Selections from Poe. Edgar Allan Poe

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 50

        From my lyre within the sky.

      THE CITY IN THE SEA

      Lo! Death has reared himself a throne

      In a strange city lying alone

      Far down within the dim West,

      Where the good and the bad and the worst and the best

      Have gone to their eternal rest.

      There shrines and palaces and towers

      (Time-eaten towers that tremble not)

      Resemble nothing that is ours.

      Around, by lifting winds forgot,

      Resignedly beneath the sky

      The melancholy waters lie.

      No rays from the holy heaven come down

      On the long night-time of that town;

      But light from out the lurid sea

      Streams up the turrets silently,

      Gleams up the pinnacles far and free:

      Up domes, up spires, up kingly halls,

      Up fanes, up Babylon-like walls,

      Up shadowy long-forgotten bowers

      Of sculptured ivy and stone flowers,

      Up many and many a marvellous shrine

      Whose wreathed friezes intertwine

      The viol, the violet, and the vine.

      Resignedly beneath the sky

      The melancholy waters lie.

      So blend the turrets and shadows there

      That all seem pendulous in air,

      While from a proud tower in the town

      Death looks gigantically down.

      There open fanes and gaping graves

      Yawn level with the luminous waves;

      But not the riches there that lie

      In each idol's diamond eye, —

      Not the gaily-jewelled dead,

      Tempt the waters from their bed;

      For no ripples curl, alas,

      Along that wilderness of glass;

      No swellings tell that winds may be

      Upon some far-off happier sea;

      No heavings hint that winds have been

      On seas less hideously serene!

      But lo, a stir is in the air!

      The wave – there is a movement there!

      As if the towers had thrust aside,

      In slightly sinking, the dull tide;

      As if their tops had feebly given

      A void within the filmy Heaven!

      The waves have now a redder glow,

      The hours are breathing faint and low;

      And when, amid no earthly moans,

      Down, down that town shall settle hence,

      Hell, rising from a thousand thrones,

      Shall do it reverence.

      THE SLEEPER

      At midnight, in the month of June,

      I stand beneath the mystic moon.

      An opiate vapor, dewy, dim,

      Exhales from out her golden rim,

      And, softly dripping, drop by drop,

      Upon the quiet mountain-top,

      Steals drowsily and musically

      Into the universal valley.

      The rosemary nods upon the grave;

      The lily lolls upon the wave;

      Wrapping the fog about its breast,

      The ruin moulders into rest;

      Looking like Lethe, see! the lake

      A conscious slumber seems to take,

      And would not, for the world, awake.

      All beauty sleeps! – and lo! where lies

      Irene, with her destinies!

      Oh lady bright! can it be right,

      This window open to the night?

      The wanton airs, from the tree-top,

      Laughingly through the lattice drop;

      The bodiless airs, a wizard rout,

      Flit through thy chamber in and out,

      And wave the curtain canopy

      So fitfully, so fearfully,

      Above the closed and fringéd lid

      'Neath which thy slumb'ring soul lies hid,

      That, o'er the floor and down the wall,

      Like ghosts the shadows rise and fall.

      Oh lady dear, hast thou no fear?

      Why and what art thou dreaming here?

      Sure thou art come o'er far-off seas,

      A wonder to these garden trees!

      Strange is thy pallor: strange thy dress:

      Strange, above all, thy length of tress,

      And this all solemn silentness!

      The lady sleeps. Oh, may her sleep,

      Which is enduring, so be deep!

      Heaven have her in its sacred keep!

      This chamber changed for one more holy,

      This bed for one more melancholy,

      I pray to God that she may lie

      Forever with unopened eye,

      While the pale sheeted ghosts go by!

      My love, she sleeps. Oh, may her sleep,

      As it is lasting, so be deep!

      Soft may the worms about her creep!

      Far in the forest, dim and old,

      For her may some tall vault unfold:

      Some vault that oft hath flung its black

      And winged pannels fluttering back,

      Triumphant, o'er the crested palls

      Of her grand family funerals:

      Some sepulchre, remote, alone,

      Against whose portal she hath thrown,

      In childhood, many an idle stone:

      Some tomb from out whose sounding door

      She ne'er shall force an echo more,

      Thrilling to think, poor child of sin,

      It was the dead who groaned within!

      LENORE

      Ah,