As for Locke, he is all in my eye,
May the d—l right soon for his soul call.
He never was known to lie —
In bed at a reveillé roll-call.”
John Locke was a notable name;
Joe Locke is a greater: in short,
The former was well known to fame,
But the latter’s well known “to report.”
Edgar Allan Poe
Originally Published in 1843
Ah, broken is the golden bowl!
The spirit flown forever!
Let the bell toll! — A saintly soul
Glides down the Stygian river!
And let the burial rite be read —
The funeral song be sung —
A dirge for the most lovely dead
That ever died so young!
And, Guy De Vere,
Hast thou no tear?
Weep now or nevermore!
See, on yon drear
And rigid bier,
Low lies thy love Lenore!
“Yon heir, whose cheeks of pallid hue
With tears are streaming wet,
Sees only, through
Their crocodile dew,
A vacant coronet —
False friends! ye loved her for her wealth
And hated her for her pride,
And, when she fell in feeble health,
Ye blessed her — that she died.
How shall the ritual, then, be read?
The requiem how be sung
For her most wrong’d of all the dead
That ever died so young?”
Peccavimus!
But rave not thus!
And let the solemn song
Go up to God so mournfully that she may feel no wrong!
The sweet Lenore
Hath “gone before”
With young hope at her side,
And thou art wild
For the dear child
That should have been thy bride —
For her, the fair
And debonair,
That now so lowly lies —
The life still there
Upon her hair,
The death upon her eyes.
“Avaunt! — to-night
My heart is light —
No dirge will I upraise,
But waft the angel on her flight
With a Pæan of old days!
Let no bell toll!
Lest her sweet soul,
Amid its hallow’d mirth,
Should catch the note
As it doth float
Up from the damned earth —
To friends above, from fiends below, th’ indignant ghost is riven —
From grief and moan
To a gold throne
Beside the King of Heaven!”
Edgar Allan Poe
Originally Published as “A Pæan” in 1831
Image by W. Heath Robinson
Mille, mille, mille
Mille, mille, mille
Decollavimus, unus homo!
Mille, mille, mille, mille, decollavimus!
Mille, mille, mille!
Vivat qui mille mille occidit!
Tantum vini habet nemo
Quantum sanguinis effudit!
—— which may be thus paraphrased:
A thousand, a thousand, a thousand!
A thousand, a thousand, a thousand!
We with one warrior have slain.
A thousand, a thousand, a thousand, a thousand!
Sing a thousand over again.
Soho! let us sing
Long life to our king
Who knocked over a thousand so fine.
Soho! let us roar
He has given us more
Red gallons of gore
Than all Syria can furnish of wine!
Edgar Allan Poe
Originally Published in Poe’s story “Epimanes” in 1833.
In youth’s spring, it was my lot
To haunt of the wide earth 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 tower’d around.
But when the night had thrown her pall
Upon that spot — as upon all,
And the wind would pass me by
In its stilly melody,
My infant spirit would awake
To the terror of the lone lake.
Yet that terror was not fright —
But a tremulous delight,
And a feeling undefin’d,
Springing from a darken’d mind.
Death was in that poison’d wave
And in its gulf a fitting grave
For him who thence could solace bring
To his dark imagining;
Whose wild’ring thought could even make
An Eden of that dim lake.
Edgar Allan Poe
Originally Published in 1827
I.
In Heaven a spirit doth dwell
Whose heart-strings are a lute —
None sing so wild — so well
As the angel Israfel —
And the giddy stars are mute.
II.
Tottering above
In her highest noon
The enamoured moon
Blushes with love —
While, to listen, the red levin
Pauses in Heaven.
III.
And they say (the starry choir
And all the listening things)
That Israfeli’s fire
Is owing to that lyre
With those unusual strings.
IV.
But the Heavens that angel trod
Where deep thoughts are a duty —
Where Love is a grown god —
Where Houri glances are ——
— Stay! turn thine eyes afar! —
Imbued with all the beauty
Which we worship in yon star.
V.
Thou art not, therefore, wrong
Israfeli, who despisest
An unimpassion’d song:
To thee the laurels belong
Best bard, — because the wisest.
VI.
The ecstasies above
With thy burning measures suit —
Thy grief — if any — thy love
With the fervor of thy lute —
Well may the stars be mute!
VII.
Yes, Heaven is thine: but this
Is a world of sweets and sours:
Our flowers are merely — flowers,
And the shadow of thy bliss
Is the sunshine of ours.
VIII.
If I did dwell where Israfel
Hath dwelt, and he where I,
He would not sing one half as well —
One half as passionately,
And a stormier note than this would swell
From my lyre within the sky.
Edgar Allan Poe
Originally Published in 1831
Image by W. Heath Robinson
When from your gems of thought I turn
To those pure orbs, your heart to learn,
I scarce know which to prize most high —
The bright i-dea, or the bright dear-eye.
Edgar Allan Poe
Originally Published in 1845
A dark unfathom’d tide
Of interminable pride —
A mystery, and a dream,
Should my early life seem;
I say that dream was fraught
With a wild, and waking thought
Of beings that have been,
Which my spirit hath not seen.
Had I let them pass me by,
With a dreaming eye!
Let none of earth inherit
That vision of my spirit;
Those thoughts I would control,
As a spell upon his soul:
For that bright hope at last
And that light time have past,
And my worldly rest hath gone
With a sigh as it pass’d on,
I care not tho’ it perish
With a thought I then did cherish.
Edgar Allan Poe
Originally Published in 1827
In the greenest of our valleys
By good angels tenanted,
Once a fair and stately palace —
Snow-white palace — reared its head.
In the monarch thought’s dominion —
It stood there!
Never Seraph spread his pinion
Over fabric half so fair.
Banners yellow, glorious, golden,
On its roof did float and flow —
This — all this — was in the olden
Time long ago —
And every gentle air that dallied,
In that sweet day,
Along the rampart plumed and pallid,
A winged odour went away.
All wanderers in that happy valley,
Through two luminous windows saw
Spirits moving musically
To a lute’s well tuned law,
Round about a throne where sitting
(Porphyrogene!)
In state his glory well befitting,
The sovereign of the realm was seen.
And all with pearl and ruby glowing
Was the fair palace door;
Through which came flowing, flowing, flowing,
And sparkling evermore,
A troop of echoes, whose sweet duty
Was but to sing
In voices of surpassing beauty,
The wit and wisdom of their king.
But evil things in robes of sorrow,
Assailed the monarch’s high estate!
Ah, let us mourn — for never morrow
Shall dawn upon him desolate!
And round about his home the glory,
That blushed and bloomed,
Is but a dim-remembered story
Of the old time entombed.
And travellers now within that valley,
Through the red-litten windows, see
Vast forms that move fantastically
To a discordant melody;
While, like a rapid ghastly river,
Through the pale door;
A hideous throng rush out forever,
And laugh — but smile no more.
Edgar Allan Poe
Originally Published in 1839
Image by Edmund Dulac
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
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
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
’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
