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 ...
The Poe Museum Blog
Silence — A Sonnet
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
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 ...
Song of Triumph
Song of Triumph
Who is king but Epiphanes?Say do you know?Who is God but Epiphanes?Say do you know?There is none but EpiphanesNo — there is none:So tear down the templesAnd put out the sun!
Edgar Allan Poe
Originally Published in Poe’s story “Epimanes” in 1833 ...