Steampunk: Poe

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by Zdenko Basic


  I see them still—two sweetly scintillant

  Venuses, unextinguished by the sun!

  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 wreathèd 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 thrown 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.

  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?

  The Conqueror Worm

  LO! t’is a gala night

  Within the lonesome latter years!

  An angel throng, bewinged, bedight

  In veils, and drowned in tears,

  Sit in a theatre, to see

  A play of hopes and fears,

  While the orchestra breathes fitfully

  The music of the spheres.

  Mimes, in the form of God on high,

  Mutter and mumble low,

  And hither and thither fly—

  Mere puppets they, who come and go

  At bidding of vast formless things

  That shift the scenery to and fro,

  Flapping from out their Condor wings

  Invisible Woe!

  That motley drama—oh, be sure

  It shall not be forgot!

  With its Phantom chased for evermore,

  By a crowd that seize it not,

  Through a circle that ever returneth in

  To the self-same spot,

  And much of Madness, and more of Sin,

  And Horror the soul of the plot.

  But see, amid the mimic rout

  A crawling shape intrude!

  A blood-red thing that writhes from out

  The scenic solitude!

  It writhes!—it writhes!—with mortal pangs

  The mimes become its food,

  And the angels sob at vermin fangs

  In human gore imbued.

  Out—out are the lights—out all!

  And, over each quivering form,

  The curtain, a funeral pall,

  Comes down with the rush of a storm,

  And the angels, all pallid and wan,

  Uprising, unveiling, affirm

  That the play is the tragedy “Man,”

  And its hero the Conqueror Worm.

  The Bells

  I.

  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.

  II.

  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!

  III.

  Hear the loud alarum bells—

  Brazen bells!

  What a 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

  On the bosom of the palpitating air!

  Yet the ear it fully knows.

  By the twanging,

  And the clanging,

  How the danger ebbs and flows;

  Yet 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 clamour and the clangor of the bells!

  IV.

  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 their 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.

 

 

 


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