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 doingBesides my innate love of contradiction:Each poet — if a poet — in pursuingThe muses thro’ their bowers of Truth or Fiction,Has studied very little of his part,Read nothing, written less — in short's a foolEndued 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 ...
The Poe Museum Blog
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 shadowFell, as he foundNo spot of groundThat looked like Eldorado.
And, as his strengthFailed him at length,He met a pilgrim shadow —“Shadow,” said he,“Where can it be —This land of Eldorado?”
“Over the MountainsOf 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 ...
Dreams
Dreams
Oh! that my young life were a lasting dream!My spirit not awak’ning, till the beamOf an Eternity should bring the morrow.Yes! tho’ that long dream were of hopeless sorrow.’Twere better than the cold realityOf 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 eternallyContinuing — as dreams have been to meIn 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 brightIn the summer sky, in dreams of living light.And ...
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 newlyFrom 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 discoverFor the dews that drip all over;Mountains toppling evermoreInto seas without a shore;Seas that restlessly aspire,Surging, unto skies of fire;Lakes that endlessly outspreadTheir lone waters, lone and dead, ...