Edgar Poe - The Raven and Other Selected Poems

Inmate of highest stars, where erst it sham’d

All other loveliness: its honied dew

(The fabled nectar that the heathen knew)

Deliriously sweet, was dropp’d from Heaven,

And fell on gardens of the unforgiven

In Trebizond—and on a sunny flower

So like its own above that, to this hour,

It still remaineth, torturing the bee

With madness, and unwonted reverie:

In Heaven, and all its environs, the leaf

And blossom of the fairy plant, in grief

Disconsolate linger—grief that hangs her head,

Repenting follies that full long have fled,

Heaving her white breast to the balmy air,

Like guilty beauty, chasten’d, and more fair:

Nyctanthes too, as sacred as the light

She fears to perfume, perfuming the night:

And Clytia pondering between many a sun,

While pettish tears adown her petals run:

And that aspiring flower that sprang on Earth—

And died, ere scarce exalted into birth,

Bursting its odorous heart in spirit to wing

Its way to Heaven, from garden of a king:

And Valisnerian lotus thither flown

From struggling with the waters of the Rhone:

And thy most lovely purple perfume, Zante!

Isola d’oro!—Fior di Levante!

And the Nelumbo bud that floats for ever

With Indian Cupid down the holy river—

Fair flowers, and fairy! to whose care is given

To bear the Goddess’ song, in odors, up to Heaven:

“Spirit! that dwellest where,

In the deep sky,

The terrible and fair,

In beauty vie!

Beyond the line of blue—

The boundary of the star

Which turneth at the view

Of thy barrier and thy bar—

Of the barrier overgone

By the comets who were cast

From their pride, and from their throne

To be drudges till the last—

To be carriers of fire

(The red fire of their heart)

With speed that may not tire

And with pain that shall not part—

Who livest—that we know—

In Eternity—we feel—

But the shadow of whose brow

What spirit shall reveal?

Tho’ the beings whom thy Nesace,

Thy messenger hath known

Have dream’d for thy Infinity

A model of their own—

Thy will is done, O God!

The star hath ridden high

Thro’ many a tempest, but she rode

Beneath thy burning eye;

And here, in thought, to thee—

In thought that can alone

Ascend thy empire and so be

A partner of thy throne—

By winged Fantasy,

My embassy is given,

Till secrecy shall knowledge be

In the environs of Heaven.

She ceas’d—and buried then her burning cheek

Abash’d, amid the lilies there, to seek

A shelter from the fervor of His eye;

For the stars trembled at the Deity.

She stirr’d not—breath’d not—for a voice was there

How solemnly pervading the calm air!

A sound of silence on the startled ear

Which dreamy poets name “the music of the sphere.”

Ours is a world of words: Quiet we call

“Silence”—which is the merest word of all.

All Nature speaks, and ev’n ideal things

Flap shadowy sounds from the visionary wings—

But ah! not so when, thus, in realms on high

The eternal voice of God is passing by,

And the red winds are withering in the sky!

“What tho’ in worlds which sightless cycles run,

Link’d to a little system, and one sun—

Where all my love is folly, and the crowd

Still think my terrors but the thunder cloud,

The storm, the earthquake, and the ocean-wrath

(Ah! will they cross me in my angrier path?)

What tho’ in worlds which own a single sun

The sands of time grow dimmer as they run,

Yet thine is my resplendency, so given

To bear my secrets thro’ the upper Heaven.

Leave tenantless thy crystal home, and fly,

With all thy train, athwart the moony sky—

Apart—like fire-flies in Sicilian night,

And wing to other worlds another light!

Divulge the secrets of thy embassy

To the proud orbs that twinkle—and so be

To ev’ry heart a barrier and a ban

Lest the stars totter in the guilt of man!”

Up rose the maiden in the yellow night,

The single-mooned eve!-on earth we plight

Our faith to one love—and one moon adore—

The birth-place of young Beauty had no more.

As sprang that yellow star from downy hours,

Up rose the maiden from her shrine of flowers,

And bent o’er sheeny mountain and dim plain

Her way—but left not yet her Therasæan reign.

Part II

High on a mountain of enamell’d head—

Such as the drowsy shepherd on his bed

Of giant pasturage lying at his ease,

Raising his heavy eyelid, starts and sees

With many a mutter’d “hope to be forgiven”

What time the moon is quadrated in Heaven—

Of rosy head, that towering far away

Into the sunlit ether, caught the ray

Of sunken suns at eve—at noon of night,

While the moon danc’d with the fair stranger light—

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