Works of Edgar Allan Poe

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Works of Edgar Allan Poe Page 131

by Эдгар Аллан По


  By you--by yours, the evil eye,--by yours, the slanderous tongue

  That did to death the innocence that died, and died so young?"

  Peccavimus; but rave not thus! and let a Sabbath song

  Go up to God so solemnly the dead may feel no wrong!

  The sweet Lenore hath "gone before," with Hope, that flew beside,

  Leaving thee wild for the dear child that should have been thy bride--

  For her, the fair and debonnaire, that now so lowly lies,

  The life upon her yellow hair but not within her eyes--

  The life still there, upon her hair--the death upon her eyes.

  "Avaunt! to-night my heart is light. No dirge will I upraise,

  But waft the angel on her flight with a p?an of old days!

  Let no bell toll!--lest her sweet soul, amid its hallowed mirth,

  Should catch the note, as it doth float up from the damned Earth.

  To friends above, from fiends below, the indignant ghost is riven--

  From Hell unto a high estate far up within the Heaven--

  From grief and groan to a golden throne beside the King of Heaven."

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  The End | Go to top

  To One In Paradise

  Thou wast that all to me, love,

  For which my soul did pine--

  A green isle in the sea, love,

  A fountain and a shrine,

  All wreathed with fairy fruits and flowers,

  And all the flowers were mine.

  Ah, dream too bright to last!

  Ah, starry Hope! that didst arise

  But to be overcast!

  A voice from out the Future cries,

  "On! on!"--but o'er the Past

  (Dim gulf!) my spirit hovering lies

  Mute, motionless, aghast!

  For, alas! alas! with me

  The light of Life is o'er!

  "No more--no more--no more"--

  (Such language holds the solemn sea

  To the sands upon the shore)

  Shall bloom the thunder-blasted tree,

  Or the stricken eagle soar!

  And all my days are trances,

  And all my nightly dreams

  Are where thy dark eye glances,

  And where thy footstep gleams--

  In what ethereal dances,

  By what eternal streams!

  Alas! for that accursed time

  They bore thee o'er the billow,

  From love to titled age and crime,

  And an unholy pillow!

  From me, and from our misty clime,

  Where weeps the silver willow!

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  The Coliseum

  Type of the antique Rome! Rich reliquary

  Of lofty contemplation left to Time

  By buried centuries of pomp and power!

  At length--at length--after so many days

  Of weary pilgrimage and burning thirst,

  (Thirst for the springs of lore that in thee lie,)

  I kneel, an altered and an humble man,

  Amid thy shadows, and so drink within

  My very soul thy grandeur, gloom, and glory!

  Vastness! and Age! and Memories of Eld!

  Silence! and Desolation! and dim Night!

  I feel ye now--I feel ye in your strength--

  O spells more sure than e'er Judean king

  Taught in the gardens of Gethsemane!

  O charms more potent than the rapt Chaldee

  Ever drew down from out the quiet stars!

  Here, where a hero fell, a column falls!

  Here, where the mimic eagle glared in gold,

  A midnight vigil holds the swarthy bat!

  Here, where the dames of Rome their gilded hair

  Waved to the wind, now wave the reed and thistle!

  Here, where on golden throne the monarch lolled,

  Glides, spectre-like, unto his marble home,

  Lit by the wan light of the horned moon,

  The swift and silent lizard of the stones!

  But stay! these walls--these ivy-clad arcades--

  These mouldering plinths--these sad and blackened shafts--

  These vague entablatures--this crumbling frieze--

  These shattered cornices--this wreck--this ruin--

  These stones--alas! these gray stones--are they all--

  All of the famed, and the colossal left

  By the corrosive Hours to Fate and me?

  "Not all"--the Echoes answer me--"not all!

  Prophetic sounds and loud, arise forever

  From us, and from all Ruin, unto the wise,

  As melody from Memnon to the Sun.

  We rule the hearts of mightiest men--we rule

  With a despotic sway all giant minds.

  We are not impotent--we pallid stones.

  Not all our power is gone--not all our fame--

  Not all the magic of our high renown--

  Not all the wonder that encircles us--

  Not all the mysteries that in us lie--

  Not all the memories that hang upon

  And cling around about us as a garment,

  Clothing us in a robe of more than glory."

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  The End | Go to top

  The Haunted Palace

  In the greenest of our valleys

  By good angels tenanted,

  Once a fair and stately palace--

  Radiant palace--reared its head.

  In the monarch Thought's dominion--

  It stood there!

  Never seraph spread a pinion

  Over fabric half so fair!

  Banners yellow, glorious, golden,

  On its roof did float and flow,

  (This--all this--was in the olden

  Time long ago),

  And every gentle air that dallied,

  In that sweet day,

  Along the ramparts plumed and pallid,

  A winged odor went away.

  Wanderers in that happy valley,

  Through two luminous windows, saw

  Spirits moving musically,

  To a lute's well-tun?d law,

  Bound about a throne where, sitting

  (Porphyrogene!)

  In state his glory well befitting,

  The ruler of the realm was seen.

  And all with pearl and ruby glowing

  Was the fair palace door,

  Through which came flowing, flowing, flowing,

  And sparkling evermore,

  A troop of Echoes, whose sweet duty

  Was but to sing,

  In voices of surpassing beauty,

  The wit and wisdom of their king.

  But evil things, in robes of sorrow,

  Assailed the monarch's high estate.

  (Ah, let us mourn!--for never morrow

  Shall dawn upon him desolate !)

  And round about his home the glory

  That blushed and bloomed,

  Is but a dim-remembered story

  Of the old time entombed.

  And travellers, now, within that valley,

  Through the red-litten windows see

  Vast forms, that move fantastically

  To a discordant melody,

  While, like a ghastly rapid river,

  Through the pale door

  A hideous throng rush out forever

  And laugh--but smile no more.

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  The End | Go to top

  The Conqueror Worm

  Lo! 'tis 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 Wo!

  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.

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  The End | Go to top

  Silence

  There are some qualities--some incorporate things,

  That have a double life, which thus is made

  A type of that twin entity which springs

  From matter and light, evinced in solid and shade.

  There is a twofold Silence --sea and shore--

  Body and soul. One dwells in lonely places,

  Newly with grass o'ergrown; some solemn graces,

  Some human memories and tearful lore,

  Render him terrorless: his name's "No More."

  He is the corporate Silence: dread him not!

  No power hath he of evil in himself;

  But should some urgent fate (untimely lot!)

  Bring thee to meet his shadow (nameless elf,

  That haunteth the lone regions where hath trod

  No foot of man), commend thyself to God!

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  The End | Go to top

  Dreamland

  By a route obscure and lonely,

  Haunted by ill angels only,

  Where an Eidolon, named NIGHT,

  On a black throne reigns upright,

  I have reached these lands but newly

  From an ultimate dim Thule--

  From a wild weird clime that lieth, sublime,

  Out of SPACE--out of TIME.

  Bottomless vales and boundless floods,

  And chasms, and caves, and Titan woods,

  With forms that no man can discover

  For the dews that drip all over;

  Mountains toppling evermore

  Into seas without a shore;

  Seas that restlessly aspire,

  Surging, unto skies of fire;

  Lakes that endlessly outspread

  Their lone waters--lone and dead,

  Their still waters--still and chilly

  With the snows of the lolling lily.

  By the lakes that thus outspread

  Their lone waters, lone and dead,--

  Their sad waters, sad and chilly

  With the snows of the lolling lily,--

  By the mountains--near the river

  Murmuring lowly, murmuring ever,--

  By the gray woods,--by the swamp

  Where the toad and the newt encamp,--

  By the dismal tarns and pools

  Where dwell the Ghouls,--

  By each spot the most unholy--

  In each nook most melancholy,--

  There the traveller meets aghast

  Sheeted Memories of the past--

  Shrouded forms that start and sigh

  As they pass the wanderer by--

  White-robed forms of friends long given,

  In agony, to the Earth--and Heaven.

  For the heart whose woes are legion

  'Tis a peaceful, soothing region--

  For the spirit that walks in shadow

  'Tis--oh, 'tis an Eldorado!

  But the traveller, travelling through it,

  May not--dare not openly view it;

  Never its mysteries are exposed

  To the weak human eye unclosed;

  So wills its King, who hath forbid

  The uplifting of the fringed lid;

  And thus the sad Soul that here passes

  Beholds it but through darkened glasses.

  By a route obscure and lonely,

  Haunted by ill angels only.

  Where an Eidolon, named NIGHT,

  On a black throne reigns upright,

  I have wandered home but newly

  From this ultimate dim Thule.

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  The End | Go to top

  To Zante

  Fair isle, that from the fairest of all flowers,

  Thy gentlest of all gentle names dost take!

  How many memories of what radiant hours

  At sight of thee and thine at once awake!

  How many scenes of what departed bliss!

  How many thoughts of what entombed hopes!

  How many visions of a maiden that is

  No more--no more upon thy verdant slopes!

  No more! alas, that magical sad sound

  Transforming all! Thy charms shall please no more--

  Thy memory no more! Accursed ground

  Henceforward I hold thy flower-enamelled shore,

  O hyacinthine isle! O purple Zante!

  "Isola d'oro! Fior di Levante!"

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  The End | Go to top

  Hymn

  At morn--at noon--at twilight dim--

  Maria! thou hast heard my hymn!

  In joy and wo--in good and ill--

  Mother of God, be with me still!

  When the Hours flew brightly by,

  And not a cloud obscured the sky,

  My soul, lest it should truant be,

  Thy grace did guide to thine and thee

  Now, when storms of Fate o'ercast

  Darkly my Present and my Past,

  Let my future radiant shine

  With sweet hopes of thee and thine!

  ________

  The End | Go to top

  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 the 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

 

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