Tag: Poe’s Works

The Valley of Unrest

Far away — far away —
Far away — as far at least
Lies that valley as the day
Down within the golden east —
All things lovely — are not they
Far away — far away? 

It is called the valley Nis.
And a Syriac tale there is
Thereabout which Time hath said
Shall not be interpreted.
Something about Satan’s dart —
Something about angel wings —
Much about a broken heart —
All about unhappy things:
But “the valley Nis” at best
Means “the valley of unrest.” 

Once it smil’d a silent dell
Where the people did not dwell,
Having gone unto the wars —
And the sly, mysterious stars,
With a visage full of meaning,
O’er the unguarded flowers were leaning:
Or the sun ray dripp’d all red
Thro’ the tulips overhead,
Then grew paler as it fell
On the quiet Asphodel. 

Now the unhappy shall confess
Nothing there is motionless:
Helen, like thy human eye
There th’ uneasy violets lie —
There the reedy grass doth wave
Over the old forgotten grave —
One by one from the tree top
There the eternal dews do drop —
There the vague and dreamy trees
Do roll like seas in northern breeze
Around the stormy Hebrides —
There the gorgeous clouds do fly,
Rustling everlastingly,
Through the terror-stricken sky,
Rolling like a waterfall
O’er th’ horizon’s fiery wall —
There the moon doth shine by night
With a most unsteady light —
There the sun doth reel by day
“Over the hills and far away.”

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Edgar Allan Poe

Originally Published in 1831

Spirits of the Dead

Thy soul shall find itself alone,
Mid dark thoughts of the grey tombstone —
Not one, of all the crowd to pry
Into thine hour of secrecy —
Be silent in thy solitude
Which is not loneliness — for then
The spirits of the dead who stood
In life before thee are again
In death around thee, and their will
Shall then oershadow thee — be still. 

The night tho’ clear shall frown —
And the stars shall look not down
From their high thrones in the Heaven,
With light like Hope to mortals given,
But their red orbs, without beam,
To thy weariness shall seem
As a burning & a fever
Which would cling to thee forever
But twill leave thee, as each star
With the dew-drop flies afar — 

Now are thoughts thou can’st not banish —
Now are visions ne’er to vanish —
No more, like dew-drop from the grass,
From thy spirit shall they pass —
The breeze — the breath of God — is still —
And the mist upon the hill
Shadowy — shadowy, yet unbroken
Is a symbol & a token —
How it hangs upon the trees!
A mystery of mysteries!

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Edgar Allan Poe

Originally Published in 1827

To My Mother

Because I feel that, in the heavens above,
The angels, whispering to one another,
Can find, among their burning terms of love,
None so devotional as that of ‘mother’ —
Therefore by that sweet name I long have called you —
You, who are more than mother unto me,
And fill my heart of hearts, where Death installed you,
In setting my Virginia’s spirit free.
My mother — my own mother — who died early —
Was but the mother of myself; but you
Are mother to the one I loved so dearly,
And thus are dearer than the mother I knew;
By that infinity with which my wife
Was dearer to my soul than its soul-life.

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Edgar Allan Poe

Originally published in 1849

To Marie Louise

Not long ago, the writer of these lines,
In the mad pride of intellectuality,
Maintained the “Power of Words” — denied that ever
A thought arose within the human brain
Beyond the utterance of the human tongue:
And now, as if in mockery of that boast,
Two words — two foreign, soft dissyllables —
Two gentle sounds made only to be murmured
By angels dreaming in the moon-lit “dew
That hangs like chains of pearl on Hermon hill”
Have stirred from out the abysses of his heart
Unthought-like thoughts — scarcely the shades of thought —
Bewildering fantasies — far richer visions
Than even the seraph harper, Israfel,
Who “had the sweetest voice of all God’s creatures”,
Would hope to utter. Ah, Marie Louise!
In deep humility I own that now
All pride — all thought of power — all hope of fame —
All wish for Heaven — is merged forevermore
Beneath the palpitating tide of passion
Heaped o’er my soul by thee. Its spells are broken —
The pen falls powerless from my shivering hand —
With that dear name as text I cannot write —
I cannot speak — I cannot even think —
Alas! I cannot feel; for ’tis not feeling —
This standing motionless upon the golden
Threshold of the wide-open gate of Dreams,
Gazing, entranced, adown the gorgeous vista,
And thrilling as I see upon the right —
Upon the left — and all the way along,
Amid the clouds of glory, far away
To where the prospect terminates — thee only.

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Edgar Allan Poe

Originally Published in 1848

To Mary

Mary, amid the cares — the woes
Crowding around my earthly path,
(Sad path, alas! where grows
Not ev’n one lonely rose,)
My soul at least a solace hath
In dreams of thee, and therein knows
An Eden of sweet repose. 

And thus thy memory is to me
Like some enchanted far-off isle,
In some tumultuous sea —
Some lake beset as lake can be
With storms — but where, meanwhile,
Serenest skies continually
Just o’er that one bright island smile.

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Edgar Allan Poe

Originally Published in 1835

To Margaret

Who hath seduced thee to this foul revolt } Milton Par. Lost. Bk. I
From the pure well of Beauty undefiled? } Somebody
So banished from true wisdom to prefer } Cowper’s Task, Book I  
Such squalid wit to honourable rhyme?
To write? To scribble? Nonsense and no more?   } Shakespeare
 I will not write upon this argument } do.Troilus & Cressida
To write is human — not to write divine. } Pope Essay on Man

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Edgar Allan Poe

This poem was never published during Poe’s lifetime

The text on the right refers to the source from which the line is derived from

To M. L. S.

Of all who hail thy presence as the morning —
Of all to whom thy absence is the night —
The blotting utterly from out high heaven
The sacred sun — of all who, weeping, bless thee
Hourly for hope — for life — ah! above all,
For the resurrection of deep-buried faith
In Truth — in Virtue — in Humanity —
Of all who, on Despair’s unhallowed bed
Laying them down to die, have suddenly risen
At thy soft-murmured words, “Let there be light!”
At the soft-murmured words that were fulfilled
In the seraphic glancing of thine eyes —
Of all who owe thee most — whose gratitude
Nearest approaches worship — oh, remember
The truest — the most fervently devoted,
And think that these weak lines are written by him —
By him who, as he pens them, thrills to think
His spirit is communing with an angel’s.

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Edgar Allan Poe

Originally Published in 1847

To Her Whose Name is Written Below

For her these lines are penned, whose luminous eyes,
Bright and expressive as the stars of Leda,
Shall find her own sweet name that, nestling, lies
Upon this page, enwrapped from every reader.
Search narrowly these words, which hold a treasure
Divine — a talisman — an amulet
That must be worn at heart. Search well the measure —
The words — the letters themselves. Do not forget
The smallest point, or you may lose your labor.
And yet there is in this no Gordian knot,
Which one might not undo without a sabre.
If one could merely comprehend the plot
Upon the open page, on which are peering
Such sweet eyes now, there lies, I say perdu,
A musical name, oft uttered in the hearing
Of poets, by poets — for the name is a poet’s, too,
In common sequence set, the letters lying,
Compose a sound delighting all to hear.
Ah, this you’d have no trouble in descrying,
Were you not something, of a dunce, my dear:
And now I leave these riddles to their seer.

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Edgar Allan Poe

Origninally Published in 1846

Poe wrote this poem for Frances Sargent Osgood, whose name can be found within the text. If you take the first letter of the first line (F), the second letter of the second line (R), and so on, the letters spell her name. In the original version of the text (as seen above) Poe accidentally misspells Osgood’s middle name as Sargeant.

To Helen

I saw thee once — once only — years ago:
I must not say how many — but not many.
It was a July midnight; and from out
A full-orbed moon, that, like thine own soul, soaring,
Sought a precipitant pathway up through heaven,
There fell a silvery-silken veil of light,
With quietude, and sultriness, and slumber,
Upon the upturn’d faces of a thousand
Roses that grew in an enchanted garden,
Where no wind dared to stir, unless on tip-toe —
Fell on the upturn’d faces of these roses
That gave out, in return for the love-light,
Their odorous souls in an ecstatic death —
Fell on the upturn’d faces of these roses
That smiled and died in this parterre, enchanted
By thee and by the poetry of thy presence. 

Clad all in white, upon a violet bank
I saw thee half reclining; while the moon
Fell on the upturn’d faces of the roses,
And on thine own, upturn’d — alas! in sorrow! 

Was it not Fate that, on this July midnight —
Was it not Fate (whose name is also Sorrow)
That bade me pause before that garden-gate
To breathe the incense of those slumbering roses?
No footstep stirred: the hated world all slept,
Save only thee and me. I paused — I looked —
And in an instant all things disappeared.
(Ah, bear in mind this garden was enchanted!)
The pearly lustre of the moon went out:
The mossy banks and the meandering paths,
The happy flowers and the repining trees,
Were seen no more: the very roses’ odors
Died in the arms of the adoring airs.
All — all expired save thee — save less than thou:
Save only the divine light in thine eyes —
Save but the soul in thine uplifted eyes.
I saw but them — they were the world to me.
I saw but them — saw only them for hours —
Saw only them until the moon went down.
What wild heart-histories seemed to lie enwritten
Upon those crystalline, celestial spheres!
How dark a wo! yet how sublime a hope!
How silently serene a sea of pride!
How daring an ambition! yet how deep —
How fathomless a capacity for love! 

But now, at length, dear Dian sank from sight,
Into a western couch of thunder-cloud,
And thou, a ghost, amid the entombing trees
Didst glide away. Only thine eyes remained.
They would not go — they never yet have gone.
Lighting my lonely pathway home that night,
They have not left me (as my hopes have) since.
They follow me — they lead me through the years.
They are my ministers — yet I their slave.
Their office is to illumine and enkindle —
My duty to be saved by their bright light
And purified in their electric fire —
And sanctified in their elysian fire.
They fill my soul with Beauty (which is Hope,)
And are far up in Heaven, the stars I kneel to
In the sad, silent watches of my night;
While even in the meridian glare of day
I see them still — two sweetly scintillant
Venuses, unextinguished by the sun!

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Edgar Allan Poe

Originally Published in 1848

Lines Written in an Album

Eliza! — let thy generous heart
From its present pathway part not!
Being every thing which now thou art,
Be nothing which thou art not.
So with the world thy gentle ways —
Thy unassuming beauty —
And truth shall be a theme of praise
Forever — and love a duty.

E. A. P.

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Edgar Allan Poe

Originally Published in 1835

To —— (Song)

I saw thee on the bridal day;
When a burning blush came o’er thee,
Tho’ Happiness around thee lay,
The world all love before thee. 

And, in thine eye, the kindling light
Of young passion free
Was all on earth, my chain’d sight
Of Loveliness might see.

 That blush, I ween, was maiden shame:
As such it well may pass:
Tho’ its glow hath rais’d a fiercer flame
In the breast of him, alas! 
Who saw thee on that bridal day,
When that deep blush would come o’er thee, —
Tho’ Happiness around thee lay;
The world all Love before thee. —

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Edgar Allan Poe

Originally Published in 1827

To —— [Violet Vane]

I would not lord it o’er thy heart,
Alas! I cannot rule my own,
Nor would I rob one loyal thought,
From him who there should reign alone;
We both have found a life-long love;
Wherein our weary souls may rest,
Yet may we not, my gentle friend
Be each to each the second best? 

A love which shall be passion-free,
Fondness as pure as it is sweet,
A bond where all the dearest ties
Of brother, friend and cousin meet, —
Such is the union I would frame,
That thus we might be doubly blest,
With Love to rule our hearts supreme
And friendship to be second best.

M.

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Edgar Allan Poe

Originally Published in 1845