Complete Stories And Poems Of Edgar Allan Poe (166 page)

The night—tho’ clear—shall frown—

And the stars shall not look 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 forever.

Now are thoughts thou shalt not banish—

Now are visions ne’er to vanish—

From thy spirit shall they pass

No more—like dew-drops from the grass.

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!

In visions of the dark night

I have dreamed of joy departed—

But a waking dream 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 Truth’s day star?

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

Though gazing on the unquiet sky.

And when an hour with calmer wings

Its down upon my 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.

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 thing!)

Have brought a specimen

Upon their quivering wings.

In spring of youth it was my lot

To haunt of the wide world 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 towered around.

But when the Night had thrown her pall

Upon the 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.

‘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,

And more I admire

Thy distant fire,

Than that colder, lowly light.

A dark unfathomed 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 wordly rest hath gone

With a sigh as it passed on:

I care not though it perish

With a thought I then did cherish.

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.

II.

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 feel 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.

Oh! that my young life were a lasting dream!

My spirit not awakening, till the beam

Of an Eternity should bring the morrow.

Yes! though that long dream were of hopeless sorrow,

‘Twere better than the cold reality

Of waking life, to him whose heart must be,

And hath been still, upon the lovely 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 revelled when the sun was bright

I’ the summer sky, in dreams of living light

And loveliness,—have left my very heart

Inclines of my imaginary apart

From mine own home, with beings that have been

Of mine own thought—what more could I have seen?

‘Twas once—and only once—and the wild hour

From my remembrance shall not pass—some power

Or spell had bound me—’twas the chilly wind

Came o’er me in the night, and 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 that that night-wind—let it pass.

I have been
happy, though in a dream.

I have been happy—and I love the theme:

Dreams! in their vivid coloring of life

As in that fleeting, shadowy, misty strife

Of semblance with reality which brings

To the delirious eye, more lovely things

Of Paradise and Love—and all my own!—

Than young Hope in his sunniest hour hath known.

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.

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 ferver 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.

From childhood’s hour I have not been

As others were—I have not seen

As others saw—I could not bring

My passions from a common spring—

From the same source I have not taken

My sorrow—I could not awaken

My heart to joy at the same tone—

And all I loved—I loved alone—

Thou—in my childhood—in the dawn

Of a most stormy life—was drawn

From every depth of good and ill

The mystery which binds me still—

From the torrent, or the fountain—

From the red cliff of the mountain—

From the sun that round me roll’d

In its autumn tint of gold—

From the lightning in the sky

As it passed me flying by—

From the thunder and the storm—

And the cloud that took the form

(When the rest of Heaven was blue)

Of a demon in my view.

I.

Beneath the vine-clad eaves,

Whose shadows fall before

Thy lowly cottage door—

Under the lilac’s tremulous leaves—

Within thy snowy clasped hand

The purple flowers it bore.

Last eve in dreams, I saw thee stand,

Like queenly nymph from Fairy-land—

Enchantress of the flowery wand,

Most beauteous Isadore!

II.

And when I bade the dream

Upon thy spirit flee,

Thy violet eyes to me

Upturned, did overflowing seem

With the deep, untold delight

Of Love’s serenity;

Thy classic brow, like lilies white

And pale as the Imperial Night

Upon her throne, with stars bedight,

Enthralled my soul to thee!

III
.

Ah! ever I behold

Thy dreamy, passionate eyes,

Blue as the languid skies

Hung with the sunset’s fringe of gold;

Now strangely clear thine image grows,

And olden memories

Are startled from their long repose

Like shadows on the silent snows

When suddenly the night-wind blows

Where quiet moonlight lies.

IV.

Like music heard in dreams,

Like strains of harps unknown,

Of birds for ever flown,—

Audible as the voice of streams

That murmur in some leafy dell,

I hear thy gentlest tone,

And Silence cometh with her spell

Like that which on my tongue doth dwell,

When tremulous in dreams I tell

My love to thee alone!

V.

In every valley heard,

Floating from tree to tree,

Less beautiful to me,

The music of the radiant bird,