Works of Edgar Allan Poe

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Works of Edgar Allan Poe Page 133

by Эдгар Аллан По


  (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 grow-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 measures suit--

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

  With the fervor 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,

  While a bolder note than this might swell

  From my lyre within the sky.

  ________

  The End | Go to top

  To The River

  Fair river! in thy bright, clear flow

  Of crystal, wandering water,

  Thou art an emblem of the glow

  Of beauty--the unhidden heart--

  The playful maziness of art

  In old Alberto's daughter;

  But when within thy wave she looks--

  Which glistens then, and trembles--

  Why, then, the prettiest of brooks

  Her worshipper resembles;

  For in his heart, as in thy stream,

  Her image deeply lies--

  His heart which trembles at the beam

  Of her soul-searching eyes.

  ________

  The End | Go to top

  Song

  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.

  ________

  The End | Go to top

  Spirits of The Dead

  Thy soul shall find itself alone

  'Mid dark thoughts of the gray tombstone

  Not one, of all the crowd, to pry

  Into thine hour of secrecy.

  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.

  The night--tho' clear--shall frown--

  And the stars shall not look 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 forever.

  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.

  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!

  ________

  The End

  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 End | Go to top

  Romance

  Romance, who loves to nod and sing,

  With drowsy head and folded wing,

  Among the green leaves as they shake

  Far down within some shadowy lake,

  To me a painted paroquet

  Hath been--a most familiar bird--

  Taught me my alphabet to say--

  To lisp my very earliest word

  While in the wild wood I did lie,

  A child--with a most knowing eye.

  Of late, eternal Condor years

  So shake the very Heaven on high

  With tumult as they thunder by,

  I have no time for idle cares

  Though gazing on the unquiet sky.

  And when an hour with calmer wings

  Its down upon my spirit flings--

  That little time with lyre and rhyme

  To while away--forbidden things!

  My heart would feel to be a crime

  Unless it trembled with the strings.

  ________

  The End | Go to top

  Fairyland

  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 bef
ore--

  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 thing!)

  Have brought a specimen

  Upon their quivering wings.

  ________

  The End | Go to top

  The Lake

  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 the 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 that 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.

  ________

  The End | Go to top

  Evening Star

  'Twas noontide of summer,

  And midtime of night,

  And stars, in their orbits,

  Shone pale, through 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 passed, as a shroud,

  A fleecy cloud,

  And I turned 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.

  ________

  The End | Go to top

  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 wordly rest hath gone

  With a sigh as it passed on:

  I care not though it perish

  With a thought I then did cherish.

  ________

  The End | Go to top

  The Happiest Day

  I.

  The happiest day--the happiest hour

  My seared and blighted heart hath known,

  The highest hope of pride and power,

  I feel hath flown.

  II.

  Of power! said I? Yes! such I ween

  But they have vanished long, alas!

  The visions of my youth have been--

  But let them pass.

  III.

  And pride, what have I now with thee?

  Another brow may ev'n inherit

  The venom thou hast poured on me--

  Be still my spirit!

  IV.

  The happiest day--the happiest hour

  Mine eyes shall see--have ever seen

  The brightest glance of pride and power

  I feel have been:

  V.

  But were that hope of pride and power

  Now offered with the pain

  Ev'n then I felt--that brightest hour

  I would not live again:

  VI.

  For on its wing was dark alloy

  And as it fluttered--fell

  An essence--powerful to destroy

  A soul that knew it well.

  ________

  The End | Go to top

  Dreams

  Oh! that my young life were a lasting dream!

  My spirit not awakening, till the beam

  Of an Eternity should bring the morrow.

  Yes! though that long dream were of hopeless sorrow,

  'Twere 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,

  'Twere folly still to hope for higher Heaven.

  For I have revelled when the sun was bright

  I' the summer sky, in dreams of living light

  And loveliness,--have left my very heart

  Inclines of my imaginary apart

  From mine own home, with beings that have been

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

  'Twas once--and only once--and the wild hour

  From my remembrance shall not pass--some power

  Or spell had bound me--'twas 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 that that night-wind--let it pass.

  I have been happy, though in a dream.

  I have been happy--and I love the theme:

  Dreams! in their vivid coloring 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 my own!--

  Than young Hope in his sunniest hour hath known.

  ________

  The End

  In Youth I Have Known One

  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!

  I.

  In youth I have known one with whom the Earth

  In secret communing held--as he with it,

  In daylight, and in beauty, from his birth:

 

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