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

And more I admire Thy distant fire, Than that colder, lowly light.

1827.

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"THE HAPPIEST DAY."

I

THE happiest day-the happiest hour My seared and blighted heart hath known, The highest hope of pride and power, I feel hath flown.

Of power! said I? Yes! such I ween But they have vanished long, alas! The visions of my youth have been But let them pass.

III

And pride, what have I now with thee? Another brow may ev'n inherit The venom thou hast poured on me Be still my spirit!

IV

The happiest day-the happiest hour Mine eyes shall see-have ever seen The brightest glance of pride and power I feet have been:

V

But were that hope of pride and power Now offered with the pain Ev'n _then I _felt-that brightest hour I would not live again:

VI

For on its wing was dark alloy And as it fluttered-fell An essence-powerful to destroy A soul that knew it well.

1827.

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IMITATION

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 on 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.

1827.

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Translation from the Greek

HYMN TO ARISTOGE1TON AND HARMODIUS

I

WREATHED in myrtle, my sword I'll conceal Like those champions devoted and brave, When they plunged in the tyrant their steel, And to Athens deliverance gave.

II

Beloved heroes! your deathless souls roam In the joy breathing isles of the blest; Where the mighty of old have their home Where Achilles and Diomed rest

III

In fresh myrtle my blade I'll entwine, Like Harmodius, the gallant and good, When he made at the tutelar shrine A libation of Tyranny's blood.

IV

Ye deliverers of Athens from shame! Ye avengers of Liberty's wrongs! Endless ages shall cherish your fame, Embalmed in their echoing songs!

1827.

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DREAMS

Oh! that my young life were a lasting dream! My spirit not awak'ning, till the beam Of an Eternity should bring the morrow: Yes! tho' that long dream were of hopeless sorrow, 'Twere better than the dull reality Of waking life to him whose heart shall be, And hath been ever, on the chilly earth, A chaos of deep passion from his birth !

But should it be - that dream eternally Continuing - as dreams have been to me In my young boyhood - should it thus be given, 'Twere folly still to hope for higher Heaven! For I have revell'd, when the sun was bright In the summer sky; in dreamy fields of light, And left unheedingly my very heart In climes of mine imagining - apart From mine own home, with beings that have been Of mine own thought - what more could I have seen?

'Twas once & only once & the wild hour From my rememberance shall not pass - some power Or spell had bound me - 'twas the chilly wind Came o'er me in the night & left behind Its image on my spirit, or the moon Shone on my slumbers in her lofty noon Too coldly - or the stars - howe'er it was That dream was as that night wind - let it pass.

I have been happy - tho' but in a dream I have been happy - & I love the theme - Dreams! in their vivid colouring of life - As in that fleeting, shadowy, misty strife Of semblance with reality which brings To the delirious eye more lovely things Of Paradise & Love - & all our own! Than young Hope in his sunniest hour hath known.

{From an earlier MS. Than in the book -ED.}

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"IN YOUTH I HAVE KNOWN ONE"

How often we forget all time, when lone Admiring Nature's universal throne; Her woods--her wilds--her mountains-the intense Reply of Hers to Our intelligence!

I I

IN youth I have known one with whom the Earth In secret communing held-as he with it, In daylight, and in beauty, from his birth: Whose fervid, flickering torch of life was lit From the sun and stars, whence he had drawn forth A passionate light such for his spirit was fit And yet that spirit knew-not in the hour Of its own fervor-what had o'er it power.

II

Perhaps it may be that my mind is wrought To a fever* by the moonbeam that hangs o'er, But I will half believe that wild light fraught With more of sovereignty than ancient lore Hath ever told-or is it of a thought The unembodied essence, and no more That with a quickening spell doth o'er us pass As dew of the night-time, o'er the summer grass?

III

Doth o'er us pass, when, as th' expanding eye To the loved object-so the tear to the lid Will start, which lately slept in apathy? And yet it need not be---(that object) hid From us in life-but common-which doth lie Each hour before us--but then only bid With a strange sound, as of a harp-string broken T' awake us--'Tis a symbol and a token

IV

Of what in other worlds shall be--and given In beauty by our God, to those alone Who otherwise would fall from life and Heaven Drawn by their heart's passion, and that tone, That high tone of the spirit which hath striven Though not with Faith-with godliness--whose throne With desperate energy 't hath beaten down; Wearing its own deep feeling as a crown.

Query "fervor"?--ED.

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A P�AN. I.

How shall the burial rite be read? The solemn song be sung ? The requiem for the loveliest dead, That ever died so young?

II.

Her friends are gazing on her, And on her gaudy bier, And weep ! - oh! to dishonor Dead beauty with a tear!

III.

They loved her for her wealth - And they hated her for her pride - But she grew in feeble health, And they love her - that she died.

IV.

They tell me (while they speak Of her "costly broider'd pall") That my voice is growing weak - That I should not sing at all -

V.

Or that my tone should be Tun'd to such solemn song So mournfully - so mournfully, That the dead may feel no wrong.

VI.

But she is gone above, With young Hope at her side, And I am drunk with love Of the dead, who is my bride. -

VII.

Of the dead - dead who lies All perfum'd there, With the death upon her eyes, And the life upon her hair.

VIII.

Thus on the coffin loud and long I strike - the murmur sent Through the grey chambers to my song, Shall be the accompaniment.

IX.

Thou died'st in thy life's June - But thou did'st not die too fair: Thou did'st not die too soon, Nor with too calm an air.

X.

From more than fiends on earth, Thy life and love are riven, To join the untainted mirth Of more than thrones in heaven -

XII.

Therefore, to thee this night I will no requiem raise, But waft thee on thy flight, With a P�an of old days.

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NOTES

On the "Poems written in Youth" little comment is needed. This section includes the pieces printed for first volume of 1827 (which was subsequently suppressed), such poems from the first and second published volumes of 1829 and 1831 as have not already been given in their revised versions, and a few others collected from various sources. "Al Aaraaf" first appeared, with the sonnet "To Silence" prefixed to it, in 1829, and is, substantially, as originally issued. In the edition for 1831, however, this poem, its author's longest, was introduced by the following twenty-nine lines, which have been omitted in -all subsequent collections:

AL AARAAF

Mysterious star! Thou wert my dream All a long summer night-- Be now my theme! By this clear stream, Of thee will I write; Meantime from afar Bathe me in light I

Thy world has not the dross of ours, Yet all the beauty-all the flowers That list our love or deck our bowers In dreamy gardens, where do lie Dreamy maidens all the day; While the silver winds of Circassy On violet couches faint away. Little---oh I little dwells in thee11 Like unto what on earth we see: Beauty's eye is here the bluest In the falsest and untruest--On the sweetest air doth float The most sad and solemn note--

If with thee be broken hearts, Joy so