Edgar Poe - The Raven and Other Selected Poems

(STANZAS)

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.

1827

I saw thee on thy bridal day—

When a burning blush came o’er thee,

Though happiness around thee lay,

The world all love before thee:

And in thine eye a kindling light

(Whatever it might be)

Was all on Earth my aching sight

Of Loveliness could see.

That blush, perhaps, was maiden shame—

As such it well may pass—

Though its glow hath raised a fiercer flame

In the breast of him, alas!

Who saw thee on that bridal day,

When that deep blush would come o’er thee,

Though happiness around thee lay,

The world all love before thee.

1827

Thy soul shall find itself alone

’Mid dark thoughts of the gray tombstone

Not one, of all the crowd, to pry

Into thine hour of secrecy.

Be silent in that solitude

Which is not loneliness—for then

The spirits of the dead who stood

In life before thee are again

In death around thee—and their will

Shall overshadow thee: be still.

The night—tho’ clear—shall frown—

And the stars shall not look down

From their high thrones in the Heaven,

With light like Hope to mortals given—

But their red orbs, without beam,

To thy weariness shall seem

As a burning and a fever

Which would cling to thee forever.

Now are thoughts thou shalt not banish—

Now are visions ne’er to vanish—

From thy spirit shall they pass

No more—like dew-drops from the grass.

The breeze—the breath of God—is still—

And the mist upon the hill

Shadowy—shadowy—yet unbroken,

Is a symbol and a token—

How it hangs upon the trees,

A mystery of mysteries!

1827

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—