Collected Works of Poe, Edgar Allan Poe [best mobile ebook reader TXT] 📗

The enamoured moon Blushes with love, While, to listen, the red levin (With the rapid Pleiads, even, Which were seven,) Pauses in Heaven

And they say (the starry choir And all the listening things) That Israfeli's fire Is owing to that lyre By which he sits and sings - The trembling living wire Of those unusual strings.

And the angel Israfel, whose heart-strings are a lut, and who has the sweetest voice of all God's creatures. - KORAN.

But the skies that angel trod, Where deep thoughts are a duty - Where Love's a grown up God - Where the Houri glances are Imbued with all the beauty Which we worship in a star.

Therefore, thou art not wrong, Israfeli, who despisest An unimpassion'd song: To thee the laurels belong Best bard, because the wisest! Merrily live, and long!

The extacies above With thy burning measures suit - Thy grief, thy joy, thy hate, thy love, With the fervor of thy lute - Well may the stars be mute!

Yes, Heaven is thine; but this Is a world of sweets and sours; Our flowers are merely - flowers, And the shadow of thy perfect bliss Is the sunshine of ours.

If I could dwell Where Israfel Hath dwelt, and he where I, He might not sing so wildly well A mortal melody, While a bolder note than this might swell From my lyre within the sky.

1836.

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TO - - 1

The bowers whereat, in dreams, I see The wantonest singing birds Are lips - and all thy melody Of lip-begotten words -

2

Thine eyes, in Heaven of heart enshrin'd Then desolately fall, O! God! on my funereal mind Like starlight on a pall -

3

Thy heart - thy heart! - I wake and sigh, And sleep to dream till day Of truth that gold can never buy - Of the trifles that it may.

1829.

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TO ---

I HEED not that my earthly lot

Hath-little of Earth in it--

That years of love have been forgot

In the hatred of a minute:--

I mourn not that the desolate

Are happier, sweet, than I,

But that you sorrow for my fate

Who am a passer-by.

1829.

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TO THE RIVER ----

FAIR river! in thy bright, clear flow Of crystal, wandering water, Thou art an emblem of the glow Of beauty - the unhidden heart - The playful maziness of art In old Alberto's daughter;

But when within thy wave she looks - Which glistens then, and trembles - Why, then, the prettiest of brooks Her worshipper resembles; For in my heart, as in thy stream, Her image deeply lies - His heart which trembles at the beam Of her soul-searching eyes.

1829.

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SONG ~~~~~~~~~~~~

I SAW thee on thy bridal day - When a burning blush came o'er thee, Though happiness around thee lay, The world all love before thee:

And in thine eye a kindling light (Whatever it might be) Was all on Earth my aching sight Of Loveliness could see.

That blush, perhaps, was maiden shame - As such it well may pass - Though its glow hath raised 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, Though happiness around thee lay, The world all love before thee.

1827.

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SPIRITS OF THE DEAD

1

Thy soul shall find itself alone 'Mid dark thoughts of the grey tomb-stone - Not one, of all the crowd, to pry Into thine hour of secrecy:

2

Be silent in that 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 overshadow thee: be still.

3

For 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 and a fever Which would cling to thee for ever :

4

Now are thoughts thou shalt not banish - Now are visions ne'er to vanish - From thy spirit shall they pass No more - like dew-drop from the grass:

5

The breeze - the breath of God - is still - And the mist upon the hill Shadowy - shadowy - yet unbroken, Is a symbol and a token - How it hangs upon the trees, A mystery of mysteries! -

1827.

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A DREAM

In visions of the dark night I have dreamed of joy departed -- But a waking dreams of life and light Hath left me broken-hearted.

Ah! what is not a dream by day To him whose eyes are cast On things around him with a ray Turned back upon the past?

That holy dream -- that holy dream, While all the world were chiding, Hath cheered me as a lovely beam A lonely spirit guiding.

What though that light, thro' storm and night, So trembled from afar- What could there be more purely bright In Truths day-star ?

1827.

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ROMANCE

ROMANCE, who loves to nod and sing, With drowsy head and folded wing, Among the green leaves as they shake Far down within some shadowy lake, To me a painted paroquet Hath been - a most familiar bird - Taught me my alphabet to say - To lisp my very earliest word While in the wild wood I did lie, A child - with a most knowing eye.

Of late, eternal Condor years So shake the very Heaven on high With tumult as they thunder by, I have no time for idle cares Through gazing on the unquiet sky. And when an hour with calmer wings Its down upon thy spirit flings - That little time with lyre and rhyme To while away - forbidden things! My heart would feel to be a crime Unless it trembled with the strings.

1829.

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FAIRY-LAND

DIM vales - and shadowy floods - And cloudy-looking woods, Whose forms we can't discover For the tears that drip all over Huge moons there wax and wane - Again - again - again - Every moment of the night - Forever changing places - And they put out the star-light With the breath from their pale faces. About twelve by the moon-dial One, more filmy than the rest (A kind which, upon trial, They have found to be the best) Comes down - still down - and down With its centre on the crown Of a mountain's eminence, While its wide circumference In easy drapery falls Over hamlets, over halls, Wherever they may be - O'er the strange woods - o'er the sea - Over spirits on the wing - Over every drowsy thing - And buries them up quite In a labyrinth of light - And then, how deep! - O, deep! Is the passion of their sleep. In the morning they arise, And their moony covering Is soaring in the skies, With the tempests as they toss, Like -- almost any thing - Or a yellow Albatross. They use that moon no more For the same end as before - Videlicet a tent - Which I think extravagant: Its atomies, however, Into a shower dissever, Of which those butterflies, Of Earth, who seek the skies, And so come down again (Never-contented things!) Have brought a specimen Upon their quivering wings.

1831.

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THE LAKE -- TO ----

IN spring of youth 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 mystic wind went by Murmuring in melody -- Then -- ah then I would awake To the terror of the lone lake.

Yet that terror was not fright, But a tremulous delight -- A feeling not the jewelled mine Could teach or bribe me to define -- Nor Love -- although the Love were thine.

Death was in that poisonous wave, And in its gulf a fitting grave For him who thence could solace bring To his lone imagining -- Whose solitary soul could make An Eden of that dim lake.

1827.

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EVENING STAR

'TWAS noontide of summer, And midtime of night, And stars, in their orbits, Shone pale, through the light Of the brighter, cold moon. 'Mid planets her slaves, Herself in the Heavens, Her beam on the waves.

I gazed awhile On her cold smile; Too cold-too cold for me-- There passed, as a shroud, A fleecy cloud, And I turned 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 Heaven at night.,