Edgar Poe - The Raven and Other Selected Poems

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!

1827

I

The happiest day—the happiest hour

My seared and blighted heart hath known,

The highest hope of pride and power,

I feel hath flown.

II

Of power! said I? Yes! such I ween

But they have vanished long, alas!

The visions of my youth have been—

But let them pass.

III

And pride, what have I now with thee?

Another brow may ev’n inherit

The venom thou hast poured on me—

Be still my spirit!

IV

The happiest day—the happiest hour

Mine eyes shall see—have ever seen

The brightest glance of pride and power

I feel have been:

V

But were that hope of pride and power

Now offered with the pain

Ev’n then I felt—that brightest hour

I would not live again:

VI

For on its wing was dark alloy

And as it fluttered—fell

An essence—powerful to destroy

A soul that knew it well.

1827

In spring of youth it was my lot

To haunt of the wide world a spot

The which I could not love the less—

So lovely was the loneliness

Of a wild lake, with black rock bound,

And the tall pines that towered around.

But when the Night had thrown her pall

Upon the spot, as upon all,

And the mystic wind went by

Murmuring in melody—

Then—ah, then, I would awake

To the terror of the lone lake.

Yet that terror was not fright,

But a tremulous delight—

A feeling not the jewelled mine

Could teach or bribe me to define—

Nor Love—although the Love were thine.

Death was in that poisonous wave,

And in its gulf a fitting grave

For him who thence could solace bring

To his lone imagining—

Whose solitary soul could make

An Eden of that dim lake.

1827

Part I

O! nothing earthly save the ray

(Thrown back from flowers) of Beauty’s eye,

As in those gardens where the day

Springs from the gems of Circassy—

O! nothing earthly save the thrill

Of melody in woodland rill—

Or (music of the passion-hearted)

Joy’s voice so peacefully departed

That like the murmur in the shell,

Its echo dwelleth and will dwell—

O! nothing of the dross of ours—

Yet all the beauty—all the flowers

That list our Love, and deck our bowers—

Adorn yon world afar, afar—

The wandering star.

’Twas a sweet time for Nesace—for there

Her world lay lolling on the golden air,

Near four bright suns—a temporary rest—

An oasis in desert of the blest.

Away away—’mid seas of rays that roll

Empyrean splendor o’er th’ unchained soul—

The soul that scarce (the billows are so dense)

Can struggle to its destin’d eminence—

To distant spheres, from time to time, she rode,

And late to ours, the favour’d one of God—

But, now, the ruler of an anchor’d realm,

She throws aside the sceptre—leaves the helm,

And, amid incense and high spiritual hymns,

Laves in quadruple light her angel limbs.

Now happiest, loveliest in yon lovely Earth,

Whence sprang the “Idea of Beauty” into birth,

(Falling in wreaths thro’ many a startled star,

Like woman’s hair ’mid pearls, until, afar,

It lit on hills Achaian, and there dwelt),

She look’d into Infinity—and knelt.

Rich clouds, for canopies, about her curled—

Fit emblems of the model of her world—

Seen but in beauty—not impeding sight—

Of other beauty glittering thro’ the light—

A wreath that twined each starry form around,

And all the opal’d air in color bound.

All hurriedly she knelt upon a bed

Of flowers: of lilies such as rear’d the head

On the fair Capo Deucato, and sprang

So eagerly around about to hang

Upon the flying footsteps of—deep pride—

Of her who lov’d a mortal—and so died.

The Sephalica, budding with young bees,

Uprear’d its purple stem around her knees:

And gemmy flower, of Trebizond misnam’d—