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

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By this clear stream,

       Of thee will I write;

       Meantime from afar

       Bathe me in light!

       Thy world has not the dross of ours,

       Yet all the beauty—all the flowers

       That list our love or deck our bowers

       In dreamy gardens, where do lie

       Dreamy maidens all the day;

       While the silver winds of Circassy

       On violet couches faint away.

       Little—oh! little dwells in thee

       Like unto what on earth we see:

       Beauty's eye is here the bluest

       In the falsest and untruest—

       On the sweetest air doth float

       The most sad and solemn note—

       If with thee be broken hearts,

       Joy so peacefully departs,

       That its echo still doth dwell,

       Like the murmur in the shell.

       Thou! thy truest type of grief

       Is the gently falling leaf—

       Thou! thy framing is so holy

       Sorrow is not melancholy.

      Note on Tamerlane

      The earliest version of "Tamerlane" was included in the suppressed volume of 1827, but differs very considerably from the poem as now published. The present draft, besides innumerable verbal alterations and improvements upon the original, is more carefully punctuated, and, the lines being indented, presents a more pleasing appearance, to the eye at least.

      Note on To Helen, The Valley of Unrest, Israfel etc.

      "To Helen" first appeared in the 1831 volume, as did also "The Valley of Unrest" (as "The Valley Nis"), "Israfel," and one or two others of the youthful pieces.

      Note on Romance

      The poem styled "Romance" constituted the Preface of the 1829 volume, but with the addition of the following lines:

      Succeeding years, too wild for song,

       Then rolled like tropic storms along,

       Where, though the garish lights that fly

       Dying along the troubled sky,

       Lay bare, through vistas thunder-riven,

       The blackness of the general Heaven,

       That very blackness yet doth fling

       Light on the lightning's silver wing.

       For being an idle boy lang syne,

       Who read Anacreon and drank wine,

       I early found Anacreon rhymes

       Were almost passionate sometimes—

       And by strange alchemy of brain

       His pleasures always turned to pain—

       His naïveté to wild desire—

       His wit to love—his wine to fire—

       And so, being young and dipt in folly,

       I fell in love with melancholy.

       And used to throw my earthly rest

       And quiet all away in jest—

       I could not love except where Death

       Was mingling his with Beauty's breath—

       Or Hymen, Time, and Destiny,

       Were stalking between her and me.

       ...

       But now my soul hath too much room— Gone are the glory and the gloom— The black hath mellow'd into gray, And all the fires are fading away. My draught of passion hath been deep— I revell'd, and I now would sleep— And after drunkenness of soul Succeeds the glories of the bowl— An idle longing night and day To dream my very life away. But dreams—of those who dream as I, Aspiringly, are damned, and die: Yet should I swear I mean alone, By notes so very shrilly blown, To break upon Time's monotone, While yet my vapid joy and grief Are tintless of the yellow leaf— Why not an imp the greybeard hath, Will shake his shadow in my path— And e'en the greybeard will o'erlook Connivingly my dreaming-book.

      Doubtful Poems

       Table of Contents

       Alone

       To Isadore

       The Village Street

       The Forest Reverie

       Notes

      Alone

       Table of Contents

      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.

      To Isadore

       Table of Contents

       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

      

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