—let it pass.

  I have been happy, tho’ [but] in a dream.

  I have been happy—and I love the theme:

  Dreams! in their vivid colouring of life

  As in that fleeting, shadowy, misty strife

  Of semblance with reality which brings

  To the delirious eye, more lovely things

  Of Paradise and Love—and all our own!

  Than young Hope in his sunniest hour hath known.

  SPIRITS OF THE DEAD

  I

  Thy soul shall find itself alone

  ’Mid dark thoughts of the gray tomb-stone—

  Not one, of all the crowd, to pry

  Into thine hour of secrecy:

  II

  Be silent in that solitude,

  Which is not loneliness—for then

  The spirits of the dead who stood

  In life before thee, are again

  In death around thee—and their will

  Shall overshadow thee: be still.

  III

  The night—tho’ clear—shall frown—

  And the stars shall look not down,

  From their high thrones in the heaven,

  With light like Hope to mortals given—

  But their red orbs, without beam,

  To thy weariness shall seem

  As a burning and a fever

  Which would cling to thee for ever.

  IV

  Now are thoughts thou shalt not banish—

  Now are visions ne’er to vanish—

  From thy spirit shall they pass

  No more—like dew-drops from the grass.

  V

  The breeze—the breath of God—is still—

  And the mist upon the hill

  Shadowy—shadowy—yet unbroken,

  Is a symbol and a token—

  How it hangs upon the trees,

  A mystery of mysteries!—

  EVENING STAR

  ’T was noontide of summer,

  And mid-time of night;

  And stars, in their orbits,

  Shone pale, thro’ the light

  Of the brighter, cold moon,

  ’Mid planets her slaves,

  Herself in the Heavens,

  Her beam on the waves.

  I gazed awhile

  On her cold smile;

  Too cold—too cold for me—

  There pass’d, as a shroud,

  A fleecy cloud,

  And I turn’d away to thee,

  Proud Evening Star,

  In thy glory afar,

  And dearer thy beam shall be;

  For joy to my heart

  Is the proud part

  Thou bearest in Heaven at night,

  And more I admire

  Thy distant fire,

  Than that colder, lowly light.

  ELIZABETH

  Elizabeth, it surely is most fit

  Logic and common usage so commanding,

  In thy own book that first thy name be writ,

  Zeno and other sages notwithstanding;

  And I have other reasons for so doing

  Beside my innate love of contradiction;

  Each poet—if a poet—in pursuing

  The muses thro’ their bowers of Truth or Fiction,

  Has studied very little of his part,

  Read nothing, written less—in short’s a fool

  Endued with neither soul, nor sense, nor art,

  Being ignorant of one important rule,

  Employed in even the theses of the school—

  Called—I forget the heathenish Greek name—

  Called anything, its meaning is the same,

  “Always write first things uppermost in the heart.”

  SERENADE

  So sweet the hour, so calm the time,

  I feel it more than half a crime,

  When Nature sleeps and stars are mute,

  To mar the silence ev’n with lute.

  At rest on ocean’s brilliant dyes

  An image of Elysium lies:

  Seven Pleiades entranced in Heaven,

  Form in the deep another seven:

  Endymion nodding from above

  Sees in the sea a second love.

  Within the valleys dim and brown,

  And on the spectral mountain’s crown,

  The wearied light is dying down,

  And earth, and stars, and sea, and sky

  Are redolent of sleep, as I

  Am redolent of thee and thine

  Enthralling love, my Adeline.

  But list, O list,—so soft and low

  Thy lover’s voice tonight shall flow,

  That, scarce awake, thy soul shall deem

  My words the music of a dream.

  Thus, while no single sound too rude

  Upon thy slumber shall intrude,

  Our thoughts, our souls—O God above!

  In every deed shall mingle, love.

  IMITATION

  A dark unfathomed tide

  Of interminable pride—

  A mystery, and a dream,

  Should my early life seem;

  I say that dream was fraught

  With a wild and waking thought

  Of beings that have been,

  Which my spirit hath not seen,

  Had I let them pass me by,

  With a dreaming eye!

  Let none of earth inherit

  That vision on my spirit;

  Those thoughts I would control,

  As a spell upon his soul:

  For that bright hope at last

  And that light time have past,

  And my worldly rest hath gone

  With a sigh as it passed on:

  I care not though it perish

  With a thought I then did cherish.

  Translation from the Greek

  HYMN TO ARISTOGEITON AND HARMODIUS

  I

  Wreathed in myrtle, my sword I’ll conceal

  Like those champions devoted and brave,

  When they plunged in the tyrant their steel,

  And to Athens deliverance gave.

  II

  Beloved heroes! your deathless souls roam

  In the joy breathing isles of the blest;

  Where the mighty of old have their home—

  Where Achilles and Diomed rest.

  III

  In fresh myrtle my blade I’ll entwine,

  Like Harmodius, the gallant and good,

  When he made at the tutelar shrine

  A libation of Tyranny’s blood.

  IV

  Ye deliverers of Athens from shame!

 
; Ye avengers of Liberty’s wrongs!

  Endless ages shall cherish your fame,

  Embalmed in their echoing songs!

  SCENES FROM “POLITIAN”

  AN UNPUBLISHED DRAMA

  I

  ROME.–A Hall in a Palace. Alessandra and Castiglione.

  Alessandra. Thou art sad, Castiglione.

  Castiglione. Sad!–not I.

  Oh, I’m the happiest, happiest man in Rome!

  A few days more, thou knowest, my Alessandra,

  Will make thee mine. Oh, I am very happy!

  Aless. Methinks thou hast a singular way of showing

  Thy happiness!—what ails thee, cousin of mine?

  Why didst thou sigh so deeply?

  Cas. Did I sigh?

  I was not conscious of it. It is a fashion,

  A silly—a most silly fashion I have

  When I am very happy. Did I sigh? (Sighing.)

  Aless. Thou didst. Thou art not well. Thou hast indulged

  Too much of late, and I am vexed to see it.

  Late hours and wine, Castiglione,—these

  Will ruin thee! thou art already altered—

  Thy looks are haggard—nothing so wears away

  The constitution as late hours and wine.

  Cas. (Musing.) Nothing, fair cousin, nothing—not even deep sorrow—

  Wears it away like evil hours and wine.

  I will amend.

  Aless. Do it! I would have thee drop

  Thy riotous company, too—fellows low born—

  Ill suit the like with old Di Broglio’s heir

  And Alessandra’s husband.

  Cas. I will drop them.

  Aless. Thou wilt—thou must. Attend thou also more

  To thy dress and equipage—they are over plain

  For thy lofty rank and fashion—much depends

  Upon appearances.

  Cas. I’ll see to it.

  Aless. Then see to it!—pay more attention, sir,

  To a becoming carriage—much thou wantest

  In dignity.

  Cas. Much, much, oh, much I want

  In proper dignity.

  Aless. (Haughtily.) Thou mockest me, sir!

  Cas. (Abstractedly.) Sweet, gentle Lalage!