Эдгар По - Works of Edgar Allan Poe

The sickness--the nausea--

The pitiless pain--

Have ceased, with the fever

That maddened my brain--

With the fever called "Living"

That burned in my brain.

And oh! of all tortures

That torture the worst

Has abated--the terrible

Torture of thirst,

For the naphthaline river

Of Passion accurst:--

I have drank of a water

That quenches all thirst:--

Of a water that flows,

With a lullaby sound,

From a spring but a very few

Feet under ground--

From a cavern not very far

Down under ground.

And ah! let it never

Be foolishly said

That my room it is gloomy

And narrow my bed--

For man never slept

In a different bed;

And, to sleep , you must slumber

In just such a bed.

My tantalized spirit

Here blandly reposes,

Forgetting, or never

Regretting its roses--

Its old agitations

Of myrtles and roses:

For now, while so quietly

Lying, it fancies

A holier odor

About it, of pansies--

A rosemary odor,

Commingled with pansies--

With rue and the beautiful

Puritan pansies.

And so it lies happily,

Bathing in many

A dream of the truth

And the beauty of Annie--

Drowned in a bath

Of the tresses of Annie.

She tenderly kissed me,

She fondly caressed,

And then I fell gently

To sleep on her breast--

Deeply to sleep

From the heaven of her breast.

When the light was extinguished,

She covered me warm,

And she prayed to the angels

To keep me from harm--

To the queen of the angels

To shield me from harm.

And I lie so composedly,

Now in my bed

(Knowing her love)

That you fancy me dead--

And I rest so contentedly,

Now in my bed,

(With her love at my breast)

That you fancy me dead--

That you shudder to look at me.

Thinking me dead.

But my heart it is brighter

Than all of the many

Stars in the sky,

For it sparkles with Annie--

It glows with the light

Of the love of my Annie--

With the thought of the light

Of the eyes of my Annie.

________

The End | Go to top

To F--

Beloved! amid the earnest woes

That crowd around my earthly path--

(Drear path, alas! where grows

Not even one lonely rose)--

My soul at least a solace hath

In dreams of thee, and therein knows

An Eden of bland repose.

And thus thy memory is to me

Like some enchanted far-off isle

In some tumultuous sea--

Some ocean throbbing far and free

With storm--but where meanwhile

Serenest skies continually

Just o'er that one bright inland smile.

________

The End | Go to top

To Frances S. Osgood

Thou wouldst be loved?--then let thy heart

From its present pathway part not;

Being everything which now thou art,

Be nothing which thou art not.

So with the world thy gentle ways,

Thy grace, thy more than beauty,

Shall be an endless theme of praise.

And love a simple duty.

________

The End | Go to top

Eldorado

Gaily bedight,

A gallant knight,

In sunshine and in shadow,

Had journeyed long,

Singing a song,

In search of Eldorado.

But he grew old--

This knight so bold--

And o'er his heart a shadow

Fell as he found

No spot of ground

That looked like Eldorado.

And, as his strength

Failed him at length,

He met a pilgrim shadow--

"Shadow," said he,

"Where can it be--

This land of Eldorado?"

"Over the Mountains

Of the Moon,

Down the Valley of the Shadow,

Ride, boldly ride,"

The shade replied,

"If you seek for Eldorado!"

________

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Eulalie

I dwelt alone

In a world of moan,

And my soul was a stagnant tide,

Till the fair and gentle Eulalie became my blushing bride--

Till the yellow-haired young Eulalie became my smiling bride.

Ah, less--less bright

The stars of the night

Than the eyes of the radiant girl!

And never a flake

That the vapor can make

With the moon-tints of purple and pearl,

Can vie with the modest Eulalie's most unregarded curl--

Can compare with the bright-eyed Eulalie's most humble and careless

curl.

Now Doubt--now Pain

Come never again,

For her soul gives me sigh for sigh,

And all day long

Shines, bright and strong,

Astart? within the sky,

While ever to her dear Eulalie upturns her matron eye--

While ever to her young Eulalie upturns her violet eye.

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A Dream Within A Dream

Take this kiss upon the brow!

And, in parting from you now,

Thus much let me avow--

You are not wrong, who deem

That my days have been a dream:

Yet if hope has flown away

In a night, or in a day,

In a vision or in none,

Is it therefore the less gone ?

All that we see or seem

Is but a dream within a dream.

I stand amid the roar

Of a surf-tormented shore,

And I hold within my hand

Grains of the golden sand--

How few! yet how they creep

Through my fingers to the deep

While I weep--while I weep!

O God! can I not grasp

Them with a tighter clasp?

O God! can I not save

One from the pitiless wave?

Is all that we see or seem

But a dream within a dream?

________

The End | Go to top

To Marie Louise

Of all who hail thy presence as the morning--

Of all to whom thine absence is the night--

The blotting utterly from out high heaven

The sacred sun--of all who, weeping, bless thee

Hourly for hope--for life--ah, above all,

For the resurrection of deep buried faith

In truth, in virtue, in humanity--

Of all who, on despair's unhallowed bed

Lying down to die, have suddenly arisen

At thy soft-murmured words, "Let there be light!"

At thy soft-murmured words that were fulfilled

In thy seraphic glancing of thine eyes--

Of all who owe thee most, whose gratitude

Nearest resembles worship,--oh, remember

The truest, the most fervently devoted,

And think that these weak lines are written by him--

By him who, as he pens them, thrills to think

His spirit is communing with an angel's.

________

The End | Go to top

The City In The Sea

Lo! Death has reared himself a throne

In a strange city lying alone

Far down within the dim West,

Where the good and the bad and the worst and the best

Have gone to their eternal rest.

There shrines and palaces and towers

(Time-eaten towers and tremble not!)

Resemble nothing that is ours.

Around, by lifting winds forgot,

Resignedly beneath the sky

The melancholy waters lie.

No rays from the holy Heaven come down

On the long night-time of that town;

But light from out the lurid sea

Streams up the turrets silently--

Gleams up the pinnacles far and free--

Up domes--up spires--up kingly halls--

Up fanes--up Babylon-like walls--

Up shadowy long-forgotten bowers

Of sculptured ivy and stone flowers--

Up many and many a marvellous shrine

Whose wreathed friezes intertwine

The viol, the violet, and the vine.