The Complete Poetical Works of Edgar Allan Poe. Эдгар Аллан По

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      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

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      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.

      Fairyland

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      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.

      The Lake

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      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.

      Evening Star

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      '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