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The Happiest Day

The Happiest Day

The happiest day — the happiest hour,
My sear’d and blighted heart has known,
The brightest glance of pride and power
I feel hath flown —

 Of power, said I? Yes, such I ween —
But it has vanish’d — long alas!
The visions of my youth have been —
But let them pass. —


And pride! what have I now with thee?
Another brow may e’en inherit
The venom thou hast pour’d on me:
Be still my spirit.


The smile of love — soft friendship’s charm —
Bright hope itself has fled at last,
’T will ne’er again my bosom warm—
‘Tis ever past. 

The happiest day, — the happiest hour,
Mine eyes shall see, — have ever seen, —
The brightest glance of pride and power,
I feel has been.  


Edgar Allan Poe

Originally Published in 1827

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For Annie

For Annie

Thank Heaven! — the crisis —
The danger is past;
And the lingering illness
Is over at last ——
And the fever called “Living”
Is conquered at last.
——
Sadly, I know, I am
Shorn of my strength,
And no muscle I move,
As I lie at full length: —
But no matter! — I feel
I am better, at length.
——
And I rest so composedly
Now, in my bed,
That any beholder
Might fancy me dead —
Might start at beholding me,
Thinking me dead.
——
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.
——
The moaning and groaning —
The sighing and sobbing —
Are quieted now; with
The horrible throbbing
At heart: — oh, that horrible,
Horrible throbbing!
——
And ah, of all tortures
That torture the worst
Has abated — the terrible
Torture of thirst
For the napthaline river
Of Glory 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, I fancy
A holier odor about me,
of pansy —
A rosemary odor
Commingled with pansy —
With rue and the beautiful
Puritan pansy.
——
And so I lie happily
Bathing in many
A dream of the love
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 of the Heaven — for it
Sparkles with Annie —
It glows with the thought
Of the love of my Annie —
With the thought of the light
Of the eyes of my Annie.


Edgar Allan Poe

Originally Published in 1849

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Fanny

Fanny

The dying swan by northern lakes
Sings its wild death song, sweet and clear,
And as the solemn music breaks
O’er hill and glen dissolves in air;
Thus musical thy soft voice came,
Thus trembled on thy tongue my name.
Like sunburst through the ebon cloud,
Which veils the solemn midnight sky,
Piercing cold evening’s sable shroud,
Thus came the first glance of that eye;
But like the adamantine rock,
My spirit met and braved the shock.
Let memory the boy recall
Who laid his heart upon thy shrine,
When far away his footsteps fall,
Think that he deem’d thy charms divine;
A victim on love’s altar slain,
By witching eyes which looked disdain.


Edgar Allan Poe

Originally Published in 1833

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Evening Star

Evening Star

’Twas noontide of summer,
And mid-time of night;
And stars, in their orbits,
Shone pale, thro’ the light
Of the brighter, cold moon,
’Mid planets her slaves,
Herself in the Heavens,
Her beam on the waves.
I gaz’d awhile
On her cold smile;
Too cold — too cold for me —
There pass’d, as a shroud,
A fleecy cloud,
And I turn’d away to thee,
Proud Evening Star,
In thy glory afar,
And dearer thy beam shall be;
For joy to my heart
Is the proud part
Thou bearest in Heav’n at night,
And more I admire
Thy distant fire,
Than that colder, lowly light.


Edgar Allan Poe

Originally Published in 1827

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Eulalie

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. 

And ah! less bright
The stars of the night
Than the eyes of the radiant girl,
And never a flake
Their lustre can make
Of the vapor and gold and pearl
Can vie with the sweet young 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
Astarté within the sky,
And ever to it dear Eulalie upturns her matron eye —
And ever to it young Eulalie upturns her violet eye.


Edgar Allan Poe

Originally Published in 1845

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Elizabeth

Elizabeth

Elizabeth — it surely is most fit
(Logic and common usage so commanding)
In thy own book that first thy name be writ,
Zeno and other sages notwithstanding:
And I have other reasons for so doing
Besides my innate love of contradiction:
Each poet — if a poet — in pursuing
The muses thro’ their bowers of Truth or Fiction,
Has studied very little of his part,
Read nothing, written less — in short’s a fool
Endued with neither soul, nor sense, nor art,
Being ignorant of one important rule,
Employed in even the theses of the school —
Called —— I forget the heathenish Greek name —
(Called any thing, its meaning is the same)
“Always write first things uppermost in the heart”

Edgar


Edgar Allan Poe

This poem remained unpublished during Poe’s lifetime.

This poem is an acrostic, read the first letter of each sentence.

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Eldorado

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!”


Edgar Allan Poe

Originally Published in 1849

Image by W. Heath Robinson

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Dreams

Dreams

Oh! that my young life were a lasting dream!
My spirit not awak’ning, till the beam
Of an Eternity should bring the morrow.
Yes! tho’ that long dream were of hopeless sorrow.
’Twere better than the cold reality
Of waking life, to him whose heart must be,
And hath been still, upon the lovely earth,
A chaos of deep passion, from his birth.
But should it be — that dream eternally
Continuing — as dreams have been to me
In my young boyhood — should it thus be giv’n
’Twere folly still to hope for higher Heav’n.
For I have revell’d when the sun was bright
In the summer sky, in dreams of living light.
And loveliness, — have left my very heart
In climes of my imaginings apart
From mine own home, with beings that have been
Of mine own thought — what more could I have seen?
’Twas once — and only once — and the wild hour
From my remembrance shall not pass — some pow’r
Or spell had bound me — ’twas the chilly wind
Came o’er me in the night, and left behind
Its image on my spirit — or the moon
Shone on my slumbers in her lofty noon
Too coldly — or the stars — howe’er it was
That dream was as that night-wind — let it pass.
have been happy, tho’ in a dream.
I have been happy — and I love the theme:
Dreams! in their vivid colouring of life
As in that fleeting, shadowy, misty strife
Of semblance with reality which brings
To the delirious eye, more lovely things
Of Paradise and Love — and all our own!
Than young Hope in his sunniest hour hath known.


Edgar Allan Poe

Published in 1827

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Dream-Land

Dream-Land

By a route obscure and lonely,
Haunted by ill angels only,
Where an Eidolon, named NIGHT,
On a black throne reigns upright,
I have reached these lands but newly
From an ultimate dim Thule —
From a wild weird clime, that lieth, sublime,
Out of SPACE — out of TIME.

Bottomless vales and boundless floods,
And chasms, and caves, and Titan woods,
With forms that no man can discover
For the dews that drip all over;
Mountains toppling evermore
Into seas without a shore;
Seas that restlessly aspire,
Surging, unto skies of fire;
Lakes that endlessly outspread
Their lone waters, lone and dead, —
Their still waters, still and chilly
With the snows of the lolling lily.

By a route obscure and lonely,
Haunted by ill angels only,
Where an Eidolon, named NIGHT,
On a black throne reigns upright,
I have reached my home but newly
From this ultimate dim Thule. 

By the lakes that thus outspread
Their lone waters, lone and dead, —
Their sad waters, sad and chilly
With the snows of the lolling lily, —
By the mountain — near the river
Murmuring lowly, murmuring ever, —
By the gray woods, — by the swamp
Where the toad and the newt encamp, —
By the dismal tarns and pools
Where dwell the Ghouls, —
By each spot the most unholy —
In each nook most melancholy, —
There the traveler meets aghast
Sheeted Memories of the Past —
Shrouded forms that start and sigh
As they pass the wanderer by —
White-robed forms of friends long given,
In agony, to the worms, and Heaven.

By a route obscure and lonely,
Haunted by ill angels only,
Where an Eidolon, named NIGHT,
On a black throne reigns upright,
I have journeyed home but newly
From this ultimate dim Thule. 

For the heart whose woes are legion
’T is a peaceful, soothing region —
For the spirit that walks in shadow
’T is — oh ’t is an Eldorado!
But the traveler, traveling through it,
May not — dare not openly view it;
Never its mysteries are exposed
To the weak human eye unclosed;
So wills the King, who hath forbid
The uplifting of the fringéd lid;
And thus the sad Soul that here passes
Beholds it but through darkened glasses. 

By a route obscure and lonely,
Haunted by ill angels only,
Where an Eidolon, named NIGHT,
On a black throne reigns upright,
I have wandered home but newly
From this ultimate dim Thule.


Edgar Allan Poe

Originally Published in 1844

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The Doomed City

The Doomed City

A PROPHECY.

Lo! Death hath rear’d himself a throne
In a strange city, all alone,
Far down within the dim west —
And the good, and the bad, and the worst, and the best,
Have gone to their eternal rest. 

There shrines, and palaces, and towers
Are — not like any thing of ours —
O! no — O! no — ours never loom
To heaven with that ungodly gloom!
Time-eaten towers that tremble not!
Around, by lifting winds forgot,
Resignedly beneath the sky
The melancholy waters lie.

A heaven that God doth not contemn
With stars is like a diadem —
We liken our ladies’ eyes to them —
But there! that everlasting pall!
It would be mockery to call
Such dreariness a heaven at all. 

Yet tho’ no holy rays come down
On the long night-time of that town,
Light from the lurid, deep sea
Streams up the turrets silently —
Up thrones — up long-forgotten bowers
Of sculptur’d ivy and stone flowers —
Up domes — up spires — up kingly halls —
Up fanes — up Babylon-like walls —
Up many a melancholy shrine
Whose entablatures intertwine
The mask the — the viol — and the vine. 

There open temples — open graves
Are on a level with the waves —
But not the riches there that lie
In each idol’s diamond eye.
Not the gaily-jewell’d dead
Tempt the waters from their bed:
For no ripples curl,  alas!
Along that wilderness of glass —
No swellings hint that winds may be
Upon a far-off happier sea:
So blend the turrets and shadows there
That all seem pendulous in air,
While from the high towers of the town
Death looks gigantically down.

But lo! a stir is in the air!
The wave! there is a ripple there!
As if the towers had thrown aside,
In slightly sinking, the dull tide —
As if the turret-tops had given
A vacuum in the filmy heaven:
The waves have now a redder glow —
The very hours are breathing low —
And when, amid no earthly moans,
Down, down that town shall settle hence,
Hell rising from a thousand thrones
Shall do it reverence,
And Death to some more happy clime
Shall give his undivided time.


Edgar Allan Poe

Originally Published in 1831. Also called “The City in the Sea.”

Image by Edmund Dulac

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The Divine Right of Kings

The Divine Right of Kings

The only king by right divine
Is Ellen King, and were she mine
I’d strive for liberty no more,
But hug the glorious chains I wore.

 Her bosom is an ivory throne,
Where tyrant virtue reigns alone;
No subject vice dare interfere,
To check the power that governs here. 

O! would she deign to rule my fate,
I’d worship Kings and kingly state,
And hold this maxim all life long,
The King — my King — can do no wrong.

P.


Many scholars attribute this poem to Edgar Allan Poe.

Originally Published in 1845.

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The Coliseum

The Coliseum

Lone ampitheatre! Grey Coliseum!
Type of the antique Rome! Rich reliquary
Of lofty contemplation left to Time
By buried centuries of pomp and power!
At length, at length — after so many days
Of weary pilgrimage, and burning thirst,
(Thirst for the springs of lore that in thee lie,)
I kneel, an altered, and an humble man,
Amid thy shadows, and so drink within
My very soul thy grandeur, gloom, and glory. 

Vastness! and Age! and Memories of Eld!
Silence and Desolation! and dim Night!
Gaunt vestibules! and phantom-peopled aisles!
I feel ye now: I feel ye in your strength!
O spells more sure than e’er Judæan king
Taught in the gardens of Gethsemane!
O charms more potent than the rapt Chaldee
Ever drew down from out the quiet stars! 

Here, where a hero fell, a column falls:
Here, where the mimic eagle glared in gold,
A midnight vigil holds the swarthy bat:
Here, where the dames of Rome their yellow hair
Wav’d to the wind, now wave the reed and thistle:
Here, where on ivory couch the Cæsar sate,
On bed of moss lies gloating the foul adder:
Here, where on golden throne the monarch loll’d,
Glides spectre-like unto his marble home,
Lit by the wan light of the horned moon,
The swift and silent lizard of the stones. 

These crumbling walls; these tottering arcades;
These mouldering plinths; these sad, and blacken’d shafts;
These vague entablatures; this broken frieze;
These shattered cornices; this wreck; this ruin;
These stones, alas! — these grey stones — are they all;
All of the great and the colossal left
By the corrosive hours to Fate and me? 

“Not all,” — the echoes answer me; “not all:
Prophetic sounds, and loud, arise forever
From us, and from all ruin, unto the wise,
As in old days from Memnon to the sun.
We rule the hearts of mightiest men: — we rule
With a despotic sway all giant minds.
We are not desolate — we pallid stones;
Not all our power is gone; not all our Fame;
Not all the magic of our high renown;
Not all the wonder that encircles us;
Not all the mysteries that in us lie;
Not all the memories that hang upon,
And cling around about us now and ever,
And clothe us in a robe of more than glory.”


Edgar Allan Poe

Originally Published in 1833

Image by W. Heath Robinson