Works of Edgar Allan Poe

pedestal of a throne--

And who her sovereign? Timour--he

Whom the astonished people saw

Striding o'er empires haughtily

A diademed outlaw!

O, human love! thou spirit given,

On Earth, of all we hope in Heaven!

Which fall'st into the soul like rain

Upon the Siroc-withered plain,

And, failing in thy power to bless,

But leav'st the heart a wilderness!

Idea! which bindest life around

With music of so strange a sound

And beauty of so wild a birth--

Farewell! for I have won the Earth.

When Hope, the eagle that towered, could see

No cliff beyond him in the sky,

His pinions were bent droopingly--

And homeward turned his softened eye.

'Twas sunset: When the sun will part

There comes a sullenness of heart

To him who still would look upon

The glory of the summer sun.

That soul will hate the ev'ning mist

So often lovely, and will list

To the sound of the coming darkness (known

To those whose spirits hearken) as one

Who, in a dream of night, would fly,

But cannot, from a danger nigh.

What tho' the moon--tho' the white moon

Shed all the splendor of her noon,

Her smile is chilly--and her beam,

In that time of dreariness, will seem

(So like you gather in your breath)

A portrait taken after death.

And boyhood is a summer sun

Whose waning is the dreariest one--

For all we live to know is known,

And all we seek to keep hath flown--

Let life, then, as the day-flower, fall

With the noon-day beauty--which is all.

I reached my home--my home no more--

For all had flown who made it so.

I passed from out its mossy door,

And, tho' my tread was soft and low,

A voice came from the threshold stone

Of one whom I had earlier known--

O, I defy thee, Hell, to show

On beds of fire that burn below,

An humbler heart--a deeper woe.

Father, I firmly do believe--

I know--for Death who comes for me

From regions of the blest afar,

Where there is nothing to deceive,

Hath left his iron gate ajar.

And rays of truth you cannot see

Are flashing thro' Eternity----

I do believe that Eblis hath

A snare in every human path--

Else how, when in the holy grove

I wandered of the idol, Love,--

Who daily scents his snowy wings

With incense of burnt-offerings

From the most unpolluted things,

Whose pleasant bowers are yet so riven

Above with trellised rays from Heaven

No mote may shun--no tiniest fly--

The light'ning of his eagle eye--

How was it that Ambition crept,

Unseen, amid the revels there,

Till growing bold, he laughed and leapt

In the tangles of Love's very hair!

________

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The Valley of Unrest

Once it smiled a silent dell

Where the people did not dwell;

They had gone unto the wars,

Trusting to the mild-eyed stars,

Nightly, from their azure towers,

To keep watch above the flowers,

In the midst of which all day

The red sun-light lazily lay,

Now each visitor shall confess

The sad valley's restlessness.

Nothing there is motionless--

Nothing save the airs that brood

Over the magic solitude.

Ah, by no wind are stirred those trees

That palpitate like the chill seas

Around the misty Hebrides!

Ah, by no wind those clouds are driven

That rustle through the unquiet Heaven

Unceasingly, from morn till even,

Over the violets there that lie

In myriad types of the human eye--

Over the lilies that wave

And weep above a nameless grave!

They wave:--from out their fragrant tops

Eternal dews come down in drops.

They weep:--from off their delicate stems

Perennial tears descend in gems.

________

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Israfel

In Heaven a spirit doth dwell

'Whose heart-strings are a lute;'

None sing so wildly well

As the angel Israfel,

And the giddy Stars (so legends tell),

Ceasing their hymns, attend the spell

Of his voice, all mute.

Tottering above

In her highest noon,

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 the other 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.

But the skies that angel trod,

Where deep thoughts are a duty--

Where Love's a grow-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 unimpassioned song;

To thee the laurels belong,

Best bard, because the wisest!

Merrily live and long!

The ecstasies above

With thy burning measures suit--

Thy grief, thy joy, thy hate, thy love,

With the fervor of thy lute--

Well