Works of Edgar Allan Poe

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Works of Edgar Allan Poe Page 132

by Эдгар Аллан По


  The summer dream beneath the tamarind tree?

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  The End | Go to top

  Al Aaraaf

  Mysterious star!

  Thou wert my dream

  All a long summer night--

  Be now my theme!

  By this clear stream,

  Of thee will I write;

  Meantime from afar

  Bathe me in light!

  Thy world has not the dross of ours,

  Yet all the beauty--all the flowers

  That list our love or deck our bowers

  In dreamy gardens, where do lie

  Dreamy maidens all the day;

  While the silver winds of Circassy

  On violet couches faint away.

  Little--oh! little dwells in thee

  Like unto what on earth we see:

  Beauty's eye is here the bluest

  In the falsest and untruest--

  On the sweetest air doth float

  The most sad and solemn note--

  If with thee be broken hearts,

  Joy so peacefully departs,

  That its echo still doth dwell,

  Like the murmur in the shell.

  Thou! thy truest type of grief

  Is the gently falling leaf--

  Thou! thy framing is so holy

  Sorrow is not melancholy.

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  Tamerlane

  Kind solace in a dying hour!

  Such, father, is not (now) my theme--

  I will not madly deem that power

  Of Earth may shrive me of the sin

  Unearthly pride hath revelled in--

  I have no time to dote or dream:

  You call it hope--that fire of fire!

  It is but agony of desire:

  If I can hope--O God! I can--

  Its fount is holier--more divine--

  I would not call thee fool, old man,

  But such is not a gift of thine.

  Know thou the secret of a spirit

  Bowed from its wild pride into shame

  O yearning heart! I did inherit

  Thy withering portion with the fame,

  The searing glory which hath shone

  Amid the Jewels of my throne,

  Halo of Hell! and with a pain

  Not Hell shall make me fear again--

  O craving heart, for the lost flowers

  And sunshine of my summer hours!

  The undying voice of that dead time,

  With its interminable chime,

  Rings, in the spirit of a spell,

  Upon thy emptiness--a knell.

  I have not always been as now:

  The fevered diadem on my brow

  I claimed and won usurpingly--

  Hath not the same fierce heirdom given

  Rome to the C?sar--this to me?

  The heritage of a kingly mind,

  And a proud spirit which hath striven

  Triumphantly with human kind.

  On mountain soil I first drew life:

  The mists of the Taglay have shed

  Nightly their dews upon my head,

  And, I believe, the winged strife

  And tumult of the headlong air

  Have nestled in my very hair.

  So late from Heaven--that dew--it fell

  ('Mid dreams of an unholy night)

  Upon me with the touch of Hell,

  While the red flashing of the light

  From clouds that hung, like banners, o'er,

  Appeared to my half-closing eye

  The pageantry of monarchy;

  And the deep trumpet-thunder's roar

  Came hurriedly upon me, telling

  Of human battle, where my voice,

  My own voice, silly child!--was swelling

  (O! how my spirit would rejoice,

  And leap within me at the cry)

  The battle-cry of Victory!

  The rain came down upon my head

  Unsheltered--and the heavy wind

  Rendered me mad and deaf and blind.

  It was but man, I thought, who shed

  Laurels upon me: and the rush--

  The torrent of the chilly air

  Gurgled within my ear the crush

  Of empires--with the captive's prayer--

  The hum of suitors--and the tone

  Of flattery 'round a sovereign's throne.

  My passions, from that hapless hour,

  Usurped a tyranny which men

  Have deemed since I have reached to power,

  My innate nature--be it so:

  But, father, there lived one who, then,

  Then--in my boyhood--when their fire

  Burned with a still intenser glow

  (For passion must, with youth, expire)

  E'en then who knew this iron heart

  In woman's weakness had a part.

  I have no words--alas!--to tell

  The loveliness of loving well!

  Nor would I now attempt to trace

  The more than beauty of a face

  Whose lineaments, upon my mind,

  Are--shadows on th' unstable wind:

  Thus I remember having dwelt

  Some page of early lore upon,

  With loitering eye, till I have felt

  The letters--with their meaning--melt

  To fantasies--with none.

  O, she was worthy of all love!

  Love as in infancy was mine--

  'Twas such as angel minds above

  Might envy; her young heart the shrine

  On which my every hope and thought

  Were incense--then a goodly gift,

  For they were childish and upright--

  Pure--as her young example taught:

  Why did I leave it, and, adrift,

  Trust to the fire within, for light?

  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 smiled.

  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 asked no reason why,

  But turned 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 marked a throne

  Of half the world as all my own,

  And murmured 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 walked together on the crown

  O
f a high mountain which looked 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

  Seemed to become a queenly throne

  Too well that I should let it be

  Light in the wilderness alone.

  I wrapped myself in grandeur then,

  And donned a visionary crown--

  Yet it was not that Fantasy

  Had thrown her mantle over me--

  But that, among the rabble--men,

  Lion ambition is chained 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 diademed 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-withered 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 towered, could see

  No cliff beyond him in the sky,

  His pinions were bent droopingly--

  And homeward turned his softened eye.

  'Twas 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 hearken) as one

  Who, in a dream of night, would fly,

  But cannot, from a danger nigh.

  What tho' the moon--tho' 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 reached my home--my home no more--

  For all had flown who made it so.

  I passed 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 woe.

  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 trellised 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!

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  The End | Go to top

  The Valley of Unrest

  Once it smiled a silent dell

  Where the people did not dwell;

  They had gone unto the wars,

  Trusting to the mild-eyed stars,

  Nightly, from their azure towers,

  To keep watch above the flowers,

  In the midst of which all day

  The red sun-light lazily lay,

  Now each visitor shall confess

  The sad valley's restlessness.

  Nothing there is motionless--

  Nothing save the airs that brood

  Over the magic solitude.

  Ah, by no wind are stirred those trees

  That palpitate like the chill seas

  Around the misty Hebrides!

  Ah, by no wind those clouds are driven

  That rustle through the unquiet Heaven

  Unceasingly, from morn till even,

  Over the violets there that lie

  In myriad types of the human eye--

  Over the lilies that wave

  And weep above a nameless grave!

  They wave:--from out their fragrant tops

  Eternal dews come down in drops.

  They weep:--from off their delicate stems

  Perennial tears descend in gems.

  ________

  The End | Go to top

  Israfel

  In Heaven a spirit doth dwell

  "Whose heart-strings are a lute;"

  None sing so wildly well

  As the angel Israfel,

  And the giddy Stars (so legends tell),

  Ceasing their hymns, attend the spell

  Of his voice, all mute.

  Tottering above

  In her highest noon,

  The enamoured Moon

  Blushes with love,

  While, to listen, the red levin

 

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