Complete Stories And Poems Of Edgar Allan Poe (163 page)

She tenderly kissed me,

She fondly caressed,

And then I fell gently

To sleep on her breast—

Deeply to sleep

From the heaven of her breast.

When the light was extinguished,

She covered me warm,

And she prayed to the angels

To keep me from harm—

To the queen of the angels

To shield me from harm.

And I lie so composedly,

Now in my bed

(Knowing her love)

That you fancy me dead—

And I rest so contentedly,

Now in my bed,

(With her love at my breast)

That you fancy me dead—

That you shudder to look at me.

Thinking me dead.

But my heart it is brighter

Than all of the many

Stars in the sky,

For it sparkles with Annie—

It glows with the light

Of the love of my Annie—

With the thought of the light

Of the eyes of my Annie.

Beloved! amid the earnest woes

That crowd around my earthly path—

(Drear path, alas! where grows

Not even one lonely rose)—

My soul at least a solace hath

In dreams of thee, and therein knows

An Eden of bland repose.

And thus thy memory is to me

Like some enchanted far-off isle

In some tumultuous sea—

Some ocean throbbing far and free

With storm—but where meanwhile

Serenest skies continually

Just o’er that one bright inland smile.

Thou wouldst be loved?—then let thy heart

From its present pathway part not;

Being everything which now thou art,

Be nothing which thou art not.

So with the world thy gentle ways,

Thy grace, thy more than beauty,

Shall be an endless theme of praise.

And love a simple duty.

Gaily bedight,

A gallant knight,

In sunshine and in shadow,

Had journeyed long,

Singing a song,

In search of Eldorado.

But he grew old—

This knight so bold—

And o’er his heart a shadow

Fell as he found

No spot of ground

That looked like Eldorado.

And, as his strength

Failed him at length,

He met a pilgrim shadow—

“Shadow,” said he,

“Where can it be—

This land of Eldorado?”

“Over the Mountains

Of the Moon,

Down the Valley of the Shadow,

Ride, boldly ride,”

The shade replied,

“If you seek for Eldorado!”

I dwelt alone

In a world of moan,

And my soul was a stagnant tide,

Till the fair and gentle Eulalie became my blushing bride—

Till the yellow-haired young Eulalie became my smiling bride.

Ah, less—less bright

The stars of the night

Than the eyes of the radiant girl!

And never a flake

That the vapor can make

With the moon-tints of purple and pearl,

Can vie with the modest Eulalie’s most unregarded curl—

Can compare with the bright-eyed Eulalie’s most humble and careless

curl.

Now Doubt—now Pain

Come never again,

For her soul gives me sigh for sigh,

And all day long

Shines, bright and strong,

Astart? within the sky,

While ever to her dear Eulalie upturns her matron eye—

While ever to her young Eulalie upturns her violet eye.

Take this kiss upon the brow!

And, in parting from you now,

Thus much let me avow—

You are not wrong, who deem

That my days have been a dream:

Yet if hope has flown away

In a night, or in a day,

In a vision or in none,

Is it therefore the less
gone
?

All
that we see or seem

Is but a dream within a dream.

I stand amid the roar

Of a surf-tormented shore,

And I hold within my hand

Grains of the golden sand—

How few! yet how they creep

Through my fingers to the deep

While I weep—while I weep!

O God! can I not grasp

Them with a tighter clasp?

O God! can I not save

One
from the pitiless wave?

Is
all
that we see or seem

But a dream within a dream?

Of all who hail thy presence as the morning—

Of all to whom thine absence is the night—

The blotting utterly from out high heaven

The sacred sun—of all who, weeping, bless thee

Hourly for hope—for life—ah, above all,

For the resurrection of deep buried faith

In truth, in virtue, in humanity—

Of all who, on despair’s unhallowed bed

Lying down to die, have suddenly arisen

At thy soft-murmured words, “Let there be light!”

At thy soft-murmured words that were fulfilled

In thy seraphic glancing of thine eyes—

Of all who owe thee most, whose gratitude

Nearest resembles worship,—oh, remember

The truest, the most fervently devoted,

And think that these weak lines are written by him—

By him who, as he pens them, thrills to think

His spirit is communing with an angel’s.

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 and 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.

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

(Her casement open to the skies)

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 fringed 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

For ever with unopened eye,

While the dim 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 panels 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.

The ring is on my hand,

And the wreath is on my brow;

Satins and jewels grand

Are all at my command.

And I am happy now.

And my lord he loves me well;

But, when first he breathed his vow,

I felt my bosom swell—

For the words rang as a knell,

And the voice seemed his who fell

In the battle down the dell,

And who is happy now.

But he spoke to reassure me,

And he kissed my pallid brow,

While a reverie came o’er me,

And to the churchyard bore me,

And I sighed to him before me,

Thinking him dead D’Elormie,

“Oh, I am happy now!”

And thus the words were spoken,

And thus the plighted vow,

And, though my faith be broken,

And, though my heart be broken,

Behold the golden keys

That proves me happy now!

Would to God I could awaken

For I dream I know not how,

And my soul is sorely shaken

Lest an evil step be taken,—

Lest the dead who is forsaken

May not be happy now.

Ah, broken is the golden bowl! the spirit flown forever!

Let the bell toll!—a saintly soul floats on the Stygian river.

And, Guy de Vere, hast
thou
no tear?—weep now or never more!

See! on yon drear and rigid bier low lies thy love, Lenore!

Come! let the burial rite be read—the funeral song be sung!—

An anthem for the queenliest dead that ever died so young—

A dirge for her, the doubly dead in that she died so young.

“Wretches! ye loved her for her wealth and hated her for her pride,

And when she fell in feeble health, ye blessed her—that she died!

How
shall
the ritual, then, be read?—the requiem how be sung

By you—by yours, the evil eye,—by yours, the slanderous tongue

That did to death the innocence that died, and died so young?”

Peccavimus
; but rave not thus! and let a Sabbath song

Go up to God so solemnly the dead may feel no wrong!

The sweet Lenore hath “gone before,” with Hope, that flew beside,

Leaving thee wild for the dear child that should have been thy bride—

For her, the fair and
debonnaire
, that now so lowly lies,

The life upon her yellow hair but not within her eyes—

The life still there, upon her hair—the death upon her eyes.

“Avaunt! to-night my heart is light. No dirge will I upraise,

But waft the angel on her flight with a p?an of old days!

Let
no
bell toll!—lest her sweet soul, amid its hallowed mirth,

Should catch the note, as it doth float up from the damned Earth.

To friends above, from fiends below, the indignant ghost is riven—

From Hell unto a high estate far up within the Heaven—

From grief and groan to a golden throne beside the King of Heaven.”

Thou wast that all to me, love,

For which my soul did pine—

A green isle in the sea, love,

A fountain and a shrine,

All wreathed with fairy fruits and flowers,

And all the flowers were mine.

Ah, dream too bright to last!

Ah, starry Hope! that didst arise

But to be overcast!

A voice from out the Future cries,

“On! on!”—but o’er the Past

(Dim gulf!) my spirit hovering lies