Edgar Allan Poe - The Complete Poetry

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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:

Whose fervid, flickering torch of life was lit

From the sun and stars, whence he had drawn forth

A passionate light such for his spirit was fit—

And yet that spirit knew—not in the hour

Of its own fervor—what had o'er it power.

II

Perhaps it may be that my mind is wrought

To a ferver by the moonbeam that hangs o'er,

But I will half believe that wild light fraught

With more of sovereignty than ancient lore

Hath ever told—or is it of a thought

The unembodied essence, and no more

That with a quickening spell doth o'er us pass

As dew of the night-time, o'er the summer grass?

III

Doth o'er us pass, when, as th' expanding eye

To the loved object—so the tear to the lid

Will start, which lately slept in apathy?

And yet it need not be—(that object) hid

From us in life—but common—which doth lie

Each hour before us—but then only bid

With a strange sound, as of a harp-string broken

T' awake us—'Tis a symbol and a token—

IV

Of what in other worlds shall be—and given

In beauty by our God, to those alone

Who otherwise would fall from life and Heaven

Drawn by their heart's passion, and that tone,

That high tone of the spirit which hath striven

Though not with Faith—with godliness—whose throne

With desperate energy 't hath beaten down;

Wearing its own deep feeling as a crown.

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I

How shall the burial rite be read?

The solemn song be sung?

The requiem for the loveliest dead,

That ever died so young?

II

Her friends are gazing on her,

And on her gaudy bier,

And weep!—oh! to dishonor

Dead beauty with a tear!

III

They loved her for her wealth—

And they hated her for her pride—

But she grew in feeble health,

And they love her—that she died.

IV

They tell me (while they speak

Of her "costly broider'd pall")

That my voice is growing weak—

That I should not sing at all—

V

Or that my tone should be

Tun'd to such solemn song

So mournfully—so mournfully,

That the dead may feel no wrong.

VI

But she is gone above,

With young Hope at her side,

And I am drunk with love

Of the dead, who is my bride.—

VII

Of the dead—dead who lies

All perfum'd there,

With the death upon her eyes.

And the life upon her hair.

VIII

Thus on the coffin loud and long

I strike—the murmur sent

Through the gray chambers to my song,

Shall be the accompaniment.

IX

Thou diedst in thy life's June—

But thou didst not die too fair:

Thou didst not die too soon,

Nor with too calm an air.

X

From more than friends on earth,

Thy life and love are riven,

To join the untainted mirth

Of more than thrones in heaven.—

XI

Therefore, to thee this night

I will no requiem raise,

But waft thee on thy flight,

With a Pæan of old days.

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On the "Poems written in Youth" little comment is needed. This section includes the pieces printed for the first volume of 1827 (which was subsequently suppressed), such poems from the first and second published volumes of 1829 and 1831 as have not already been given in their revised versions, and a few others collected from various sources.

"Al Aaraaf" first appeared, with the sonnet "To Silence" prefixed to it, in 1829, and is, substantially, as originally issued. In the edition for 1831, however, this poem, its author's longest, was introduced by the following twenty-nine lines, which have been omitted in all subsequent collections:

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.

The earliest version of "Tamerlane" was included in the suppressed volume of 1827, but differs very considerably from the poem as now published. The present draft, besides innumerable verbal alterations and improvements upon the original, is more carefully punctuated, and, the lines being indented, presents a more pleasing appearance, to the eye at least.

"To Helen" first appeared in the 1831 volume, as did also "The Valley of Unrest" (as "The Valley Nis"), "Israfel," and one or two others of the youthful pieces.

The poem styled "Romance" constituted the Preface of the 1829 volume, but with the addition of the following lines:

Succeeding years, too wild for song,

Then rolled like tropic storms along,

Where, though the garish lights that fly

Dying along the troubled sky,

Lay bare, through vistas thunder-riven,

The blackness of the general Heaven,

That very blackness yet doth fling

Light on the lightning's silver wing.

For being an idle boy lang syne,

Who read Anacreon and drank wine,

I early found Anacreon rhymes

Were almost passionate sometimes—

And by strange alchemy of brain

His pleasures always turned to pain—

His naïveté to wild desire—

His wit to love—his wine to fire—

And so, being young and dipt in folly,

I fell in love with melancholy.

And used to throw my earthly rest

And quiet all away in jest—

I could not love except where Death

Was mingling his with Beauty's breath—

Or Hymen, Time, and Destiny,

Were stalking between her and me.

...

But now my soul hath too much room— Gone are the glory and the gloom— The black hath mellow'd into gray, And all the fires are fading away. My draught of passion hath been deep— I revell'd, and I now would sleep— And after drunkenness of soul Succeeds the glories of the bowl— An idle longing night and day To dream my very life away. But dreams—of those who dream as I, Aspiringly, are damned, and die: Yet should I swear I mean alone, By notes so very shrilly blown, To break upon Time's monotone, While yet my vapid joy and grief Are tintless of the yellow leaf— Why not an imp the greybeard hath, Will shake his shadow in my path— And e'en the greybeard will o'erlook Connivingly my dreaming-book.