The Poe Museum Blog

Sonnet — To Zante Fair isle, that from the fairest of all flowersThy gentlest of all gentle names dost take,How many memories of what radiant hoursAt sight of thee and thine at once awake!How many scenes of what departed bliss!How many thoughts of what entombed hopes!How many visions of a maiden that isNo more — no more upon thy verdant slopes!No more! — alas, that magical sad soundTransforming all! Thy charms shall please no more —Thy memory no more! Accursed groundHenceforth I hold thy flower-enamelled shore,O, hyacinthine isle! O, purple Zante!Isola d’oro! Fior ...

Sonnet — To Science Science! meet daughter of old Time thou artWho alterest all things with thy peering eyes!Why prey'st thou thus upon the poet's heart,Vulture! whose wings are dull realities!How should he love thee — or how deem thee wiseWho woulds’t not leave him, in his wandering,To seek for treasure in the jewell’d skiesAlbeit, he soar with an undaunted wing?Hast thou not dragg’d Diana from her car,And driv’n the Hamadryad from the woodTo seek a shelter in some happier star?The gentle Naiad from her fountain-flood?The elfin from the green grass? and from meThe summer dream beneath the ...

Silence A Sonnet There are some qualities — some incorporate thingsThat have a double life — life aptly made,The type of that twin entity which springsFrom matter and light, evinced in solid and shade.There is a two-fold Silence — sea and shore —Body and soul. One dwells in lonely places,Newly with grass o’ergrown. Some solemn graces —Some human memories and tearful lore,Render him terrorless — his name's “No More.”He is the corporate Silence — dread him not!No power hath he of evil in himself;But should some urgent fate — untimely lot!Bring thee to meet ...

Sonnet “Seldom we find,” says Solomon Don Dunce,“Half an idea in the profoundest sonnet.Through all the flimsy things we see at onceAs easily as through a Naples bonnet —Trash of all trash! — how can a lady don it?Yet heavier far than your Petrarchan stuff —Owl-downy nonsense that the faintest puffTwirls into trunk-paper the while you con it.”And, veritably, Sol is right enough.The general Petrarchanities are arrantBubbles — ephemeral and so transparent —But this is, now, — you may depend upon it —Stable, opaque, immortal — all by dintOf the dear names that lie ...