Great Tales and Poems of Edgar Allan Poe

by Edgar Allan Poe

  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.

  Vintage is a registered trademark and Vintage Classics and colophon are trademarks of Random House, Inc.

  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