letters/poetry/poe_poetical_works.json

[
  {
    "title": "Poems Of Later Life:",
    "body": "  Dedication\n  Preface\n  The Raven\n  The Bells\n  Ulalume\n  To Helen\n  Annabel Lee\n  A Valentine\n  An Enigma\n  To my Mother\n  For Annie\n  To F----\n  To Frances S. Osgood\n  Eldorado\n  Eulalie\n  A Dream within a Dream\n  To Marie Louise (Shew)\n  To the Same\n  The City in the Sea\n  The Sleeper,\n  Bridal Ballad\nNotes",
    "author": "Edgar Allan Poe",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Edgar Allan Poe",
    "period": "1827–1849"
  },
  {
    "title": "Poems Of Manhood:",
    "body": "  Lenore\n  To one in Paradise\n  The Coliseum\n  The Haunted Palace\n  The Conqueror Worm\n  Silence\n  Dreamland\n  To Zante\n  Hymn\nNotes",
    "author": "Edgar Allan Poe",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Edgar Allan Poe",
    "period": "1827–1849"
  },
  {
    "title": "Poems Of Youth:",
    "body": "  Introduction (1831)\n  To Science\n  Al Aaraaf\n  Tamerlane\n  To Helen\n  The Valley of Unrest\n  Israfel\n  To----(\"I heed not that my earthly lot\")\n  To----(\"The bowers whereat, in dreams, I see\")\n  To the River----\n  Song\n  Spirits of the Dead\n  A Dream\n  Romance\n  Fairyland\n  The Lake\n  Evening Star\n  Imitation\n  \"The Happiest Day,\"\n  Hymn. Translation from the Greek\n  Dreams\n  \"In Youth I have known one\"\n  A Pæan\nNotes",
    "author": "Edgar Allan Poe",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Edgar Allan Poe",
    "period": "1827–1849"
  },
  {
    "title": "Doubtful Poems:",
    "body": "  Alone\n  To Isadore\n  The Village Street\n  The Forest Reverie\nNotes",
    "author": "Edgar Allan Poe",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Edgar Allan Poe",
    "period": "1827–1849"
  },
  {
    "title": "Prose Poems:",
    "body": "  The Island of the Fay\n  The Power of Words\n  The Colloquy of Monos and Una\n  The Conversation of Eiros and Charmion\n  Shadow--A Parable\n  Silence--A Fable",
    "author": "Edgar Allan Poe",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Edgar Allan Poe",
    "period": "1827–1849"
  },
  {
    "title": "Essays:",
    "body": "  The Poetic Principle\n  The Philosophy of Composition\n  Old English Poetry",
    "author": "Edgar Allan Poe",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Edgar Allan Poe",
    "period": "1827–1849"
  },
  {
    "title": "Memoir Of Edgar Allan Poe.",
    "body": "During the last few years every incident in the life of Edgar Poe has\nbeen subjected to microscopic investigation. The result has not been\naltogether satisfactory. On the one hand, envy and prejudice have\nmagnified every blemish of his character into crime, whilst on the\nother, blind admiration would depict him as far \"too good for human\nnature's daily food.\" Let us endeavor to judge him impartially, granting\nthat he was as a mortal subject to the ordinary weaknesses of mortality,\nbut that he was tempted sorely, treated badly, and suffered deeply.\n\nThe poet's ancestry and parentage are chiefly interesting as explaining\nsome of the complexities of his character. His father, David Poe, was of\nAnglo-Irish extraction. Educated for the Bar, he elected to abandon it\nfor the stage. In one of his tours through the chief towns of the United\nStates he met and married a young actress, Elizabeth Arnold, member of\nan English family distinguished for its musical talents. As an actress,\nElizabeth Poe acquired some reputation, but became even better known for\nher domestic virtues. In those days the United States afforded little\nscope for dramatic energy, so it is not surprising to find that when her\nhusband died, after a few years of married life, the young widow had a\nvain struggle to maintain herself and three little ones, William Henry,\nEdgar, and Rosalie. Before her premature death, in December, 1811, the\npoet's mother had been reduced to the dire necessity of living on the\ncharity of her neighbors.\n\nEdgar, the second child of David and Elizabeth Poe, was born at Boston,\nin the United States, on the 19th of January, 1809. Upon his mother's\ndeath at Richmond, Virginia, Edgar was adopted by a wealthy Scotch\nmerchant, John Allan. Mr. Allan, who had married an American lady and\nsettled in Virginia, was childless. He therefore took naturally to the\nbrilliant and beautiful little boy, treated him as his son, and made him\ntake his own surname. Edgar Allan, as he was now styled, after some\nelementary tuition in Richmond, was taken to England by his adopted\nparents, and, in 1816, placed at the Manor House School,\nStoke-Newington.\n\nUnder the Rev. Dr. Bransby, the future poet spent a lustrum of his life\nneither unprofitably nor, apparently, ungenially. Dr. Bransby, who is\nhimself so quaintly portrayed in Poe's tale of 'William Wilson',\ndescribed \"Edgar Allan,\" by which name only he knew the lad, as \"a quick\nand clever boy,\" who \"would have been a very good boy had he not been\nspoilt by his parents,\" meaning, of course, the Allans. They \"allowed\nhim an extravagant amount of pocket-money, which enabled him to get into\nall manner of mischief. Still I liked the boy,\" added the tutor, \"but,\npoor fellow, his parents spoiled him.\"\n\nPoe has described some aspects of his school days in his oft cited story\nof 'William Wilson'. Probably there is the usual amount of poetic\nexaggeration in these reminiscences, but they are almost the only record\nwe have of that portion of his career and, therefore, apart from their\nliterary merits, are on that account deeply interesting. The description\nof the sleepy old London suburb, as it was in those days, is remarkably\naccurate, but the revisions which the story of 'William Wilson' went\nthrough before it reached its present perfect state caused many of the\nauthor's details to deviate widely from their original correctness. His\nschoolhouse in the earliest draft was truthfully described as an \"old,\nirregular, and cottage-built\" dwelling, and so it remained until its\ndestruction a few years ago.\n\nThe 'soi-disant' William Wilson, referring to those bygone happy days\nspent in the English academy, says,\n\n  \"The teeming brain of childhood requires no external world of incident\n  to occupy or amuse it. The morning's awakening, the nightly summons to\n  bed; the connings, the recitations, the periodical half-holidays and\n  perambulations, the playground, with its broils, its pastimes, its\n  intrigues--these, by a mental sorcery long fo
    "author": "Edgar Allan Poe",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Edgar Allan Poe",
    "period": "1827–1849"
  },
  {
    "title": "John H. Ingram.",
    "body": "       *       *       *       *       *",
    "author": "Edgar Allan Poe",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Edgar Allan Poe",
    "period": "1827–1849"
  },
  {
    "title": "The Noblest Of Her Sex--",
    "body": "                            TO THE AUTHOR OF\n                         \"THE DRAMA OF EXILE\"--\n\n                                   TO",
    "author": "Edgar Allan Poe",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Edgar Allan Poe",
    "period": "1827–1849"
  },
  {
    "title": "With The Most Enthusiastic Admiration And",
    "body": "                      WITH THE MOST SINCERE ESTEEM.\n\n                1845                                E.A.P.\n\n\n\n\n\n        *       *       *       *       *",
    "author": "Edgar Allan Poe",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Edgar Allan Poe",
    "period": "1827–1849"
  },
  {
    "title": "The Raven.",
    "body": "  Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary,\n  Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore--\n  While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,\n  As of some one gently rapping--rapping at my chamber door.\n  \"'Tis some visitor,\" I muttered, \"tapping at my chamber door--\n          Only this and nothing more.\"\n\n  Ah, distinctly I remember, it was in the bleak December,\n  And each separate dying ember wrought its ghost upon the floor.\n  Eagerly I wished the morrow;--vainly I had sought to borrow\n  From my books surcease of sorrow--sorrow for the lost Lenore--\n  For the rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name Lenore--\n          Nameless here for evermore.\n\n  And the silken sad uncertain rustling of each purple curtain\n  Thrilled me--filled me with fantastic terrors never felt before;\n  So that now, to still the beating of my heart, I stood repeating\n  \"'Tis some visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door--\n  Some late visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door;--\n      This it is and nothing more.\"\n\n  Presently my soul grew stronger; hesitating then no longer,\n  \"Sir,\" said I, \"or Madam, truly your forgiveness I implore;\n  But the fact is I was napping, and so gently you came rapping,\n  And so faintly you came tapping--tapping at my chamber door,\n  That I scarce was sure I heard you\"--here I opened wide the door:--\n        Darkness there and nothing more.\n\n  Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there wondering,\n    fearing,\n  Doubting, dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared to dream before;\n  But the silence was unbroken, and the darkness gave no token,\n  And the only word there spoken was the whispered word, \"Lenore!\"\n  This I whispered, and an echo murmured back the word, \"Lenore!\"\n        Merely this and nothing more.\n\n  Back into the chamber turning, all my soul within me burning,\n  Soon I heard again a tapping, somewhat louder than before.\n  \"Surely,\" said I, \"surely that is something at my window lattice;\n  Let me see, then, what thereat is, and this mystery explore--\n  Let my heart be still a moment, and this mystery explore;--\n      'Tis the wind and nothing more.\"\n\n  Open here I flung the shutter, when, with many a flirt and flutter,\n  In there stepped a stately Raven of the saintly days of yore;\n  Not the least obeisance made he: not an instant stopped or stayed he;\n  But, with mien of lord or lady, perched above my chamber door--\n  Perched upon a bust of Pallas just above my chamber door--\n      Perched, and sat, and nothing more.\n\n  Then this ebony bird beguiling my sad fancy into smiling,\n  By the grave and stern decorum of the countenance it wore,\n  \"Though thy crest be shorn and shaven, thou,\" I said, \"art sure no\n    craven,\n  Ghastly grim and ancient Raven wandering from the Nightly shore--\n  Tell me what thy lordly name is on the Night's Plutonian shore!\"\n        Quoth the Raven, \"Nevermore.\"\n\n  Much I marvelled this ungainly fowl to hear discourse so plainly,\n  Though its answer little meaning--little relevancy bore;\n  For we cannot help agreeing that no living human being\n  Ever yet was blessed with seeing bird above his chamber door--\n  Bird or beast upon the sculptured bust above his chamber door,\n        With such name as \"Nevermore.\"\n\n  But the Raven, sitting lonely on that placid bust, spoke only\n  That one word, as if his soul in that one word he did outpour.\n  Nothing further then he uttered--not a feather then he fluttered--\n  Till I scarcely more than muttered, \"Other friends have flown before--\n  On the morrow _he_ will leave me, as my hopes have flown before.\"\n        Then the bird said, \"Nevermore.\"\n\n  Startled at the stillness broken by reply so aptly spoken,\n  \"Doubtless,\" said I, \"what it utters is its only stock and store,\n  Caught from some unhappy master whom unmerciful Disaster\n  Followed fast and followed faster till his songs one burden bore--\n  Till the dirges of his Hope the melancholy burden bore\
    "author": "Edgar Allan Poe",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Edgar Allan Poe",
    "period": "1827–1849"
  },
  {
    "title": "The Bells,",
    "body": "I.\n\n  Hear the sledges with the bells--\n  Silver bells!\n  What a world of merriment their melody foretells!\n  How they tinkle, tinkle, tinkle,\n  In their icy air of night!\n  While the stars, that oversprinkle\n  All the heavens, seem to twinkle\n  With a crystalline delight;\n  Keeping time, time, time,\n  In a sort of Runic rhyme,\n  To the tintinnabulation that so musically wells\n  From the bells, bells, bells, bells,\n  Bells, bells, bells--\n  From the jingling and the tinkling of the bells.\n\n\nII.\n\n  Hear the mellow wedding bells,\n  Golden bells!\n  What a world of happiness their harmony foretells!\n  Through the balmy air of night\n  How they ring out their delight!\n  From the molten golden-notes,\n  And all in tune,\n  What a liquid ditty floats\n  To the turtle-dove that listens, while she gloats\n  On the moon!\n  Oh, from out the sounding cells,\n  What a gush of euphony voluminously wells!\n  How it swells!\n  How it dwells\n  On the future! how it tells\n  Of the rapture that impels\n  To the swinging and the ringing\n  Of the bells, bells, bells,\n  Of the bells, bells, bells, bells,\n  Bells, bells, bells--\n  To the rhyming and the chiming of the bells!",
    "author": "Edgar Allan Poe",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Edgar Allan Poe",
    "period": "1827–1849"
  },
  {
    "title": "Iii.",
    "body": "  Hear the loud alarum bells--\n  Brazen bells!\n  What a tale of terror now their turbulency tells!\n  In the startled ear of night\n  How they scream out their affright!\n  Too much horrified to speak,\n  They can only shriek, shriek,\n  Out of tune,\n  In a clamorous appealing to the mercy of the fire,\n  In a mad expostulation with the deaf and frantic fire\n  Leaping higher, higher, higher,\n  With a desperate desire,\n  And a resolute endeavor\n  Now--now to sit or never,\n  By the side of the pale-faced moon.\n  Oh, the bells, bells, bells!\n  What a tale their terror tells\n  Of Despair!\n  How they clang, and clash, and roar!\n  What a horror they outpour\n  On the bosom of the palpitating air!\n  Yet the ear it fully knows,\n  By the twanging,\n  And the clanging,\n  How the danger ebbs and flows;\n  Yet the ear distinctly tells,\n  In the jangling,\n  And the wrangling,\n  How the danger sinks and swells,\n  By the sinking or the swelling in the anger of the bells--\n  Of the bells--\n  Of the bells, bells, bells, bells,\n  Bells, bells, bells--\n  In the clamor and the clangor of the bells!\n\n\nIV.\n\n  Hear the tolling of the bells--\n  Iron bells!\n  What a world of solemn thought their monody compels!\n  In the silence of the night,\n  How we shiver with affright\n  At the melancholy menace of their tone!\n  For every sound that floats\n  From the rust within their throats\n     Is a groan.\n  And the people--ah, the people--\n  They that dwell up in the steeple.\n      All alone,\n  And who tolling, tolling, tolling,\n    In that muffled monotone,\n  Feel a glory in so rolling\n    On the human heart a stone--\n  They are neither man nor woman--\n  They are neither brute nor human--\n      They are Ghouls:\n  And their king it is who tolls;\n  And he rolls, rolls, rolls,\n           Rolls\n  A pæan from the bells!\n  And his merry bosom swells\n  With the pæan of the bells!\n  And he dances, and he yells;\n  Keeping time, time, time,\n  In a sort of Runic rhyme,\n  To the pæan of the bells--\n      Of the bells:\n  Keeping time, time, time,\n  In a sort of Runic rhyme,\n    To the throbbing of the bells--\n  Of the bells, bells, bells--\n    To the sobbing of the bells;\n  Keeping time, time, time,\n    As he knells, knells, knells,\n  In a happy Runic rhyme,\n  To the rolling of the bells--\n  Of the bells, bells, bells--\n  To the tolling of the bells,\n  Of the bells, bells, bells, bells,\n    Bells, bells, bells--\n  To the moaning and the groaning of the bells.\n\n\n\n1849.\n\n\n\n\n\n       *       *       *       *       *",
    "author": "Edgar Allan Poe",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Edgar Allan Poe",
    "period": "1827–1849"
  },
  {
    "title": "Ulalume.",
    "body": "  The skies they were ashen and sober;\n    The leaves they were crisped and sere--\n    The leaves they were withering and sere;\n  It was night in the lonesome October\n    Of my most immemorial year;\n  It was hard by the dim lake of Auber,\n    In the misty mid region of Weir--\n  It was down by the dank tarn of Auber,\n    In the ghoul-haunted woodland of Weir.\n\n  Here once, through an alley Titanic.\n    Of cypress, I roamed with my Soul--\n    Of cypress, with Psyche, my Soul.\n  These were days when my heart was volcanic\n    As the scoriac rivers that roll--\n    As the lavas that restlessly roll\n  Their sulphurous currents down Yaanek\n    In the ultimate climes of the pole--\n  That groan as they roll down Mount Yaanek\n    In the realms of the boreal pole.\n\n  Our talk had been serious and sober,\n    But our thoughts they were palsied and sere--\n    Our memories were treacherous and sere--\n  For we knew not the month was October,\n  And we marked not the night of the year--\n    (Ah, night of all nights in the year!)\n  We noted not the dim lake of Auber--\n    (Though once we had journeyed down here)--\n  Remembered not the dank tarn of Auber,\n    Nor the ghoul-haunted woodland of Weir.\n\n  And now as the night was senescent\n    And star-dials pointed to morn--\n    As the sun-dials hinted of morn--\n  At the end of our path a liquescent\n    And nebulous lustre was born,\n  Out of which a miraculous crescent\n    Arose with a duplicate horn--\n  Astarte's bediamonded crescent\n    Distinct with its duplicate horn.\n\n  And I said--\"She is warmer than Dian:\n    She rolls through an ether of sighs--\n    She revels in a region of sighs:\n  She has seen that the tears are not dry on\n    These cheeks, where the worm never dies,\n  And has come past the stars of the Lion\n    To point us the path to the skies--\n    To the Lethean peace of the skies--\n  Come up, in despite of the Lion,\n    To shine on us with her bright eyes--\n  Come up through the lair of the Lion,\n    With love in her luminous eyes.\"\n\n  But Psyche, uplifting her finger,\n    Said--\"Sadly this star I mistrust--\n    Her pallor I strangely mistrust:--\n  Oh, hasten!--oh, let us not linger!\n    Oh, fly!--let us fly!--for we must.\"\n  In terror she spoke, letting sink her\n    Wings till they trailed in the dust--\n  In agony sobbed, letting sink her\n    Plumes till they trailed in the dust--\n    Till they sorrowfully trailed in the dust.\n\n  I replied--\"This is nothing but dreaming:\n    Let us on by this tremulous light!\n    Let us bathe in this crystalline light!\n  Its Sibyllic splendor is beaming\n    With Hope and in Beauty to-night:--\n    See!--it flickers up the sky through the night!\n  Ah, we safely may trust to its gleaming,\n    And be sure it will lead us aright--\n  We safely may trust to a gleaming\n    That cannot but guide us aright,\n    Since it flickers up to Heaven through the night.\"\n\n  Thus I pacified Psyche and kissed her,\n    And tempted her out of her gloom--\n    And conquered her scruples and gloom;\n  And we passed to the end of a vista,\n    But were stopped by the door of a tomb--\n    By the door of a legended tomb;\n  And I said--\"What is written, sweet sister,\n    On the door of this legended tomb?\"\n    She replied--\"Ulalume--Ulalume--\n    'Tis the vault of thy lost Ulalume!\"\n\n  Then my heart it grew ashen and sober\n    As the leaves that were crisped and sere--\n    As the leaves that were withering and sere;\n  And I cried--\"It was surely October\n    On _this_ very night of last year\n    That I journeyed--I journeyed down here--\n    That I brought a dread burden down here!\n    On this night of all nights in the year,\n    Ah, what demon has tempted me here?\n  Well I know, now, this dim lake of Auber--\n    This misty mid region of Weir--\n  Well I know, now, this dank tarn of Auber,--\n    This ghoul-haunted woodland of Weir.\"\n\n\n1847.\n\n\n\n\n\n       *       *       *       *       *",
    "author": "Edgar Allan Poe",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Edgar Allan Poe",
    "period": "1827–1849"
  },
  {
    "title": "To Helen.",
    "body": "  I saw thee once--once only--years ago:\n  I must not say _how_ many--but _not_ many.\n  It was a July midnight; and from out\n  A full-orbed moon, that, like thine own soul, soaring,\n  Sought a precipitate pathway up through heaven,\n  There fell a silvery-silken veil of light,\n  With quietude, and sultriness and slumber,\n  Upon the upturn'd faces of a thousand\n  Roses that grew in an enchanted garden,\n  Where no wind dared to stir, unless on tiptoe--\n  Fell on the upturn'd faces of these roses\n  That gave out, in return for the love-light,\n  Their odorous souls in an ecstatic death--\n  Fell on the upturn'd faces of these roses\n  That smiled and died in this parterre, enchanted\n  By thee, and by the poetry of thy presence.\n\n  Clad all in white, upon a violet bank\n  I saw thee half-reclining; while the moon\n  Fell on the upturn'd faces of the roses,\n  And on thine own, upturn'd--alas, in sorrow!\n\n  Was it not Fate, that, on this July midnight--\n  Was it not Fate (whose name is also Sorrow),\n  That bade me pause before that garden-gate,\n  To breathe the incense of those slumbering roses?\n  No footstep stirred: the hated world all slept,\n  Save only thee and me--(O Heaven!--O God!\n  How my heart beats in coupling those two words!)--\n  Save only thee and me. I paused--I looked--\n  And in an instant all things disappeared.\n  (Ah, bear in mind this garden was enchanted!)\n  The pearly lustre of the moon went out:\n  The mossy banks and the meandering paths,\n  The happy flowers and the repining trees,\n  Were seen no more: the very roses' odors\n  Died in the arms of the adoring airs.\n  All--all expired save thee--save less than thou:\n  Save only the divine light in thine eyes--\n  Save but the soul in thine uplifted eyes.\n  I saw but them--they were the world to me.\n  I saw but them--saw only them for hours--\n  Saw only them until the moon went down.\n  What wild heart-histories seemed to lie unwritten\n  Upon those crystalline, celestial spheres!\n  How dark a woe! yet how sublime a hope!\n  How silently serene a sea of pride!\n  How daring an ambition! yet how deep--\n  How fathomless a capacity for love!\n\n  But now, at length, dear Dian sank from sight,\n  Into a western couch of thunder-cloud;\n  And thou, a ghost, amid the entombing trees\n  Didst glide away. _Only thine eyes remained._\n  They _would not_ go--they never yet have gone.\n  Lighting my lonely pathway home that night,\n  _They_ have not left me (as my hopes have) since.\n  They follow me--they lead me through the years.\n\n  They are my ministers--yet I their slave.\n  Their office is to illumine and enkindle--\n  My duty, _to be saved_ by their bright light,\n  And purified in their electric fire,\n  And sanctified in their elysian fire.\n  They fill my soul with Beauty (which is Hope),\n  And are far up in Heaven--the stars I kneel to\n  In the sad, silent watches of my night;\n  While even in the meridian glare of day\n  I see them still--two sweetly scintillant\n  Venuses, unextinguished by the sun!\n\n\n1846.\n\n\n\n\n\n       *       *       *       *       *",
    "author": "Edgar Allan Poe",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Edgar Allan Poe",
    "period": "1827–1849"
  },
  {
    "title": "Annabel Lee.",
    "body": "  It was many and many a year ago,\n    In a kingdom by the sea,\n  That a maiden there lived whom you may know\n    By the name of ANNABEL LEE;\n  And this maiden she lived with no other thought\n    Than to love and be loved by me.\n\n  _I_ was a child and _she_ was a child,\n    In this kingdom by the sea:\n  But we loved with a love that was more than love--\n    I and my ANNABEL LEE;\n  With a love that the winged seraphs of heaven\n    Coveted her and me.\n\n  And this was the reason that, long ago,\n    In this kingdom by the sea,\n  A wind blew out of a cloud, chilling\n    My beautiful ANNABEL LEE;\n  So that her highborn kinsmen came\n    And bore her away from me,\n  To shut her up in a sepulchre\n    In this kingdom by the sea.\n\n  The angels, not half so happy in heaven,\n    Went envying her and me--\n  Yes!--that was the reason (as all men know,\n    In this kingdom by the sea)\n  That the wind came out of the cloud by night,\n    Chilling and killing my ANNABEL LEE.\n\n  But our love it was stronger by far than the love\n    Of those who were older than we--\n    Of many far wiser than we--\n  And neither the angels in heaven above,\n    Nor the demons down under the sea,\n  Can ever dissever my soul from the soul\n    Of the beautiful ANNABEL LEE.\n\n  For the moon never beams without bringing me dreams\n    Of the beautiful ANNABEL LEE;\n  And the stars never rise but I see the bright eyes\n    Of the beautiful ANNABEL LEE;\n  And so, all the night-tide, I lie down by the side\n  Of my darling, my darling, my life and my bride,\n    In her sepulchre there by the sea--\n    In her tomb by the side of the sea.\n\n\n\n\n\n       *       *       *       *       *",
    "author": "Edgar Allan Poe",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Edgar Allan Poe",
    "period": "1827–1849"
  },
  {
    "title": "A Valentine.",
    "body": "  For her this rhyme is penned, whose luminous eyes,\n    Brightly expressive as the twins of Leda,\n  Shall find her own sweet name, that, nestling lies\n    Upon the page, enwrapped from every reader.\n  Search narrowly the lines!--they hold a treasure\n    Divine--a talisman--an amulet\n  That must be worn _at heart_. Search well the measure--\n    The words--the syllables! Do not forget\n  The trivialest point, or you may lose your labor!\n    And yet there is in this no Gordian knot\n  Which one might not undo without a sabre,\n    If one could merely comprehend the plot.\n  Enwritten upon the leaf where now are peering\n    Eyes scintillating soul, there lie _perdus_\n  Three eloquent words oft uttered in the hearing\n    Of poets by poets--as the name is a poet's, too.\n  Its letters, although naturally lying\n    Like the knight Pinto--Mendez Ferdinando--\n  Still form a synonym for Truth--Cease trying!\n    You will not read the riddle, though you do the best you _can_ do.\n\n\n1846.\n\n[To discover the names in this and the following poem, read the first\nletter of the first line in connection with the second letter of the\nsecond line, the third letter of the third line, the fourth, of the\nfourth and so on, to the end.]\n\n\n\n\n\n       *       *       *       *       *",
    "author": "Edgar Allan Poe",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Edgar Allan Poe",
    "period": "1827–1849"
  },
  {
    "title": "An Enigma.",
    "body": "  \"Seldom we find,\" says Solomon Don Dunce,\n      \"Half an idea in the profoundest sonnet.\n    Through all the flimsy things we see at once\n      As easily as through a Naples bonnet--\n      Trash of all trash!--how _can_ a lady don it?\n    Yet heavier far than your Petrarchan stuff--\n    Owl-downy nonsense that the faintest puff\n      Twirls into trunk-paper the while you con it.\"\n    And, veritably, Sol is right enough.\n    The general tuckermanities are arrant\n    Bubbles--ephemeral and _so_ transparent--\n      But _this is_, now--you may depend upon it--\n    Stable, opaque, immortal--all by dint\n    Of the dear names that lie concealed within't.\n\n\n[See note after previous poem.]\n\n1847.\n\n\n\n\n\n       *       *       *       *       *",
    "author": "Edgar Allan Poe",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Edgar Allan Poe",
    "period": "1827–1849"
  },
  {
    "title": "To My Mother.",
    "body": "  Because I feel that, in the Heavens above,\n    The angels, whispering to one another,\n  Can find, among their burning terms of love,\n    None so devotional as that of \"Mother,\"\n  Therefore by that dear name I long have called you--\n    You who are more than mother unto me,\n  And fill my heart of hearts, where Death installed you,\n    In setting my Virginia's spirit free.\n  My mother--my own mother, who died early,\n    Was but the mother of myself; but you\n  Are mother to the one I loved so dearly,\n    And thus are dearer than the mother I knew\n  By that infinity with which my wife\n    Was dearer to my soul than its soul-life.\n\n\n1849.\n\n\n[The above was addressed to the poet's mother-in-law, Mrs. Clemm.--Ed.]\n\n\n\n\n\n       *       *       *       *       *",
    "author": "Edgar Allan Poe",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Edgar Allan Poe",
    "period": "1827–1849"
  },
  {
    "title": "For Annie.",
    "body": "  Thank Heaven! the crisis--\n    The danger is past,\n  And the lingering illness\n    Is over at last--\n  And the fever called \"Living\"\n    Is conquered at last.\n\n  Sadly, I know,\n    I am shorn of my strength,\n  And no muscle I move\n    As I lie at full length--\n  But no matter!--I feel\n    I am better at length.\n\n  And I rest so composedly,\n    Now in my bed,\n  That any beholder\n    Might fancy me dead--\n  Might start at beholding me\n    Thinking me dead.\n\n  The moaning and groaning,\n    The sighing and sobbing,\n  Are quieted now,\n    With that horrible throbbing\n  At heart:--ah, that horrible,\n    Horrible throbbing!\n\n  The sickness--the nausea--\n    The pitiless pain--\n  Have ceased, with the fever\n    That maddened my brain--\n  With the fever called \"Living\"\n    That burned in my brain.\n\n  And oh! of all tortures\n    _That_ torture the worst\n  Has abated--the terrible\n    Torture of thirst,\n  For the naphthaline river\n    Of Passion accurst:--\n  I have drank of a water\n    That quenches all thirst:--\n\n  Of a water that flows,\n    With a lullaby sound,\n  From a spring but a very few\n    Feet under ground--\n  From a cavern not very far\n    Down under ground.\n\n  And ah! let it never\n    Be foolishly said\n  That my room it is gloomy\n    And narrow my bed--\n  For man never slept\n    In a different bed;\n  And, to _sleep_, you must slumber\n    In just such a bed.\n\n  My tantalized spirit\n    Here blandly reposes,\n  Forgetting, or never\n    Regretting its roses--\n  Its old agitations\n    Of myrtles and roses:\n\n  For now, while so quietly\n    Lying, it fancies\n  A holier odor\n    About it, of pansies--\n  A rosemary odor,\n    Commingled with pansies--\n  With rue and the beautiful\n    Puritan pansies.\n\n  And so it lies happily,\n    Bathing in many\n  A dream of the truth\n    And the beauty of Annie--\n  Drowned in a bath\n    Of the tresses of Annie.\n\n  She tenderly kissed me,\n    She fondly caressed,\n  And then I fell gently\n    To sleep on her breast--\n  Deeply to sleep\n    From the heaven of her breast.\n\n  When the light was extinguished,\n    She covered me warm,\n  And she prayed to the angels\n    To keep me from harm--\n  To the queen of the angels\n    To shield me from harm.\n\n  And I lie so composedly,\n    Now in my bed\n  (Knowing her love)\n    That you fancy me dead--\n  And I rest so contentedly,\n    Now in my bed,\n  (With her love at my breast)\n    That you fancy me dead--\n  That you shudder to look at me.\n    Thinking me dead.\n\n  But my heart it is brighter\n    Than all of the many\n  Stars in the sky,\n    For it sparkles with Annie--\n  It glows with the light\n    Of the love of my Annie--\n  With the thought of the light\n    Of the eyes of my Annie.\n\n\n1849.\n\n\n\n\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\n\n\n\n\nTO F--\n\n\n  Beloved! amid the earnest woes\n    That crowd around my earthly path--\n  (Drear path, alas! where grows\n  Not even one lonely rose)--\n    My soul at least a solace hath\n  In dreams of thee, and therein knows\n  An Eden of bland repose.\n\n  And thus thy memory is to me\n    Like some enchanted far-off isle\n  In some tumultuous sea--\n  Some ocean throbbing far and free\n    With storm--but where meanwhile\n  Serenest skies continually\n    Just o'er that one bright inland smile.\n\n\n1845.\n\n\n\n\n\n       *       *       *       *       *",
    "author": "Edgar Allan Poe",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Edgar Allan Poe",
    "period": "1827–1849"
  },
  {
    "title": "To Frances S. Osgood.",
    "body": "  Thou wouldst be loved?--then let thy heart\n    From its present pathway part not;\n  Being everything which now thou art,\n    Be nothing which thou art not.\n  So with the world thy gentle ways,\n    Thy grace, thy more than beauty,\n  Shall be an endless theme of praise.\n    And love a simple duty.\n\n\n1845.\n\n\n\n\n\n       *       *       *       *       *",
    "author": "Edgar Allan Poe",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Edgar Allan Poe",
    "period": "1827–1849"
  },
  {
    "title": "Eldorado.",
    "body": "    Gaily bedight,\n    A gallant knight,\n  In sunshine and in shadow,\n    Had journeyed long,\n    Singing a song,\n  In search of Eldorado.\n    But he grew old--\n    This knight so bold--\n  And o'er his heart a shadow\n    Fell as he found\n    No spot of ground\n  That looked like Eldorado.\n\n  And, as his strength\n    Failed him at length,\n  He met a pilgrim shadow--\n    \"Shadow,\" said he,\n    \"Where can it be--\n  This land of Eldorado?\"\n\n    \"Over the Mountains\n    Of the Moon,\n  Down the Valley of the Shadow,\n    Ride, boldly ride,\"\n    The shade replied,\n  \"If you seek for Eldorado!\"\n\n\n1849.\n\n\n\n\n\n       *       *       *       *       *",
    "author": "Edgar Allan Poe",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Edgar Allan Poe",
    "period": "1827–1849"
  },
  {
    "title": "Eulalie.",
    "body": "               I dwelt alone\n               In a world of moan,\n           And my soul was a stagnant tide,\n  Till the fair and gentle Eulalie became my blushing bride--\n  Till the yellow-haired young Eulalie became my smiling bride.\n               Ah, less--less bright\n               The stars of the night\n           Than the eyes of the radiant girl!\n               And never a flake\n               That the vapor can make\n           With the moon-tints of purple and pearl,\n  Can vie with the modest Eulalie's most unregarded curl--\n  Can compare with the bright-eyed Eulalie's most humble and careless\n    curl.\n               Now Doubt--now Pain\n               Come never again,\n           For her soul gives me sigh for sigh,\n               And all day long\n               Shines, bright and strong,\n           Astarté within the sky,\n  While ever to her dear Eulalie upturns her matron eye--\n  While ever to her young Eulalie upturns her violet eye.\n\n1845.\n\n\n\n\n\n       *       *       *       *       *",
    "author": "Edgar Allan Poe",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Edgar Allan Poe",
    "period": "1827–1849"
  },
  {
    "title": "A Dream Within A Dream.",
    "body": "  Take this kiss upon the brow!\n  And, in parting from you now,\n  Thus much let me avow--\n  You are not wrong, who deem\n  That my days have been a dream:\n  Yet if hope has flown away\n  In a night, or in a day,\n  In a vision or in none,\n  Is it therefore the less _gone_?\n  _All_ that we see or seem\n  Is but a dream within a dream.\n\n  I stand amid the roar\n  Of a surf-tormented shore,\n  And I hold within my hand\n  Grains of the golden sand--\n  How few! yet how they creep\n  Through my fingers to the deep\n  While I weep--while I weep!\n  O God! can I not grasp\n  Them with a tighter clasp?\n  O God! can I not save\n  _One_ from the pitiless wave?\n  Is _all_ that we see or seem\n  But a dream within a dream?\n\n\n1849.\n\n\n\n\n\n       *       *       *       *       *",
    "author": "Edgar Allan Poe",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Edgar Allan Poe",
    "period": "1827–1849"
  },
  {
    "title": "To Marie Louise (Shew).",
    "body": "  Of all who hail thy presence as the morning--\n  Of all to whom thine absence is the night--\n  The blotting utterly from out high heaven\n  The sacred sun--of all who, weeping, bless thee\n  Hourly for hope--for life--ah, above all,\n  For the resurrection of deep buried faith\n  In truth, in virtue, in humanity--\n  Of all who, on despair's unhallowed bed\n  Lying down to die, have suddenly arisen\n  At thy soft-murmured words, \"Let there be light!\"\n  At thy soft-murmured words that were fulfilled\n  In thy seraphic glancing of thine eyes--\n  Of all who owe thee most, whose gratitude\n  Nearest resembles worship,--oh, remember\n  The truest, the most fervently devoted,\n  And think that these weak lines are written by him--\n  By him who, as he pens them, thrills to think\n  His spirit is communing with an angel's.\n\n1847.\n\n\n\n\n\n       *       *       *       *       *",
    "author": "Edgar Allan Poe",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Edgar Allan Poe",
    "period": "1827–1849"
  },
  {
    "title": "To Marie Louise (Shew).",
    "body": "  Not long ago, the writer of these lines,\n  In the mad pride of intellectuality,\n  Maintained \"the power of words\"--denied that ever\n  A thought arose within the human brain\n  Beyond the utterance of the human tongue:\n  And now, as if in mockery of that boast,\n  Two words--two foreign soft dissyllables--\n  Italian tones, made only to be murmured\n  By angels dreaming in the moonlit \"dew\n  That hangs like chains of pearl on Hermon hill,\"--\n  Have stirred from out the abysses of his heart,\n  Unthought-like thoughts that are the souls of thought,\n  Richer, far wilder, far diviner visions\n  Than even the seraph harper, Israfel,\n  (Who has \"the sweetest voice of all God's creatures,\")\n  Could hope to utter. And I! my spells are broken.\n  The pen falls powerless from my shivering hand.\n  With thy dear name as text, though hidden by thee,\n  I cannot write--I cannot speak or think--\n  Alas, I cannot feel; for 'tis not feeling,\n  This standing motionless upon the golden\n  Threshold of the wide-open gate of dreams,\n  Gazing, entranced, adown the gorgeous vista,\n  And thrilling as I see, upon the right,\n  Upon the left, and all the way along,\n  Amid empurpled vapors, far away\n  To where the prospect terminates--_thee only_!\n\n\n\n\n\n       *       *       *       *       *",
    "author": "Edgar Allan Poe",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Edgar Allan Poe",
    "period": "1827–1849"
  },
  {
    "title": "The City In The Sea.",
    "body": "  Lo! Death has reared himself a throne\n  In a strange city lying alone\n  Far down within the dim West,\n  Where the good and the bad and the worst and the best\n  Have gone to their eternal rest.\n  There shrines and palaces and towers\n  (Time-eaten towers and tremble not!)\n  Resemble nothing that is ours.\n  Around, by lifting winds forgot,\n  Resignedly beneath the sky\n  The melancholy waters lie.\n\n  No rays from the holy Heaven come down\n  On the long night-time of that town;\n  But light from out the lurid sea\n  Streams up the turrets silently--\n  Gleams up the pinnacles far and free--\n  Up domes--up spires--up kingly halls--\n  Up fanes--up Babylon-like walls--\n  Up shadowy long-forgotten bowers\n  Of sculptured ivy and stone flowers--\n  Up many and many a marvellous shrine\n  Whose wreathed friezes intertwine\n  The viol, the violet, and the vine.\n\n  Resignedly beneath the sky\n  The melancholy waters lie.\n  So blend the turrets and shadows there\n  That all seem pendulous in air,\n  While from a proud tower in the town\n  Death looks gigantically down.\n\n  There open fanes and gaping graves\n  Yawn level with the luminous waves;\n  But not the riches there that lie\n  In each idol's diamond eye--\n  Not the gaily-jewelled dead\n  Tempt the waters from their bed;\n  For no ripples curl, alas!\n  Along that wilderness of glass--\n  No swellings tell that winds may be\n  Upon some far-off happier sea--\n  No heavings hint that winds have been\n  On seas less hideously serene.\n\n  But lo, a stir is in the air!\n  The wave--there is a movement there!\n  As if the towers had thrust aside,\n  In slightly sinking, the dull tide--\n  As if their tops had feebly given\n  A void within the filmy Heaven.\n  The waves have now a redder glow--\n  The hours are breathing faint and low--\n  And when, amid no earthly moans,\n  Down, down that town shall settle hence,\n  Hell, rising from a thousand thrones,\n  Shall do it reverence.\n\n\n1835?\n\n\n\n\n\n       *       *       *       *       *",
    "author": "Edgar Allan Poe",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Edgar Allan Poe",
    "period": "1827–1849"
  },
  {
    "title": "The Sleeper",
    "body": "  At midnight, in the month of June,\n  I stand beneath the mystic moon.\n  An opiate vapor, dewy, dim,\n  Exhales from out her golden rim,\n  And, softly dripping, drop by drop,\n  Upon the quiet mountain top,\n  Steals drowsily and musically\n  Into the universal valley.\n  The rosemary nods upon the grave;\n  The lily lolls upon the wave;\n  Wrapping the fog about its breast,\n  The ruin moulders into rest;\n  Looking like Lethe, see! the lake\n  A conscious slumber seems to take,\n  And would not, for the world, awake.\n  All Beauty sleeps!--and lo! where lies\n  (Her casement open to the skies)\n  Irene, with her Destinies!\n\n  Oh, lady bright! can it be right--\n  This window open to the night!\n  The wanton airs, from the tree-top,\n  Laughingly through the lattice-drop--\n  The bodiless airs, a wizard rout,\n  Flit through thy chamber in and out,\n  And wave the curtain canopy\n  So fitfully--so fearfully--\n  Above the closed and fringed lid\n  'Neath which thy slumb'ring soul lies hid,\n  That, o'er the floor and down the wall,\n  Like ghosts the shadows rise and fall!\n  Oh, lady dear, hast thou no fear?\n  Why and what art thou dreaming here?\n  Sure thou art come o'er far-off seas,\n  A wonder to these garden trees!\n  Strange is thy pallor! strange thy dress!\n  Strange, above all, thy length of tress,\n  And this all-solemn silentness!\n\n  The lady sleeps! Oh, may her sleep\n  Which is enduring, so be deep!\n  Heaven have her in its sacred keep!\n  This chamber changed for one more holy,\n  This bed for one more melancholy,\n  I pray to God that she may lie\n  For ever with unopened eye,\n  While the dim sheeted ghosts go by!\n\n  My love, she sleeps! Oh, may her sleep,\n  As it is lasting, so be deep;\n  Soft may the worms about her creep!\n  Far in the forest, dim and old,\n  For her may some tall vault unfold--\n  Some vault that oft hath flung its black\n  And winged panels fluttering back,\n  Triumphant, o'er the crested palls,\n  Of her grand family funerals--\n  Some sepulchre, remote, alone,\n  Against whose portal she hath thrown,\n  In childhood many an idle stone--\n  Some tomb from out whose sounding door\n  She ne'er shall force an echo more,\n  Thrilling to think, poor child of sin!\n  It was the dead who groaned within.\n\n\n1845.\n\n\n\n\n\n       *       *       *       *       *",
    "author": "Edgar Allan Poe",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Edgar Allan Poe",
    "period": "1827–1849"
  },
  {
    "title": "Bridal Ballad.",
    "body": "  The ring is on my hand,\n    And the wreath is on my brow;\n  Satins and jewels grand\n  Are all at my command.\n    And I am happy now.\n\n  And my lord he loves me well;\n    But, when first he breathed his vow,\n  I felt my bosom swell--\n  For the words rang as a knell,\n  And the voice seemed _his_ who fell\n  In the battle down the dell,\n    And who is happy now.\n\n  But he spoke to reassure me,\n    And he kissed my pallid brow,\n  While a reverie came o'er me,\n  And to the churchyard bore me,\n  And I sighed to him before me,\n  Thinking him dead D'Elormie,\n    \"Oh, I am happy now!\"\n\n  And thus the words were spoken,\n    And thus the plighted vow,\n  And, though my faith be broken,\n  And, though my heart be broken,\n  Behold the golden keys\n    That _proves_ me happy now!\n\n  Would to God I could awaken\n    For I dream I know not how,\n  And my soul is sorely shaken\n  Lest an evil step be taken,--\n  Lest the dead who is forsaken\n    May not be happy now.\n\n\n1845.\n\n\n\n\n\n       *       *       *       *       *",
    "author": "Edgar Allan Poe",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Edgar Allan Poe",
    "period": "1827–1849"
  },
  {
    "title": "1.   The Raven",
    "body": "\"The Raven\" was first published on the 29th January, 1845, in the New\nYork 'Evening Mirror'--a paper its author was then assistant editor of.\nIt was prefaced by the following words, understood to have been written\nby N. P. Willis:\n\n  \"We are permitted to copy (in advance of publication) from the second\n  number of the 'American Review', the following remarkable poem by\n  Edgar Poe. In our opinion, it is the most effective single example of\n  'fugitive poetry' ever published in this country, and unsurpassed in\n  English poetry for subtle conception, masterly ingenuity of\n  versification, and consistent sustaining of imaginative lift and\n  'pokerishness.' It is one of those 'dainties bred in a book' which we\n  feed on. It will stick to the memory of everybody who reads it.\"\n\nIn the February number of the 'American Review' the poem was published\nas by \"Quarles,\" and it was introduced by the following note, evidently\nsuggested if not written by Poe himself.\n\n  [\"The following lines from a correspondent--besides the deep, quaint\n  strain of the sentiment, and the curious introduction of some\n  ludicrous touches amidst the serious and impressive, as was doubtless\n  intended by the author--appears to us one of the most felicitous\n  specimens of unique rhyming which has for some time met our eye. The\n  resources of English rhythm for varieties of melody, measure, and\n  sound, producing corresponding diversities of effect, have been\n  thoroughly studied, much more perceived, by very few poets in the\n  language. While the classic tongues, especially the Greek, possess, by\n  power of accent, several advantages for versification over our own,\n  chiefly through greater abundance of spondaic feet, we have other and\n  very great advantages of sound by the modern usage of rhyme.\n  Alliteration is nearly the only effect of that kind which the ancients\n  had in common with us. It will be seen that much of the melody of 'The\n  Raven' arises from alliteration and the studious use of similar sounds\n  in unusual places. In regard to its measure, it may be noted that if\n  all the verses were like the second, they might properly be placed\n  merely in short lines, producing a not uncommon form: but the presence\n  in all the others of one line--mostly the second in the verse\"\n  (stanza?)--\"which flows continuously, with only an aspirate pause in\n  the middle, like that before the short line in the Sapphio Adonic,\n  while the fifth has at the middle pause no similarity of sound with\n  any part beside, gives the versification an entirely different effect.\n  We could wish the capacities of our noble language in prosody were\n  better understood.\"\n\n  ED. 'Am. Rev.']\n\n\n\n       *       *       *       *       *",
    "author": "Edgar Allan Poe",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Edgar Allan Poe",
    "period": "1827–1849"
  },
  {
    "title": "2.   The Bells",
    "body": "The bibliographical history of \"The Bells\" is curious. The subject, and\nsome lines of the original version, having been suggested by the poet's\nfriend, Mrs. Shew, Poe, when he wrote out the first draft of the poem,\nheaded it, \"The Bells. By Mrs. M. A. Shew.\" This draft, now the editor's\nproperty, consists of only seventeen lines, and reads thus:\n\n\n\nI.\n\n      The bells!--ah the bells!\n      The little silver bells!\n  How fairy-like a melody there floats\n          From their throats--\n          From their merry little throats--\n          From the silver, tinkling throats\n    Of the bells, bells, bells--\n            Of the bells!\n\nII.\n\n      The bells!--ah, the bells!\n      The heavy iron bells!\n  How horrible a monody there floats\n          From their throats--\n          From their deep-toned throats--\n          From their melancholy throats\n          How I shudder at the notes\n    Of the bells, bells, bells--\n            Of the bells!\n\n\n\nIn the autumn of 1848 Poe added another line to this poem, and sent it\nto the editor of the 'Union Magazine'. It was not published. So, in the\nfollowing February, the poet forwarded to the same periodical a much\nenlarged and altered transcript. Three months having elapsed without\npublication, another revision of the poem, similar to the current\nversion, was sent, and in the following October was published in the\n'Union Magazine'.\n\n\n\n       *       *       *       *       *",
    "author": "Edgar Allan Poe",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Edgar Allan Poe",
    "period": "1827–1849"
  },
  {
    "title": "3.   Ulalume",
    "body": "This poem was first published in Colton's 'American Review' for December\n1847, as \"To----Ulalume: a Ballad.\" Being reprinted immediately in\nthe 'Home Journal', it was copied into various publications with the\nname of the editor, N. P. Willis, appended, and was ascribed to him.\nWhen first published, it contained the following additional stanza which\nPoe subsequently, at the suggestion of Mrs. Whitman wisely suppressed:\n\n\n  Said we then--the two, then--\"Ah, can it\n      Have been that the woodlandish ghouls--\n      The pitiful, the merciful ghouls--\n  To bar up our path and to ban it\n      From the secret that lies in these wolds--\n  Had drawn up the spectre of a planet\n      From the limbo of lunary souls--\n  This sinfully scintillant planet\n      From the Hell of the planetary souls?\"\n\n\n\n       *       *       *       *       *",
    "author": "Edgar Allan Poe",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Edgar Allan Poe",
    "period": "1827–1849"
  },
  {
    "title": "4.   To Helen",
    "body": "\"To Helen\" (Mrs. S. Helen Whitman) was not published Until November\n1848, although written several months earlier. It first appeared in the\n'Union Magazine' and with the omission, contrary to the knowledge or\ndesire of Poe, of the line, \"Oh, God! oh, Heaven--how my heart beats in\ncoupling those two words\".\n\n\n\n       *       *       *       *       *",
    "author": "Edgar Allan Poe",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Edgar Allan Poe",
    "period": "1827–1849"
  },
  {
    "title": "5.   Annabel Lee",
    "body": "\"Annabel Lee\" was written early in 1849, and is evidently an expression\nof the poet's undying love for his deceased bride although at least one\nof his lady admirers deemed it a response to her admiration. Poe sent a\ncopy of the ballad to the 'Union Magazine', in which publication it\nappeared in January 1850, three months after the author's death. Whilst\nsuffering from \"hope deferred\" as to its fate, Poe presented a copy of\n\"Annabel Lee\" to the editor of the 'Southern Literary Messenger', who\npublished it in the November number of his periodical, a month after\nPoe's death. In the meantime the poet's own copy, left among his papers,\npassed into the hands of the person engaged to edit his works, and he\nquoted the poem in an obituary of Poe in the New York 'Tribune', before\nany one else had an opportunity of publishing it.\n\n\n\n       *       *       *       *       *",
    "author": "Edgar Allan Poe",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Edgar Allan Poe",
    "period": "1827–1849"
  },
  {
    "title": "6.   A Valentine",
    "body": "\"A Valentine,\" one of three poems addressed to Mrs. Osgood, appears to\nhave been written early in 1846.\n\n\n\n       *       *       *       *       *",
    "author": "Edgar Allan Poe",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Edgar Allan Poe",
    "period": "1827–1849"
  },
  {
    "title": "7.   An Enigma",
    "body": "\"An Enigma,\" addressed to Mrs. Sarah Anna Lewig (\"Stella\"), was sent to\nthat lady in a letter, in November 1847, and the following March\nappeared in Sartain's 'Union Magazine'.\n\n\n\n*       *       *       *       *",
    "author": "Edgar Allan Poe",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Edgar Allan Poe",
    "period": "1827–1849"
  },
  {
    "title": "8.   To My Mother",
    "body": "The sonnet, \"To My Mother\" (Maria Clemm), was sent for publication to\nthe short-lived 'Flag of our Union', early in 1849, but does not appear\nto have been issued until after its author's death, when it appeared in\nthe 'Leaflets of Memory' for 1850.\n\n\n\n*       *       *       *       *",
    "author": "Edgar Allan Poe",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Edgar Allan Poe",
    "period": "1827–1849"
  },
  {
    "title": "9.   For Annie",
    "body": "\"For Annie\" was first published in the 'Flag of our Union', in the\nspring of 1849. Poe, annoyed at some misprints in this issue, shortly\nafterwards caused a corrected copy to be inserted in the 'Home Journal'.\n\n\n\n*       *       *       *       *\n\n\n\n10.   TO F----\n\n\n\"To F----\" (Frances Sargeant Osgood) appeared in the 'Broadway Journal'\nfor April 1845. These lines are but slightly varied from those inscribed\n\"To Mary,\" in the 'Southern Literary Messenger' for July 1835, and\nsubsequently republished, with the two stanzas transposed, in 'Graham's\nMagazine' for March 1842, as \"To One Departed.\"\n\n\n\n*       *       *       *       *",
    "author": "Edgar Allan Poe",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Edgar Allan Poe",
    "period": "1827–1849"
  },
  {
    "title": "11.   To Frances S. Osgood",
    "body": "\"To F--s S. O--d,\" a portion of the poet's triune tribute to Mrs.\nOsgood, was published in the 'Broadway Journal' for September 1845. The\nearliest version of these lines appeared in the 'Southern Literary\nMessenger' for September 1835, as \"Lines written in an Album,\" and was\naddressed to Eliza White, the proprietor's daughter. Slightly revised,\nthe poem reappeared in Burton's 'Gentleman's Magazine' for August, 1839,\nas \"To----.\"\n\n\n\n*       *       *       *       *",
    "author": "Edgar Allan Poe",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Edgar Allan Poe",
    "period": "1827–1849"
  },
  {
    "title": "12.   Eldorado",
    "body": "Although \"Eldorado\" was published during Poe's lifetime, in 1849, in the\n'Flag of our Union', it does not appear to have ever received the\nauthor's finishing touches.\n\n\n\n*       *       *       *       *",
    "author": "Edgar Allan Poe",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Edgar Allan Poe",
    "period": "1827–1849"
  },
  {
    "title": "13.   Eulalie",
    "body": "\"Eulalie--a Song\" first appears in Colton's 'American Review' for July,\n1845.\n\n\n\n*       *       *       *       *",
    "author": "Edgar Allan Poe",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Edgar Allan Poe",
    "period": "1827–1849"
  },
  {
    "title": "14.   A Dream Within A Dream",
    "body": "\"A Dream within a Dream\" does not appear to have been published as a\nseparate poem during its author's lifetime. A portion of it was\ncontained, in 1829, in the piece beginning, \"Should my early life seem,\"\nand in 1831 some few lines of it were used as a conclusion to\n\"Tamerlane.\" In 1849 the poet sent a friend all but the first nine lines\nof the piece as a separate poem, headed \"For Annie.\"\n\n\n\n*       *       *       *       *",
    "author": "Edgar Allan Poe",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Edgar Allan Poe",
    "period": "1827–1849"
  },
  {
    "title": "15   To Marie Louise (Shew)",
    "body": "\"To M----L----S----,\" addressed to Mrs. Marie Louise Shew, was written\nin February 1847, and published shortly afterwards. In the first\nposthumous collection of Poe's poems these lines were, for some reason,\nincluded in the \"Poems written in Youth,\" and amongst those poems they\nhave hitherto been included.\n\n\n\n*       *       *       *       *",
    "author": "Edgar Allan Poe",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Edgar Allan Poe",
    "period": "1827–1849"
  },
  {
    "title": "16.  (2)  To Marie Louise (Shew)",
    "body": "\"To----,\" a second piece addressed to Mrs. Shew, and written in 1848,\nwas also first published, but in a somewhat faulty form, in the above\nnamed posthumous collection.\n\n\n\n*       *       *       *       *",
    "author": "Edgar Allan Poe",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Edgar Allan Poe",
    "period": "1827–1849"
  },
  {
    "title": "17.   The City In The Sea",
    "body": "Under the title of \"The Doomed City\" the initial version of \"The City in\nthe Sea\" appeared in the 1831 volume of Poems by Poe: it reappeared as\n\"The City of Sin,\" in the 'Southern Literary Messenger' for August 1835,\nwhilst the present draft of it first appeared in Colton's 'American\nReview' for April, 1845.\n\n\n\n*       *       *       *       *",
    "author": "Edgar Allan Poe",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Edgar Allan Poe",
    "period": "1827–1849"
  },
  {
    "title": "18.   The Sleeper",
    "body": "As \"Irene,\" the earliest known version of \"The Sleeper,\" appeared in the\n1831 volume. It reappeared in the 'Literary Messenger' for May 1836,\nand, in its present form, in the 'Broadway Journal' for May 1845.\n\n\n\n*       *       *       *       *",
    "author": "Edgar Allan Poe",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Edgar Allan Poe",
    "period": "1827–1849"
  },
  {
    "title": "19.   The Bridal Ballad",
    "body": "\"The Bridal Ballad\" is first discoverable in the 'Southern Literary\nMessenger' for January 1837, and, in its present compressed and revised\nform, was reprinted in the 'Broadway Journal' for August, 1845.\n\n\n\n\n\n       *       *       *       *       *",
    "author": "Edgar Allan Poe",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Edgar Allan Poe",
    "period": "1827–1849"
  },
  {
    "title": "Poems Of Manhood.",
    "body": "       *       *       *       *       *",
    "author": "Edgar Allan Poe",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Edgar Allan Poe",
    "period": "1827–1849"
  },
  {
    "title": "Lenore.",
    "body": "  Ah, broken is the golden bowl! the spirit flown forever!\n  Let the bell toll!--a saintly soul floats on the Stygian river.\n  And, Guy de Vere, hast _thou_ no tear?--weep now or never more!\n  See! on yon drear and rigid bier low lies thy love, Lenore!\n  Come! let the burial rite be read--the funeral song be sung!--\n  An anthem for the queenliest dead that ever died so young--\n  A dirge for her, the doubly dead in that she died so young.\n\n  \"Wretches! ye loved her for her wealth and hated her for her pride,\n  And when she fell in feeble health, ye blessed her--that she died!\n  How _shall_ the ritual, then, be read?--the requiem how be sung\n  By you--by yours, the evil eye,--by yours, the slanderous tongue\n  That did to death the innocence that died, and died so young?\"\n\n  _Peccavimus;_ but rave not thus! and let a Sabbath song\n  Go up to God so solemnly the dead may feel no wrong!\n  The sweet Lenore hath \"gone before,\" with Hope, that flew beside,\n  Leaving thee wild for the dear child that should have been thy bride--\n  For her, the fair and _débonnaire_, that now so lowly lies,\n  The life upon her yellow hair but not within her eyes--\n  The life still there, upon her hair--the death upon her eyes.\n\n  \"Avaunt! to-night my heart is light. No dirge will I upraise,\n  But waft the angel on her flight with a pæan of old days!\n  Let _no_ bell toll!--lest her sweet soul, amid its hallowed mirth,\n  Should catch the note, as it doth float up from the damned Earth.\n  To friends above, from fiends below, the indignant ghost is riven--\n  From Hell unto a high estate far up within the Heaven--\n  From grief and groan to a golden throne beside the King of Heaven.\"\n\n\n1844.\n\n\n\n\n\n       *       *       *       *       *",
    "author": "Edgar Allan Poe",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Edgar Allan Poe",
    "period": "1827–1849"
  },
  {
    "title": "To One In Paradise,",
    "body": "  Thou wast that all to me, love,\n    For which my soul did pine--\n  A green isle in the sea, love,\n    A fountain and a shrine,\n  All wreathed with fairy fruits and flowers,\n  And all the flowers were mine.\n\n  Ah, dream too bright to last!\n    Ah, starry Hope! that didst arise\n  But to be overcast!\n    A voice from out the Future cries,\n  \"On! on!\"--but o'er the Past\n    (Dim gulf!) my spirit hovering lies\n  Mute, motionless, aghast!\n\n  For, alas! alas! with me\n    The light of Life is o'er!\n  \"No more--no more--no more\"--\n  (Such language holds the solemn sea\n    To the sands upon the shore)\n  Shall bloom the thunder-blasted tree,\n    Or the stricken eagle soar!\n\n  And all my days are trances,\n    And all my nightly dreams\n  Are where thy dark eye glances,\n    And where thy footstep gleams--\n  In what ethereal dances,\n    By what eternal streams!\n\n  Alas! for that accursed time\n    They bore thee o'er the billow,\n  From love to titled age and crime,\n    And an unholy pillow!\n  From me, and from our misty clime,\n    Where weeps the silver willow!\n\n\n1835\n\n\n\n\n\n       *       *       *       *       *",
    "author": "Edgar Allan Poe",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Edgar Allan Poe",
    "period": "1827–1849"
  },
  {
    "title": "The Coliseum.",
    "body": "  Type of the antique Rome! Rich reliquary\n  Of lofty contemplation left to Time\n  By buried centuries of pomp and power!\n  At length--at length--after so many days\n  Of weary pilgrimage and burning thirst,\n  (Thirst for the springs of lore that in thee lie,)\n  I kneel, an altered and an humble man,\n  Amid thy shadows, and so drink within\n  My very soul thy grandeur, gloom, and glory!\n\n  Vastness! and Age! and Memories of Eld!\n  Silence! and Desolation! and dim Night!\n  I feel ye now--I feel ye in your strength--\n  O spells more sure than e'er Judæan king\n  Taught in the gardens of Gethsemane!\n  O charms more potent than the rapt Chaldee\n  Ever drew down from out the quiet stars!\n\n  Here, where a hero fell, a column falls!\n  Here, where the mimic eagle glared in gold,\n  A midnight vigil holds the swarthy bat!\n  Here, where the dames of Rome their gilded hair\n  Waved to the wind, now wave the reed and thistle!\n  Here, where on golden throne the monarch lolled,\n  Glides, spectre-like, unto his marble home,\n  Lit by the wan light of the horned moon,\n  The swift and silent lizard of the stones!\n\n  But stay! these walls--these ivy-clad arcades--\n  These mouldering plinths--these sad and blackened shafts--\n  These vague entablatures--this crumbling frieze--\n  These shattered cornices--this wreck--this ruin--\n  These stones--alas! these gray stones--are they all--\n  All of the famed, and the colossal left\n  By the corrosive Hours to Fate and me?\n\n  \"Not all\"--the Echoes answer me--\"not all!\n  Prophetic sounds and loud, arise forever\n  From us, and from all Ruin, unto the wise,\n  As melody from Memnon to the Sun.\n  We rule the hearts of mightiest men--we rule\n  With a despotic sway all giant minds.\n  We are not impotent--we pallid stones.\n  Not all our power is gone--not all our fame--\n  Not all the magic of our high renown--\n  Not all the wonder that encircles us--\n  Not all the mysteries that in us lie--\n  Not all the memories that hang upon\n  And cling around about us as a garment,\n  Clothing us in a robe of more than glory.\"\n\n\n1838.\n\n\n\n\n\n       *       *       *       *       *",
    "author": "Edgar Allan Poe",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Edgar Allan Poe",
    "period": "1827–1849"
  },
  {
    "title": "The Haunted Palace.",
    "body": "  In the greenest of our valleys\n    By good angels tenanted,\n  Once a fair and stately palace--\n    Radiant palace--reared its head.\n  In the monarch Thought's dominion--\n    It stood there!\n  Never seraph spread a pinion\n    Over fabric half so fair!\n\n  Banners yellow, glorious, golden,\n    On its roof did float and flow,\n  (This--all this--was in the olden\n    Time long ago),\n  And every gentle air that dallied,\n    In that sweet day,\n  Along the ramparts plumed and pallid,\n    A winged odor went away.\n\n  Wanderers in that happy valley,\n    Through two luminous windows, saw\n  Spirits moving musically,\n    To a lute's well-tunëd law,\n  Bound about a throne where, sitting\n    (Porphyrogene!)\n  In state his glory well befitting,\n    The ruler of the realm was seen.\n\n  And all with pearl and ruby glowing\n    Was the fair palace door,\n  Through which came flowing, flowing, flowing,\n    And sparkling evermore,\n  A troop of Echoes, whose sweet duty\n    Was but to sing,\n  In voices of surpassing beauty,\n    The wit and wisdom of their king.\n\n  But evil things, in robes of sorrow,\n    Assailed the monarch's high estate.\n  (Ah, let us mourn!--for never morrow\n    Shall dawn upon him desolate !)\n  And round about his home the glory\n    That blushed and bloomed,\n  Is but a dim-remembered story\n    Of the old time entombed.\n\n  And travellers, now, within that valley,\n    Through the red-litten windows see\n  Vast forms, that move fantastically\n    To a discordant melody,\n    While, like a ghastly rapid river,\n    Through the pale door\n  A hideous throng rush out forever\n    And laugh--but smile no more.\n\n\n1838.\n\n\n\n\n\n       *       *       *       *       *",
    "author": "Edgar Allan Poe",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Edgar Allan Poe",
    "period": "1827–1849"
  },
  {
    "title": "The Conqueror Worm.",
    "body": "  Lo! 'tis a gala night\n    Within the lonesome latter years!\n  An angel throng, bewinged, bedight\n    In veils, and drowned in tears,\n  Sit in a theatre, to see\n    A play of hopes and fears,\n  While the orchestra breathes fitfully\n    The music of the spheres.\n\n  Mimes, in the form of God on high,\n    Mutter and mumble low,\n  And hither and thither fly--\n    Mere puppets they, who come and go\n  At bidding of vast formless things\n    That shift the scenery to and fro,\n  Flapping from out their Condor wings\n    Invisible Wo!\n\n  That motley drama--oh, be sure\n    It shall not be forgot!\n  With its Phantom chased for evermore,\n    By a crowd that seize it not,\n  Through a circle that ever returneth in\n    To the self-same spot,\n  And much of Madness, and more of Sin,\n    And Horror the soul of the plot.\n\n  But see, amid the mimic rout\n    A crawling shape intrude!\n  A blood-red thing that writhes from out\n    The scenic solitude!\n  It writhes!--it writhes!--with mortal pangs\n    The mimes become its food,\n  And the angels sob at vermin fangs\n    In human gore imbued.\n\n  Out--out are the lights--out all!\n    And, over each quivering form,\n  The curtain, a funeral pall,\n    Comes down with the rush of a storm,\n  And the angels, all pallid and wan,\n    Uprising, unveiling, affirm\n  That the play is the tragedy, \"Man,\"\n    And its hero the Conqueror Worm.\n\n\n1838\n\n\n\n\n\n       *       *       *       *       *",
    "author": "Edgar Allan Poe",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Edgar Allan Poe",
    "period": "1827–1849"
  },
  {
    "title": "Silence.",
    "body": "  There are some qualities--some incorporate things,\n    That have a double life, which thus is made\n  A type of that twin entity which springs\n    From matter and light, evinced in solid and shade.\n  There is a twofold _Silence_--sea and shore--\n    Body and soul. One dwells in lonely places,\n    Newly with grass o'ergrown; some solemn graces,\n  Some human memories and tearful lore,\n  Render him terrorless: his name's \"No More.\"\n  He is the corporate Silence: dread him not!\n    No power hath he of evil in himself;\n  But should some urgent fate (untimely lot!)\n    Bring thee to meet his shadow (nameless elf,\n  That haunteth the lone regions where hath trod\n  No foot of man), commend thyself to God!\n\n\n1840\n\n\n\n\n\n       *       *       *       *       *",
    "author": "Edgar Allan Poe",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Edgar Allan Poe",
    "period": "1827–1849"
  },
  {
    "title": "Dreamland.",
    "body": "  By a route obscure and lonely,\n  Haunted by ill angels only,\n  Where an Eidolon, named NIGHT,\n  On a black throne reigns upright,\n  I have reached these lands but newly\n  From an ultimate dim Thule--\n  From a wild weird clime that lieth, sublime,\n    Out of SPACE--out of TIME.\n\n  Bottomless vales and boundless floods,\n  And chasms, and caves, and Titan woods,\n  With forms that no man can discover\n  For the dews that drip all over;\n  Mountains toppling evermore\n  Into seas without a shore;\n  Seas that restlessly aspire,\n  Surging, unto skies of fire;\n  Lakes that endlessly outspread\n  Their lone waters--lone and dead,\n  Their still waters--still and chilly\n  With the snows of the lolling lily.\n\n  By the lakes that thus outspread\n  Their lone waters, lone and dead,--\n  Their sad waters, sad and chilly\n  With the snows of the lolling lily,--\n\n  By the mountains--near the river\n  Murmuring lowly, murmuring ever,--\n  By the gray woods,--by the swamp\n  Where the toad and the newt encamp,--\n  By the dismal tarns and pools\n    Where dwell the Ghouls,--\n  By each spot the most unholy--\n  In each nook most melancholy,--\n\n  There the traveller meets aghast\n  Sheeted Memories of the past--\n  Shrouded forms that start and sigh\n  As they pass the wanderer by--\n  White-robed forms of friends long given,\n  In agony, to the Earth--and Heaven.\n\n  For the heart whose woes are legion\n  'Tis a peaceful, soothing region--\n  For the spirit that walks in shadow\n  'Tis--oh, 'tis an Eldorado!\n  But the traveller, travelling through it,\n  May not--dare not openly view it;\n  Never its mysteries are exposed\n  To the weak human eye unclosed;\n  So wills its King, who hath forbid\n  The uplifting of the fringed lid;\n  And thus the sad Soul that here passes\n  Beholds it but through darkened glasses.\n\n  By a route obscure and lonely,\n  Haunted by ill angels only.\n\n  Where an Eidolon, named NIGHT,\n  On a black throne reigns upright,\n  I have wandered home but newly\n  From this ultimate dim Thule.\n\n\n1844\n\n\n\n\n\n       *       *       *       *       *",
    "author": "Edgar Allan Poe",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Edgar Allan Poe",
    "period": "1827–1849"
  },
  {
    "title": "To Zante.",
    "body": "  Fair isle, that from the fairest of all flowers,\n    Thy gentlest of all gentle names dost take!\n  How many memories of what radiant hours\n    At sight of thee and thine at once awake!\n  How many scenes of what departed bliss!\n    How many thoughts of what entombed hopes!\n  How many visions of a maiden that is\n    No more--no more upon thy verdant slopes!\n\n  _No more!_ alas, that magical sad sound\n    Transforming all! Thy charms shall please _no more_--\n  Thy memory _no more!_ Accursed ground\n    Henceforward I hold thy flower-enamelled shore,\n  O hyacinthine isle! O purple Zante!\n    \"Isola d'oro! Fior di Levante!\"\n\n\n1887.\n\n\n\n\n\n       *       *       *       *       *",
    "author": "Edgar Allan Poe",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Edgar Allan Poe",
    "period": "1827–1849"
  },
  {
    "title": "Hymn.",
    "body": "  At morn--at noon--at twilight dim--\n  Maria! thou hast heard my hymn!\n  In joy and wo--in good and ill--\n  Mother of God, be with me still!\n  When the Hours flew brightly by,\n  And not a cloud obscured the sky,\n  My soul, lest it should truant be,\n  Thy grace did guide to thine and thee\n  Now, when storms of Fate o'ercast\n  Darkly my Present and my Past,\n  Let my future radiant shine\n  With sweet hopes of thee and thine!\n\n\n1885.\n\n\n\n\n\n       *       *       *       *       *",
    "author": "Edgar Allan Poe",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Edgar Allan Poe",
    "period": "1827–1849"
  },
  {
    "title": "20.   Lenore",
    "body": "\"Lenore\" was published, very nearly in its existing shape, in 'The\nPioneer' for 1843, but under the title of \"The Pæan\"--now first\npublished in the POEMS OF YOUTH--the germ of it appeared in 1831.\n\n\n\n*       *       *       *       *",
    "author": "Edgar Allan Poe",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Edgar Allan Poe",
    "period": "1827–1849"
  },
  {
    "title": "21.   To One In Paradise",
    "body": "\"To One in Paradise\" was included originally in \"The Visionary\" (a tale\nnow known as \"The Assignation\"), in July, 1835, and appeared as a\nseparate poem entitled \"To Ianthe in Heaven,\" in Burton's 'Gentleman's\nMagazine' for July, 1839. The fifth stanza is now added, for the first\ntime, to the piece.\n\n\n\n*       *       *       *       *",
    "author": "Edgar Allan Poe",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Edgar Allan Poe",
    "period": "1827–1849"
  },
  {
    "title": "22.   The Coliseum",
    "body": "\"The Coliseum\" appeared in the Baltimore 'Saturday Visitor' ('sic') in\n1833, and was republished in the 'Southern Literary Messenger' for\nAugust 1835, as \"A Prize Poem.\"\n\n\n\n*       *       *       *       *",
    "author": "Edgar Allan Poe",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Edgar Allan Poe",
    "period": "1827–1849"
  },
  {
    "title": "23.   The Haunted Palace",
    "body": "\"The Haunted Palace\" originally issued in the Baltimore 'American\nMuseum' for April, 1888, was subsequently embodied in that much admired\ntale, \"The Fall of the House of Usher,\" and published in it in Burton's\n'Gentleman's Magazine' for September, 1839. It reappeared in that as a\nseparate poem in the 1845 edition of Poe's poems.\n\n\n\n*       *       *       *       *",
    "author": "Edgar Allan Poe",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Edgar Allan Poe",
    "period": "1827–1849"
  },
  {
    "title": "24.   The Conqueror Worm",
    "body": "\"The Conqueror Worm,\" then contained in Poe's favorite tale of \"Ligeia,\"\nwas first published in the 'American Museum' for September, 1838. As a\nseparate poem, it reappeared in 'Graham's Magazine' for January, 1843.\n\n\n\n*       *       *       *       *",
    "author": "Edgar Allan Poe",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Edgar Allan Poe",
    "period": "1827–1849"
  },
  {
    "title": "25.   Silence",
    "body": "The sonnet, \"Silence,\" was originally published in Burton's 'Gentleman's\nMagazine' for April, 1840.\n\n\n\n*       *       *       *       *",
    "author": "Edgar Allan Poe",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Edgar Allan Poe",
    "period": "1827–1849"
  },
  {
    "title": "26.   Dreamland",
    "body": "The first known publication of \"Dreamland\" was in 'Graham's Magazine'\nfor June, 1844.\n\n\n\n*       *       *       *       *",
    "author": "Edgar Allan Poe",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Edgar Allan Poe",
    "period": "1827–1849"
  },
  {
    "title": "37.   To Zante",
    "body": "The \"Sonnet to Zante\" is not discoverable earlier than January, 1837,\nwhen it appeared in the 'Southern Literary Messenger'.\n\n\n\n*       *       *       *       *",
    "author": "Edgar Allan Poe",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Edgar Allan Poe",
    "period": "1827–1849"
  },
  {
    "title": "28.   Hymn",
    "body": "The initial version of the \"Catholic Hymn\" was contained in the story of\n\"Morella,\" and published in the 'Southern Literary Messenger' for April,\n1885. The lines as they now stand, and with their present title, were\nfirst published in the 'Broadway Journal for August', 1845.\n\n\n\n\n\n*       *       *       *       *",
    "author": "Edgar Allan Poe",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Edgar Allan Poe",
    "period": "1827–1849"
  },
  {
    "title": "An Unpublished Drama.",
    "body": "I.\n\nROME.--A Hall in a Palace. ALESSANDRA and CASTIGLIONE\n\n_Alessandra_.     Thou art sad, Castiglione.\n\n_Castiglione_.    Sad!--not I.\n                  Oh, I'm the happiest, happiest man in Rome!\n                  A few days more, thou knowest, my Alessandra,\n                  Will make thee mine. Oh, I am very happy!\n\n_Aless_.          Methinks thou hast a singular way of showing\n                  Thy happiness--what ails thee, cousin of mine?\n                  Why didst thou sigh so deeply?\n\n_Cas_.            Did I sigh?\n                  I was not conscious of it. It is a fashion,\n                  A silly--a most silly fashion I have\n                  When I am _very_ happy. Did I sigh? (_sighing._)\n\n_Aless_.          Thou didst. Thou art not well. Thou hast indulged\n                  Too much of late, and I am vexed to see it.\n                  Late hours and wine, Castiglione,--these\n                  Will ruin thee! thou art already altered--\n                  Thy looks are haggard--nothing so wears away\n                  The constitution as late hours and wine.\n\n_Cas. (musing_ ). Nothing, fair cousin, nothing--\n                  Not even deep sorrow--\n                  Wears it away like evil hours and wine.\n                  I will amend.\n\n_Aless_.          Do it! I would have thee drop\n                  Thy riotous company, too--fellows low born\n                  Ill suit the like of old Di Broglio's heir\n                  And Alessandra's husband.\n\n_Cas_.            I will drop them.\n\n_Aless_.          Thou wilt--thou must. Attend thou also more\n                  To thy dress and equipage--they are over plain\n                  For thy lofty rank and fashion--much depends\n                  Upon appearances.\n\n_Cas_.            I'll see to it.\n\n_Aless_.          Then see to it!--pay more attention, sir,\n                  To a becoming carriage--much thou wantest\n                  In dignity.\n\n_Cas_.            Much, much, oh, much I want\n                  In proper dignity.\n\n_Aless.\n(haughtily_).     Thou mockest me, sir!\n\n_Cos.\n(abstractedly_).  Sweet, gentle Lalage!\n\n_Aless_.          Heard I aright?\n                  I speak to him--he speaks of Lalage?\n                  Sir Count!\n         (_places her hand on his shoulder_)\n                             what art thou dreaming?\n                  He's not well!\n                  What ails thee, sir?\n\n_Cas.(starting_). Cousin! fair cousin!--madam!\n                  I crave thy pardon--indeed I am not well--\n                  Your hand from off my shoulder, if you please.\n                  This air is most oppressive!--Madam--the Duke!\n\n_Enter Di Broglio_.\n\n_Di Broglio_.     My son, I've news for thee!--hey!\n                 --what's the matter?\n          (_observing Alessandra_).\n                  I' the pouts? Kiss her, Castiglione! kiss her,\n                  You dog! and make it up, I say, this minute!\n                  I've news for you both. Politian is expected\n                  Hourly in Rome--Politian, Earl of Leicester!\n                  We'll have him at the wedding. 'Tis his first visit\n                  To the imperial city.\n\n_Aless_.          What! Politian\n                  Of Britain, Earl of Leicester?\n\n_Di Brog_.        The same, my love.\n                  We'll have him at the wedding. A man quite young\n                  In years, but gray in fame. I have not seen him,\n                  But Rumor speaks of him as of a prodigy\n                  Pre-eminent in arts, and arms, and wealth,\n                  And high descent. We'll have him at the wedding.\n\n_Aless_.          I have heard much of this Politian.\n                  Gay, volatile and giddy--is he not,\n                  And little given to thinking?\n\n_Di Brog_.        Far from it, love.\n                  No branch, they say, of all philosophy\n                  So deep abstruse he has not mastered it.\n                  Learned as few are learned.\n\n_Aless_.          'Tis ve
    "author": "Edgar Allan Poe",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Edgar Allan Poe",
    "period": "1827–1849"
  },
  {
    "title": "Iii.",
    "body": "An Apartment in a Palace. POLITIAN and BALDAZZAR.\n\n\n_Baldazzar_.      Arouse thee now, Politian!\n                  Thou must not--nay indeed, indeed, thou shalt not\n                  Give way unto these humors. Be thyself!\n                  Shake off the idle fancies that beset thee\n                  And live, for now thou diest!\n\n_Politian_.       Not so, Baldazzar!\n                  _Surely_ I live.\n\n_Bal_.            Politian, it doth grieve me\n                  To see thee thus!\n\n_Pol_.            Baldazzar, it doth grieve me\n                  To give thee cause for grief, my honored friend.\n                  Command me, sir! what wouldst thou have me do?\n                  At thy behest I will shake off that nature\n                  Which from my forefathers I did inherit,\n                  Which with my mother's milk I did imbibe,\n                  And be no more Politian, but some other.\n                  Command me, sir!\n\n_Bal_.            To the field then--to the field--\n                  To the senate or the field.\n\n_Pol_.            Alas! alas!\n                  There is an imp would follow me even there!\n                  There is an imp _hath_ followed me even there!\n                  There is--what voice was that?\n\n_Bal_.            I heard it not.\n                  I heard not any voice except thine own,\n                  And the echo of thine own.\n\n_Pol_.            Then I but dreamed.\n\n_Bal_.            Give not thy soul to dreams: the camp--the court\n                  Befit thee--Fame awaits thee--Glory calls--\n                  And her the trumpet-tongued thou wilt not hear\n                  In hearkening to imaginary sounds\n                  And phantom voices.\n\n_Pol_.            It _is_ a phantom voice!\n                  Didst thou not hear it _then_?\n\n_Bal_             I heard it not.\n\n_Pol_.            Thou heardst it not!--Baldazzar, speak no more\n                  To me, Politian, of thy camps and courts.\n                  Oh! I am sick, sick, sick, even unto death,\n                  Of the hollow and high-sounding vanities\n                  Of the populous Earth! Bear with me yet awhile\n                  We have been boys together--school-fellows--\n                  And now are friends--yet shall not be so long--\n                  For in the Eternal City thou shalt do me\n                  A kind and gentle office, and a Power--\n                  A Power august, benignant, and supreme--\n                  Shall then absolve thee of all further duties\n                  Unto thy friend.\n\n_Bal_.            Thou speakest a fearful riddle\n                  I _will_ not understand.\n\n_Pol_.            Yet now as Fate\n                  Approaches, and the Hours are breathing low,\n                  The sands of Time are changed to golden grains,\n                  And dazzle me, Baldazzar. Alas! alas!\n                  I _cannot_ die, having within my heart\n                  So keen a relish for the beautiful\n                  As hath been kindled within it. Methinks the air\n                  Is balmier now than it was wont to be--\n                  Rich melodies are floating in the winds--\n                  A rarer loveliness bedecks the earth--\n                  And with a holier lustre the quiet moon\n                  Sitteth in Heaven.--Hist! hist! thou canst not say\n                  Thou hearest not _now_, Baldazzar?\n\n_Bal_.            Indeed I hear not.\n\n_Pol_.            Not hear it!--listen--now--listen!--the faintest sound\n                  And yet the sweetest that ear ever heard!\n                  A lady's voice!--and sorrow in the tone!\n                  Baldazzar, it oppresses me like a spell!\n                  Again!--again!--how solemnly it falls\n                  Into my heart of hearts! that eloquent voice\n                  Surely I never heard--yet it were well\n                  Had I _but_ heard it with its thrilling tones\n                  In earlier days!\n\n_Bal_.            I myself
    "author": "Edgar Allan Poe",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Edgar Allan Poe",
    "period": "1827–1849"
  },
  {
    "title": "Note On Politian",
    "body": "20. Such portions of \"Politian\" as are known to the public first saw the\nlight of publicity in the 'Southern Literary Messenger' for December\n1835 and January 1836, being styled \"Scenes from Politian; an\nunpublished drama.\" These scenes were included, unaltered, in the 1845\ncollection of Poems by Poe. The larger portion of the original draft\nsubsequently became the property of the present editor, but it is not\nconsidered just to the poet's memory to publish it. The work is a hasty\nand unrevised production of its author's earlier days of literary labor;\nand, beyond the scenes already known, scarcely calculated to enhance his\nreputation. As a specimen, however, of the parts unpublished, the\nfollowing fragment from the first scene of Act II. may be offered. The\nDuke, it should be premised, is uncle to Alessandra, and father of\nCastiglione her betrothed.\n\n\n\n_Duke_.           Why do you laugh?\n\n_Castiglione_.    Indeed.\n                  I hardly know myself. Stay! Was it not\n                  On yesterday we were speaking of the Earl?\n                  Of the Earl Politian? Yes! it was yesterday.\n                  Alessandra, you and I, you must remember!\n                  We were walking in the garden.\n\n_Duke_.           Perfectly.\n                  I do remember it--what of it--what then?\n\n_Cas_.            O nothing--nothing at all.\n\n_Duke_.           Nothing at all!\n                  It is most singular that you should laugh\n                  At nothing at all!\n\n_Cas_.            Most singular--singular!\n\n_Duke_.           Look yon, Castiglione, be so kind\n                  As tell me, sir, at once what 'tis you mean.\n                  What are you talking of?\n\n_Cas_.            Was it not so?\n                  We differed in opinion touching him.\n\n_Duke_.           Him!--Whom?\n\n_Cas_.            Why, sir, the Earl Politian.\n\n_Duke_.           The Earl of Leicester! Yes!--is it he you mean?\n                  We differed, indeed. If I now recollect\n                  The words you used were that the Earl you knew\n                  Was neither learned nor mirthful.\n\n_Cas_.            Ha! ha!--now did I?\n\n_Duke_.           That did you, sir, and well I knew at the time\n                  You were wrong, it being not the character\n                  Of the Earl--whom all the world allows to be\n                  A most hilarious man. Be not, my son,\n                  Too positive again.\n\n_Cas_.            'Tis singular!\n                  Most singular! I could not think it possible\n                  So little time could so much alter one!\n                  To say the truth about an hour ago,\n                  As I was walking with the Count San Ozzo,\n                  All arm in arm, we met this very man\n                  The Earl--he, with his friend Baldazzar,\n                  Having just arrived in Rome. Ha! ha! he _is_ altered!\n                  Such an account he gave me of his journey!\n                  'Twould have made you die with laughter--such tales he\n                    told\n                  Of his caprices and his merry freaks\n                  Along the road--such oddity--such humor--\n                  Such wit--such whim--such flashes of wild merriment\n                  Set off too in such full relief by the grave\n                  Demeanor of his friend--who, to speak the truth\n                  Was gravity itself--\n\n_Duke_.           Did I not tell you?\n\n_Cas_.            You did--and yet 'tis strange! but true, as strange,\n                  How much I was mistaken! I always thought\n                  The Earl a gloomy man.\n\n_Duke_.           So, so, you see!\n                  Be not too positive. Whom have we here?\n                  It cannot be the Earl?\n\n_Cas_.            The Earl! Oh no!\n                  Tis not the Earl--but yet it is--and leaning\n                  Upon his friend Baldazzar. Ah! welcome, sir!\n                  (_Enter Politian and Baldazzar_.)\n                  My lord, a second 
    "author": "Edgar Allan Poe",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Edgar Allan Poe",
    "period": "1827–1849"
  },
  {
    "title": "Poems Of Youth",
    "body": "       *       *       *       *       *",
    "author": "Edgar Allan Poe",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Edgar Allan Poe",
    "period": "1827–1849"
  },
  {
    "title": "\"Dear B--",
    "body": "...\n\nBelieving only a portion of my former volume to be worthy a second\nedition--that small portion I thought it as well to include in the\npresent book as to republish by itself. I have therefore herein combined\n'Al Aaraaf' and 'Tamerlane' with other poems hitherto unprinted. Nor\nhave I hesitated to insert from the 'Minor Poems,' now omitted, whole\nlines, and even passages, to the end that being placed in a fairer\nlight, and the trash shaken from them in which they were imbedded, they\nmay have some chance of being seen by posterity.\n\n\"It has been said that a good critique on a poem may be written by one\nwho is no poet himself. This, according to _your_ idea and _mine_ of\npoetry, I feel to be false--the less poetical the critic, the less just\nthe critique, and the converse. On this account, and because there are\nbut few B----s in the world, I would be as much ashamed of the world's\ngood opinion as proud of your own. Another than yourself might here\nobserve, 'Shakespeare is in possession of the world's good opinion, and\nyet Shakespeare is the greatest of poets. It appears then that the world\njudge correctly, why should you be ashamed of their favorable judgment?'\nThe difficulty lies in the interpretation of the word 'judgment' or\n'opinion.' The opinion is the world's, truly, but it may be called\ntheirs as a man would call a book his, having bought it; he did not\nwrite the book, but it is his; they did not originate the opinion, but\nit is theirs. A fool, for example, thinks Shakespeare a great poet--yet\nthe fool has never read Shakespeare. But the fool's neighbor, who is a\nstep higher on the Andes of the mind, whose head (that is to say, his\nmore exalted thought) is too far above the fool to be seen or\nunderstood, but whose feet (by which I mean his every-day actions) are\nsufficiently near to be discerned, and by means of which that\nsuperiority is ascertained, which _but_ for them would never have been\ndiscovered--this neighbor asserts that Shakespeare is a great poet--the\nfool believes him, and it is henceforward his _opinion_. This neighbor's\nown opinion has, in like manner, been adopted from one above _him_, and\nso, ascendingly, to a few gifted individuals who kneel around the\nsummit, beholding, face to face, the master spirit who stands upon the\npinnacle.\n\n\"You are aware of the great barrier in the path of an American writer.\nHe is read, if at all, in preference to the combined and established wit\nof the world. I say established; for it is with literature as with law\nor empire--an established name is an estate in tenure, or a throne in\npossession. Besides, one might suppose that books, like their authors,\nimprove by travel--their having crossed the sea is, with us, so great a\ndistinction. Our antiquaries abandon time for distance; our very fops\nglance from the binding to the bottom of the title-page, where the\nmystic characters which spell London, Paris, or Genoa, are precisely so\nmany letters of recommendation.\n\n\"I mentioned just now a vulgar error as regards criticism. I think the\nnotion that no poet can form a correct estimate of his own writings is\nanother. I remarked before that in proportion to the poetical talent\nwould be the justice of a critique upon poetry. Therefore a bad poet\nwould, I grant, make a false critique, and his self-love would\ninfallibly bias his little judgment in his favor; but a poet, who is\nindeed a poet, could not, I think, fail of making a just critique;\nwhatever should be deducted on the score of self-love might be replaced\non account of his intimate acquaintance with the subject; in short, we\nhave more instances of false criticism than of just where one's own\nwritings are the test, simply because we have more bad poets than good.\nThere are, of course, many objections to what I say: Milton is a great\nexample of the contrary; but his opinion with respect to the 'Paradise\nRegained' is by no means fairly ascertained. By what trivial\ncircumstances men are often led to assert what they do not really\nbelieve! Perhaps
    "author": "Edgar Allan Poe",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Edgar Allan Poe",
    "period": "1827–1849"
  },
  {
    "title": "Sonnet--To Science.",
    "body": "  SCIENCE! true daughter of Old Time thou art!\n    Who alterest all things with thy peering eyes.\n  Why preyest thou thus upon the poet's heart,\n    Vulture, whose wings are dull realities\n  How should he love thee? or how deem thee wise,\n    Who wouldst not leave him in his wandering\n  To seek for treasure in the jewelled skies,\n    Albeit he soared with an undaunted wing!\n  Hast thou not dragged Diana from her car?\n    And driven the Hamadryad from the wood\n  To seek a shelter in some happier star?\n    Hast thou not torn the Naiad from her flood,\n  The Elfin from the green grass, and from me\n  The summer dream beneath the tamarind tree?\n\n\n1829.\n\n\n\n\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\n\n\n\n\nPrivate reasons--some of which have reference to the sin of plagiarism,\nand others to the date of Tennyson's first poems [1]--have induced me,\nafter some hesitation, to republish these, the crude compositions of my\nearliest boyhood. They are printed 'verbatim'--without alteration from\nthe original edition--the date of which is too remote to be judiciously\nacknowledged.--E. A. P. (1845).\n\n\n\n[Footnote 1: This refers to the accusation brought against Edgar Poe\nthat he was a copyist of Tennyson.--Ed.]\n\n\n\n\n\n       *       *       *       *       *",
    "author": "Edgar Allan Poe",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Edgar Allan Poe",
    "period": "1827–1849"
  },
  {
    "title": "Part I.",
    "body": "  O! nothing earthly save the ray\n  (Thrown back from flowers) of Beauty's eye,\n  As in those gardens where the day\n  Springs from the gems of Circassy--\n  O! nothing earthly save the thrill\n  Of melody in woodland rill--\n  Or (music of the passion-hearted)\n  Joy's voice so peacefully departed\n  That like the murmur in the shell,\n  Its echo dwelleth and will dwell--\n  O! nothing of the dross of ours--\n  Yet all the beauty--all the flowers\n  That list our Love, and deck our bowers--\n  Adorn yon world afar, afar--\n  The wandering star.\n\n  'Twas a sweet time for Nesace--for there\n  Her world lay lolling on the golden air,\n  Near four bright suns--a temporary rest--\n  An oasis in desert of the blest.\n  Away away--'mid seas of rays that roll\n  Empyrean splendor o'er th' unchained soul--\n  The soul that scarce (the billows are so dense)\n  Can struggle to its destin'd eminence--\n  To distant spheres, from time to time, she rode,\n  And late to ours, the favour'd one of God--\n  But, now, the ruler of an anchor'd realm,\n  She throws aside the sceptre--leaves the helm,\n  And, amid incense and high spiritual hymns,\n  Laves in quadruple light her angel limbs.\n\n  Now happiest, loveliest in yon lovely Earth,\n  Whence sprang the \"Idea of Beauty\" into birth,\n  (Falling in wreaths thro' many a startled star,\n  Like woman's hair 'mid pearls, until, afar,\n  It lit on hills Achaian, and there dwelt),\n  She look'd into Infinity--and knelt.\n  Rich clouds, for canopies, about her curled--\n  Fit emblems of the model of her world--\n  Seen but in beauty--not impeding sight--\n  Of other beauty glittering thro' the light--\n  A wreath that twined each starry form around,\n  And all the opal'd air in color bound.\n\n  All hurriedly she knelt upon a bed\n  Of flowers: of lilies such as rear'd the head\n  On the fair Capo Deucato [2], and sprang\n  So eagerly around about to hang\n  Upon the flying footsteps of--deep pride--\n  Of her who lov'd a mortal--and so died [3].\n  The Sephalica, budding with young bees,\n  Uprear'd its purple stem around her knees:\n  And gemmy flower, of Trebizond misnam'd [4]--\n  Inmate of highest stars, where erst it sham'd\n  All other loveliness: its honied dew\n  (The fabled nectar that the heathen knew)\n  Deliriously sweet, was dropp'd from Heaven,\n  And fell on gardens of the unforgiven\n  In Trebizond--and on a sunny flower\n  So like its own above that, to this hour,\n  It still remaineth, torturing the bee\n  With madness, and unwonted reverie:\n  In Heaven, and all its environs, the leaf\n  And blossom of the fairy plant, in grief\n  Disconsolate linger--grief that hangs her head,\n  Repenting follies that full long have fled,\n  Heaving her white breast to the balmy air,\n  Like guilty beauty, chasten'd, and more fair:\n  Nyctanthes too, as sacred as the light\n  She fears to perfume, perfuming the night:\n  And Clytia [5] pondering between many a sun,\n  While pettish tears adown her petals run:\n  And that aspiring flower that sprang on Earth [6]--\n  And died, ere scarce exalted into birth,\n  Bursting its odorous heart in spirit to wing\n  Its way to Heaven, from garden of a king:\n  And Valisnerian lotus thither flown [7]\n  From struggling with the waters of the Rhone:\n  And thy most lovely purple perfume, Zante [8]!\n  Isola d'oro!--Fior di Levante!\n  And the Nelumbo bud that floats for ever [9]\n  With Indian Cupid down the holy river--\n  Fair flowers, and fairy! to whose care is given\n  To bear the Goddess' song, in odors, up to Heaven [10]:\n\n    \"Spirit! that dwellest where,\n      In the deep sky,\n    The terrible and fair,\n      In beauty vie!\n    Beyond the line of blue--\n      The boundary of the star\n    Which turneth at the view\n      Of thy barrier and thy bar--\n    Of the barrier overgone\n      By the comets who were cast\n    From their pride, and from their throne\n      To be drudges till the last--\n    To be carriers of fire\n      (The red fire of their heart)\n    With speed that may not tire\n      And with pain th
    "author": "Edgar Allan Poe",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Edgar Allan Poe",
    "period": "1827–1849"
  },
  {
    "title": "Part Ii.",
    "body": "  High on a mountain of enamell'd head--\n  Such as the drowsy shepherd on his bed\n  Of giant pasturage lying at his ease,\n  Raising his heavy eyelid, starts and sees\n  With many a mutter'd \"hope to be forgiven\"\n  What time the moon is quadrated in Heaven--\n  Of rosy head, that towering far away\n  Into the sunlit ether, caught the ray\n  Of sunken suns at eve--at noon of night,\n  While the moon danc'd with the fair stranger light--\n  Uprear'd upon such height arose a pile\n  Of gorgeous columns on th' uuburthen'd air,\n  Flashing from Parian marble that twin smile\n  Far down upon the wave that sparkled there,\n  And nursled the young mountain in its lair.\n  Of molten stars their pavement, such as fall [16]\n  Thro' the ebon air, besilvering the pall\n  Of their own dissolution, while they die--\n  Adorning then the dwellings of the sky.\n  A dome, by linked light from Heaven let down,\n  Sat gently on these columns as a crown--\n  A window of one circular diamond, there,\n  Look'd out above into the purple air\n  And rays from God shot down that meteor chain\n  And hallow'd all the beauty twice again,\n  Save when, between th' Empyrean and that ring,\n  Some eager spirit flapp'd his dusky wing.\n  But on the pillars Seraph eyes have seen\n  The dimness of this world: that grayish green\n  That Nature loves the best for Beauty's grave\n  Lurk'd in each cornice, round each architrave--\n  And every sculptured cherub thereabout\n  That from his marble dwelling peered out,\n  Seem'd earthly in the shadow of his niche--\n  Achaian statues in a world so rich?\n  Friezes from Tadmor and Persepolis [17]--\n  From Balbec, and the stilly, clear abyss\n  Of beautiful Gomorrah! Oh, the wave [18]\n  Is now upon thee--but too late to save!\n  Sound loves to revel in a summer night:\n  Witness the murmur of the gray twilight\n  That stole upon the ear, in Eyraco [19],\n  Of many a wild star-gazer long ago--\n  That stealeth ever on the ear of him\n  Who, musing, gazeth on the distance dim,\n  And sees the darkness coming as a cloud--\n  Is not its form--its voice--most palpable and loud?  [20]\n   But what is this?--it cometh--and it brings\n  A music with it--'tis the rush of wings--\n  A pause--and then a sweeping, falling strain,\n  And Nesace is in her halls again.\n  From the wild energy of wanton haste\n  Her cheeks were flushing, and her lips apart;\n  The zone that clung around her gentle waist\n  Had burst beneath the heaving of her heart.\n  Within the centre of that hall to breathe\n  She paus'd and panted, Zanthe! all beneath,\n  The fairy light that kiss'd her golden hair\n  And long'd to rest, yet could but sparkle there!\n\n  Young flowers were whispering in melody [21]\n  To happy flowers that night--and tree to tree;\n  Fountains were gushing music as they fell\n  In many a star-lit grove, or moon-light dell;\n  Yet silence came upon material things--\n  Fair flowers, bright waterfalls and angel wings--\n  And sound alone that from the spirit sprang\n  Bore burthen to the charm the maiden sang:\n\n    \"Neath blue-bell or streamer--\n      Or tufted wild spray\n    That keeps, from the dreamer,\n      The moonbeam away--[22]\n    Bright beings! that ponder,\n      With half-closing eyes,\n    On the stars which your wonder\n      Hath drawn from the skies,\n    Till they glance thro' the shade, and\n      Come down to your brow\n    Like--eyes of the maiden\n      Who calls on you now--\n    Arise! from your dreaming\n      In violet bowers,\n    To duty beseeming\n      These star-litten hours--\n    And shake from your tresses\n      Encumber'd with dew\n\n    The breath of those kisses\n      That cumber them too--\n    (O! how, without you, Love!\n      Could angels be blest?)\n    Those kisses of true love\n      That lull'd ye to rest!\n    Up! shake from your wing\n      Each hindering thing:\n    The dew of the night--\n      It would weigh down your flight;\n    And true love caresses--\n      O! leave them apart!\n    They are light on the tresses,\n      But lead on the heart.\n\n  
    "author": "Edgar Allan Poe",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Edgar Allan Poe",
    "period": "1827–1849"
  },
  {
    "title": "Tamerlane.",
    "body": "  Kind solace in a dying hour!\n  Such, father, is not (now) my theme--\n  I will not madly deem that power\n  Of Earth may shrive me of the sin\n  Unearthly pride hath revelled in--\n  I have no time to dote or dream:\n  You call it hope--that fire of fire!\n  It is but agony of desire:\n  If I _can_ hope--O God! I can--\n  Its fount is holier--more divine--\n  I would not call thee fool, old man,\n  But such is not a gift of thine.\n\n  Know thou the secret of a spirit\n  Bowed from its wild pride into shame\n  O yearning heart! I did inherit\n  Thy withering portion with the fame,\n  The searing glory which hath shone\n  Amid the Jewels of my throne,\n  Halo of Hell! and with a pain\n  Not Hell shall make me fear again--\n  O craving heart, for the lost flowers\n  And sunshine of my summer hours!\n  The undying voice of that dead time,\n  With its interminable chime,\n  Rings, in the spirit of a spell,\n  Upon thy emptiness--a knell.\n\n  I have not always been as now:\n  The fevered diadem on my brow\n  I claimed and won usurpingly--\n  Hath not the same fierce heirdom given\n  Rome to the Cæsar--this to me?\n  The heritage of a kingly mind,\n  And a proud spirit which hath striven\n  Triumphantly with human kind.\n  On mountain soil I first drew life:\n  The mists of the Taglay have shed\n  Nightly their dews upon my head,\n  And, I believe, the winged strife\n  And tumult of the headlong air\n  Have nestled in my very hair.\n\n  So late from Heaven--that dew--it fell\n  ('Mid dreams of an unholy night)\n  Upon me with the touch of Hell,\n  While the red flashing of the light\n  From clouds that hung, like banners, o'er,\n  Appeared to my half-closing eye\n  The pageantry of monarchy;\n  And the deep trumpet-thunder's roar\n  Came hurriedly upon me, telling\n  Of human battle, where my voice,\n  My own voice, silly child!--was swelling\n  (O! how my spirit would rejoice,\n  And leap within me at the cry)\n  The battle-cry of Victory!\n\n  The rain came down upon my head\n  Unsheltered--and the heavy wind\n  Rendered me mad and deaf and blind.\n  It was but man, I thought, who shed\n  Laurels upon me: and the rush--\n  The torrent of the chilly air\n  Gurgled within my ear the crush\n  Of empires--with the captive's prayer--\n  The hum of suitors--and the tone\n  Of flattery 'round a sovereign's throne.\n\n  My passions, from that hapless hour,\n  Usurped a tyranny which men\n  Have deemed since I have reached to power,\n  My innate nature--be it so:\n  But, father, there lived one who, then,\n  Then--in my boyhood--when their fire\n  Burned with a still intenser glow\n  (For passion must, with youth, expire)\n  E'en _then_ who knew this iron heart\n  In woman's weakness had a part.\n\n  I have no words--alas!--to tell\n  The loveliness of loving well!\n  Nor would I now attempt to trace\n  The more than beauty of a face\n  Whose lineaments, upon my mind,\n  Are--shadows on th' unstable wind:\n  Thus I remember having dwelt\n  Some page of early lore upon,\n  With loitering eye, till I have felt\n  The letters--with their meaning--melt\n  To fantasies--with none.\n\n  O, she was worthy of all love!\n  Love as in infancy was mine--\n  'Twas such as angel minds above\n  Might envy; her young heart the shrine\n  On which my every hope and thought\n  Were incense--then a goodly gift,\n  For they were childish and upright--\n  Pure--as her young example taught:\n  Why did I leave it, and, adrift,\n  Trust to the fire within, for light?\n\n  We grew in age--and love--together--\n  Roaming the forest, and the wild;\n  My breast her shield in wintry weather--\n  And, when the friendly sunshine smiled.\n  And she would mark the opening skies,\n  _I_ saw no Heaven--but in her eyes.\n  Young Love's first lesson is----the heart:\n  For 'mid that sunshine, and those smiles,\n  When, from our little cares apart,\n  And laughing at her girlish wiles,\n  I'd throw me on her throbbing breast,\n  And pour my spirit out in tears--\n  There was no need to speak the rest--\n  No need to quiet any fears\n  Of her--who asked
    "author": "Edgar Allan Poe",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Edgar Allan Poe",
    "period": "1827–1849"
  },
  {
    "title": "To Helen.",
    "body": "  Helen, thy beauty is to me\n    Like those Nicean barks of yore,\n  That gently, o'er a perfumed sea,\n    The weary, wayworn wanderer bore\n    To his own native shore.\n\n  On desperate seas long wont to roam,\n    Thy hyacinth hair, thy classic face,\n  Thy Naiad airs have brought me home\n    To the glory that was Greece,\n  To the grandeur that was Rome.\n\n  Lo! in yon brilliant window niche,\n    How statue-like I see thee stand,\n    The agate lamp within thy hand!\n  Ah, Psyche, from the regions which\n    Are Holy Land!\n\n1831.\n\n\n\n\n\n       *       *       *       *       *",
    "author": "Edgar Allan Poe",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Edgar Allan Poe",
    "period": "1827–1849"
  },
  {
    "title": "The Valley Of Unrest.",
    "body": "  _Once_ it smiled a silent dell\n  Where the people did not dwell;\n  They had gone unto the wars,\n  Trusting to the mild-eyed stars,\n  Nightly, from their azure towers,\n  To keep watch above the flowers,\n  In the midst of which all day\n  The red sun-light lazily lay,\n  _Now_ each visitor shall confess\n  The sad valley's restlessness.\n  Nothing there is motionless--\n  Nothing save the airs that brood\n  Over the magic solitude.\n  Ah, by no wind are stirred those trees\n  That palpitate like the chill seas\n  Around the misty Hebrides!\n  Ah, by no wind those clouds are driven\n  That rustle through the unquiet Heaven\n  Unceasingly, from morn till even,\n  Over the violets there that lie\n  In myriad types of the human eye--\n  Over the lilies that wave\n  And weep above a nameless grave!\n  They wave:--from out their fragrant tops\n  Eternal dews come down in drops.\n  They weep:--from off their delicate stems\n  Perennial tears descend in gems.\n\n\n1831.\n\n\n\n\n\n       *       *       *       *       *",
    "author": "Edgar Allan Poe",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Edgar Allan Poe",
    "period": "1827–1849"
  },
  {
    "title": "Israfel. [1]",
    "body": "  In Heaven a spirit doth dwell\n    \"Whose heart-strings are a lute;\"\n  None sing so wildly well\n  As the angel Israfel,\n  And the giddy Stars (so legends tell),\n  Ceasing their hymns, attend the spell\n    Of his voice, all mute.\n\n  Tottering above\n    In her highest noon,\n    The enamoured Moon\n  Blushes with love,\n    While, to listen, the red levin\n    (With the rapid Pleiads, even,\n    Which were seven),\n    Pauses in Heaven.\n\n  And they say (the starry choir\n    And the other listening things)\n  That Israfeli's fire\n  Is owing to that lyre\n    By which he sits and sings--\n  The trembling living wire\n  Of those unusual strings.\n\n  But the skies that angel trod,\n    Where deep thoughts are a duty--\n  Where Love's a grow-up God--\n    Where the Houri glances are\n  Imbued with all the beauty\n    Which we worship in a star.\n\n  Therefore, thou art not wrong,\n    Israfeli, who despisest\n  An unimpassioned song;\n  To thee the laurels belong,\n    Best bard, because the wisest!\n  Merrily live and long!\n\n  The ecstasies above\n    With thy burning measures suit--\n  Thy grief, thy joy, thy hate, thy love,\n    With the fervor of thy lute--\n    Well may the stars be mute!\n\n  Yes, Heaven is thine; but this\n    Is a world of sweets and sours;\n    Our flowers are merely--flowers,\n  And the shadow of thy perfect bliss\n    Is the sunshine of ours.\n\n  If I could dwell\n  Where Israfel\n    Hath dwelt, and he where I,\n  He might not sing so wildly well\n    A mortal melody,\n  While a bolder note than this might swell\n    From my lyre within the sky.\n\n\n1836.\n\n\n\n[Footnote 1:\n\n  And the angel Israfel, whose heart-strings are a lute, and who has the\n  sweetest voice of all God's creatures.\n\n'Koran'.]\n\n\n\n\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\n\n\n\n\nTO----\n\n\n  I heed not that my earthly lot\n    Hath--little of Earth in it--\n  That years of love have been forgot\n    In the hatred of a minute:--\n  I mourn not that the desolate\n    Are happier, sweet, than I,\n  But that _you_ sorrow for _my_ fate\n    Who am a passer-by.\n\n\n1829.\n\n\n\n\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\n\n\n\n\nTO----\n\n\n  The bowers whereat, in dreams, I see\n    The wantonest singing birds,\n\n  Are lips--and all thy melody\n    Of lip-begotten words--\n\n  Thine eyes, in Heaven of heart enshrined\n    Then desolately fall,\n  O God! on my funereal mind\n    Like starlight on a pall--\n\n  Thy heart--_thy_ heart!--I wake and sigh,\n    And sleep to dream till day\n  Of the truth that gold can never buy--\n    Of the baubles that it may.\n\n\n1829.\n\n\n\n\n\n       *       *       *       *       *",
    "author": "Edgar Allan Poe",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Edgar Allan Poe",
    "period": "1827–1849"
  },
  {
    "title": "To The River",
    "body": "  Fair river! in thy bright, clear flow\n    Of crystal, wandering water,\n  Thou art an emblem of the glow\n        Of beauty--the unhidden heart--\n        The playful maziness of art\n    In old Alberto's daughter;\n\n  But when within thy wave she looks--\n    Which glistens then, and trembles--\n  Why, then, the prettiest of brooks\n    Her worshipper resembles;\n  For in his heart, as in thy stream,\n    Her image deeply lies--\n  His heart which trembles at the beam\n    Of her soul-searching eyes.\n\n\n1829.\n\n\n\n\n\n       *       *       *       *       *",
    "author": "Edgar Allan Poe",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Edgar Allan Poe",
    "period": "1827–1849"
  },
  {
    "title": "Song.",
    "body": "  I saw thee on thy bridal day--\n    When a burning blush came o'er thee,\n  Though happiness around thee lay,\n    The world all love before thee:\n\n  And in thine eye a kindling light\n    (Whatever it might be)\n  Was all on Earth my aching sight\n    Of Loveliness could see.\n\n  That blush, perhaps, was maiden shame--\n    As such it well may pass--\n  Though its glow hath raised a fiercer flame\n    In the breast of him, alas!\n\n  Who saw thee on that bridal day,\n    When that deep blush _would_ come o'er thee,\n  Though happiness around thee lay,\n    The world all love before thee.\n\n\n1827.\n\n\n\n\n\n       *       *       *       *       *",
    "author": "Edgar Allan Poe",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Edgar Allan Poe",
    "period": "1827–1849"
  },
  {
    "title": "Spirits Of The Dead.",
    "body": "  Thy soul shall find itself alone\n  'Mid dark thoughts of the gray tombstone\n  Not one, of all the crowd, to pry\n  Into thine hour of secrecy.\n  Be silent in that solitude\n    Which is not loneliness--for then\n  The spirits of the dead who stood\n    In life before thee are again\n  In death around thee--and their will\n  Shall overshadow thee: be still.\n  The night--tho' clear--shall frown--\n  And the stars shall not look down\n  From their high thrones in the Heaven,\n  With light like Hope to mortals given--\n  But their red orbs, without beam,\n  To thy weariness shall seem\n  As a burning and a fever\n  Which would cling to thee forever.\n  Now are thoughts thou shalt not banish--\n  Now are visions ne'er to vanish--\n  From thy spirit shall they pass\n  No more--like dew-drops from the grass.\n  The breeze--the breath of God--is still--\n  And the mist upon the hill\n  Shadowy--shadowy--yet unbroken,\n    Is a symbol and a token--\n    How it hangs upon the trees,\n    A mystery of mysteries!\n\n\n1837.\n\n\n\n\n\n       *       *       *       *       *",
    "author": "Edgar Allan Poe",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Edgar Allan Poe",
    "period": "1827–1849"
  },
  {
    "title": "A Dream.",
    "body": "  In visions of the dark night\n    I have dreamed of joy departed--\n  But a waking dream of life and light\n    Hath left me broken-hearted.\n\n  Ah! what is not a dream by day\n    To him whose eyes are cast\n  On things around him with a ray\n    Turned back upon the past?\n\n  That holy dream--that holy dream,\n    While all the world were chiding,\n  Hath cheered me as a lovely beam,\n    A lonely spirit guiding.\n\n  What though that light, thro' storm and night,\n    So trembled from afar--\n  What could there be more purely bright\n    In Truth's day star?\n\n\n1837.\n\n\n\n\n\n       *       *       *       *       *",
    "author": "Edgar Allan Poe",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Edgar Allan Poe",
    "period": "1827–1849"
  },
  {
    "title": "Romance.",
    "body": "  Romance, who loves to nod and sing,\n  With drowsy head and folded wing,\n  Among the green leaves as they shake\n  Far down within some shadowy lake,\n  To me a painted paroquet\n  Hath been--a most familiar bird--\n  Taught me my alphabet to say--\n  To lisp my very earliest word\n  While in the wild wood I did lie,\n  A child--with a most knowing eye.\n\n  Of late, eternal Condor years\n  So shake the very Heaven on high\n  With tumult as they thunder by,\n  I have no time for idle cares\n  Though gazing on the unquiet sky.\n  And when an hour with calmer wings\n  Its down upon my spirit flings--\n  That little time with lyre and rhyme\n  To while away--forbidden things!\n  My heart would feel to be a crime\n  Unless it trembled with the strings.\n\n\n1829.\n\n\n\n\n\n       *       *       *       *       *",
    "author": "Edgar Allan Poe",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Edgar Allan Poe",
    "period": "1827–1849"
  },
  {
    "title": "Fairyland.",
    "body": "  Dim vales--and shadowy floods--\n  And cloudy-looking woods,\n  Whose forms we can't discover\n  For the tears that drip all over\n  Huge moons there wax and wane--\n  Again--again--again--\n  Every moment of the night--\n  Forever changing places--\n  And they put out the star-light\n  With the breath from their pale faces.\n  About twelve by the moon-dial\n  One more filmy than the rest\n  (A kind which, upon trial,\n  They have found to be the best)\n  Comes down--still down--and down\n  With its centre on the crown\n  Of a mountain's eminence,\n  While its wide circumference\n  In easy drapery falls\n  Over hamlets, over halls,\n  Wherever they may be--\n  O'er the strange woods--o'er the sea--\n  Over spirits on the wing--\n  Over every drowsy thing--\n  And buries them up quite\n  In a labyrinth of light--\n  And then, how deep!--O, deep!\n  Is the passion of their sleep.\n  In the morning they arise,\n  And their moony covering\n  Is soaring in the skies,\n  With the tempests as they toss,\n  Like--almost any thing--\n  Or a yellow Albatross.\n  They use that moon no more\n  For the same end as before--\n  Videlicet a tent--\n  Which I think extravagant:\n  Its atomies, however,\n  Into a shower dissever,\n  Of which those butterflies,\n  Of Earth, who seek the skies,\n  And so come down again\n  (Never-contented thing!)\n  Have brought a specimen\n  Upon their quivering wings.\n\n\n1831\n\n\n\n\n\n       *       *       *       *       *",
    "author": "Edgar Allan Poe",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Edgar Allan Poe",
    "period": "1827–1849"
  },
  {
    "title": "The Lake.",
    "body": "  In spring of youth it was my lot\n  To haunt of the wide world a spot\n  The which I could not love the less--\n  So lovely was the loneliness\n  Of a wild lake, with black rock bound,\n  And the tall pines that towered around.\n\n  But when the Night had thrown her pall\n  Upon the spot, as upon all,\n  And the mystic wind went by\n  Murmuring in melody--\n  Then--ah, then, I would awake\n  To the terror of the lone lake.\n\n  Yet that terror was not fright,\n  But a tremulous delight--\n  A feeling not the jewelled mine\n  Could teach or bribe me to define--\n  Nor Love--although the Love were thine.\n\n  Death was in that poisonous wave,\n  And in its gulf a fitting grave\n  For him who thence could solace bring\n  To his lone imagining--\n  Whose solitary soul could make\n  An Eden of that dim lake.\n\n\n1827.\n\n\n\n\n\n       *       *       *       *       *",
    "author": "Edgar Allan Poe",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Edgar Allan Poe",
    "period": "1827–1849"
  },
  {
    "title": "Evening Star.",
    "body": "  'Twas noontide of summer,\n    And midtime of night,\n  And stars, in their orbits,\n    Shone pale, through the light\n  Of the brighter, cold moon.\n    'Mid planets her slaves,\n  Herself in the Heavens,\n    Her beam on the waves.\n\n    I gazed awhile\n    On her cold smile;\n  Too cold--too cold for me--\n    There passed, as a shroud,\n    A fleecy cloud,\n  And I turned away to thee,\n    Proud Evening Star,\n    In thy glory afar\n  And dearer thy beam shall be;\n    For joy to my heart\n    Is the proud part\n  Thou bearest in Heaven at night,\n    And more I admire\n    Thy distant fire,\n  Than that colder, lowly light.\n\n\n1827.\n\n\n\n\n\n       *       *       *       *       *",
    "author": "Edgar Allan Poe",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Edgar Allan Poe",
    "period": "1827–1849"
  },
  {
    "title": "Imitation.",
    "body": "  A dark unfathomed tide\n  Of interminable pride--\n  A mystery, and a dream,\n  Should my early life seem;\n  I say that dream was fraught\n  With a wild and waking thought\n  Of beings that have been,\n  Which my spirit hath not seen,\n  Had I let them pass me by,\n  With a dreaming eye!\n  Let none of earth inherit\n  That vision on my spirit;\n  Those thoughts I would control,\n  As a spell upon his soul:\n  For that bright hope at last\n  And that light time have past,\n  And my wordly rest hath gone\n  With a sigh as it passed on:\n  I care not though it perish\n  With a thought I then did cherish.\n\n\n1827.\n\n\n\n\n\n       *       *       *       *       *",
    "author": "Edgar Allan Poe",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Edgar Allan Poe",
    "period": "1827–1849"
  },
  {
    "title": "\"The Happiest Day.\"",
    "body": "     I.       The happiest day--the happiest hour\n                My seared and blighted heart hath known,\n              The highest hope of pride and power,\n                I feel hath flown.\n\n\n     II.      Of power! said I? Yes! such I ween\n                But they have vanished long, alas!\n              The visions of my youth have been--\n                But let them pass.\n\n\n     III.     And pride, what have I now with thee?\n                Another brow may ev'n inherit\n              The venom thou hast poured on me--\n                Be still my spirit!\n\n\n     IV.      The happiest day--the happiest hour\n                Mine eyes shall see--have ever seen\n              The brightest glance of pride and power\n                I feel have been:\n\n\n     V.       But were that hope of pride and power\n                Now offered with the pain\n              Ev'n _then_ I felt--that brightest hour\n                I would not live again:\n\n     VI.      For on its wing was dark alloy\n                And as it fluttered--fell\n              An essence--powerful to destroy\n                A soul that knew it well.\n\n\n1827.\n\n\n\n\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\n\n\n\n\nTranslation from the Greek.",
    "author": "Edgar Allan Poe",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Edgar Allan Poe",
    "period": "1827–1849"
  },
  {
    "title": "Hymn To Aristogeiton And Harmodius.",
    "body": "  I.      Wreathed in myrtle, my sword I'll conceal,\n            Like those champions devoted and brave,\n          When they plunged in the tyrant their steel,\n            And to Athens deliverance gave.\n\n  II.     Beloved heroes! your deathless souls roam\n            In the joy breathing isles of the blest;\n          Where the mighty of old have their home--\n            Where Achilles and Diomed rest.\n\n  III.    In fresh myrtle my blade I'll entwine,\n            Like Harmodius, the gallant and good,\n          When he made at the tutelar shrine\n            A libation of Tyranny's blood.\n\n  IV.     Ye deliverers of Athens from shame!\n            Ye avengers of Liberty's wrongs!\n          Endless ages shall cherish your fame,\n            Embalmed in their echoing songs!\n\n1827\n\n\n\n\n\n       *       *       *       *       *",
    "author": "Edgar Allan Poe",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Edgar Allan Poe",
    "period": "1827–1849"
  },
  {
    "title": "Dreams.",
    "body": "  Oh! that my young life were a lasting dream!\n  My spirit not awakening, till the beam\n  Of an Eternity should bring the morrow.\n  Yes! though that long dream were of hopeless sorrow,\n  'Twere better than the cold reality\n  Of waking life, to him whose heart must be,\n  And hath been still, upon the lovely earth,\n  A chaos of deep passion, from his birth.\n  But should it be--that dream eternally\n  Continuing--as dreams have been to me\n  In my young boyhood--should it thus be given,\n  'Twere folly still to hope for higher Heaven.\n  For I have revelled when the sun was bright\n  I' the summer sky, in dreams of living light\n  And loveliness,--have left my very heart\n  Inclines of my imaginary apart [1]\n  From mine own home, with beings that have been\n  Of mine own thought--what more could I have seen?\n  'Twas once--and only once--and the wild hour\n  From my remembrance shall not pass--some power\n  Or spell had bound me--'twas the chilly wind\n  Came o'er me in the night, and left behind\n  Its image on my spirit--or the moon\n  Shone on my slumbers in her lofty noon\n  Too coldly--or the stars--howe'er it was\n  That dream was that that night-wind--let it pass.\n  _I have been_ happy, though in a dream.\n  I have been happy--and I love the theme:\n  Dreams! in their vivid coloring of life\n  As in that fleeting, shadowy, misty strife\n  Of semblance with reality which brings\n  To the delirious eye, more lovely things\n  Of Paradise and Love--and all my own!--\n  Than young Hope in his sunniest hour hath known.\n\n\n\n[Footnote 1: In climes of mine imagining apart?--Ed.]\n\n\n\n\n\n       *       *       *       *       *",
    "author": "Edgar Allan Poe",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Edgar Allan Poe",
    "period": "1827–1849"
  },
  {
    "title": "\"In Youth I Have Known One.\"",
    "body": "          _How often we forget all time, when lone\n          Admiring Nature's universal throne;\n          Her woods--her wilds--her mountains--the intense\n          Reply of Hers to Our intelligence!_\n\n\nI.        In youth I have known one with whom the Earth\n            In secret communing held--as he with it,\n          In daylight, and in beauty, from his birth:\n            Whose fervid, flickering torch of life was lit\n          From the sun and stars, whence he had drawn forth\n            A passionate light such for his spirit was fit--\n          And yet that spirit knew--not in the hour\n            Of its own fervor--what had o'er it power.\n\n\nII.       Perhaps it may be that my mind is wrought\n            To a ferver [1] by the moonbeam that hangs o'er,\n          But I will half believe that wild light fraught\n            With more of sovereignty than ancient lore\n          Hath ever told--or is it of a thought\n            The unembodied essence, and no more\n          That with a quickening spell doth o'er us pass\n            As dew of the night-time, o'er the summer grass?\n\n\nIII.      Doth o'er us pass, when, as th' expanding eye\n            To the loved object--so the tear to the lid\n          Will start, which lately slept in apathy?\n            And yet it need not be--(that object) hid\n          From us in life--but common--which doth lie\n            Each hour before us--but then only bid\n          With a strange sound, as of a harp-string broken\n            T' awake us--'Tis a symbol and a token--\n\n\nIV.       Of what in other worlds shall be--and given\n            In beauty by our God, to those alone\n          Who otherwise would fall from life and Heaven\n            Drawn by their heart's passion, and that tone,\n          That high tone of the spirit which hath striven\n            Though not with Faith--with godliness--whose throne\n          With desperate energy 't hath beaten down;\n            Wearing its own deep feeling as a crown.\n\n\n\n[Footnote 1: Query \"fervor\"?--Ed.]\n\n\n\n\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\n\n\n\n\nA PÆAN.\n\n\n\nI.        How shall the burial rite be read?\n            The solemn song be sung?\n          The requiem for the loveliest dead,\n            That ever died so young?\n\n\nII.       Her friends are gazing on her,\n            And on her gaudy bier,\n          And weep!--oh! to dishonor\n            Dead beauty with a tear!\n\n\nIII.     They loved her for her wealth--\n           And they hated her for her pride--\n          But she grew in feeble health,\n            And they _love_ her--that she died.\n\n\nIV.      They tell me (while they speak\n           Of her \"costly broider'd pall\")\n         That my voice is growing weak--\n           That I should not sing at all--\n\n\nV.       Or that my tone should be\n           Tun'd to such solemn song\n         So mournfully--so mournfully,\n           That the dead may feel no wrong.\n\n\nVI.      But she is gone above,\n           With young Hope at her side,\n         And I am drunk with love\n           Of the dead, who is my bride.--\n\nVII.     Of the dead--dead who lies\n           All perfum'd there,\n         With the death upon her eyes.\n           And the life upon her hair.\n\n\nVIII.    Thus on the coffin loud and long\n           I strike--the murmur sent\n         Through the gray chambers to my song,\n           Shall be the accompaniment.\n\n\nIX.      Thou diedst in thy life's June--\n           But thou didst not die too fair:\n         Thou didst not die too soon,\n           Nor with too calm an air.\n\n\nX.       From more than friends on earth,\n           Thy life and love are riven,\n         To join the untainted mirth\n           Of more than thrones in heaven.--\n\n\nXI.      Therefore, to thee this night\n           I will no requiem raise,\n         But waft thee on thy flight,\n           With a Pæan of old days.\n\n\n\n\n\n       *       *       *       *       *",
    "author": "Edgar Allan Poe",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Edgar Allan Poe",
    "period": "1827–1849"
  },
  {
    "title": "Al Aaraaf.",
    "body": "  Mysterious star!\n  Thou wert my dream\n  All a long summer night--\n  Be now my theme!\n  By this clear stream,\n  Of thee will I write;\n  Meantime from afar\n  Bathe me in light!\n\n  Thy world has not the dross of ours,\n  Yet all the beauty--all the flowers\n  That list our love or deck our bowers\n  In dreamy gardens, where do lie\n  Dreamy maidens all the day;\n  While the silver winds of Circassy\n  On violet couches faint away.\n  Little--oh! little dwells in thee\n  Like unto what on earth we see:\n  Beauty's eye is here the bluest\n  In the falsest and untruest--\n  On the sweetest air doth float\n  The most sad and solemn note--\n  If with thee be broken hearts,\n  Joy so peacefully departs,\n  That its echo still doth dwell,\n  Like the murmur in the shell.\n  Thou! thy truest type of grief\n  Is the gently falling leaf--\n  Thou! thy framing is so holy\n  Sorrow is not melancholy.\n\n\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\n\n\n31. The earliest version of \"Tamerlane\" was included in the suppressed\nvolume of 1827, but differs very considerably from the poem as now\npublished. The present draft, besides innumerable verbal alterations and\nimprovements upon the original, is more carefully punctuated, and, the\nlines being indented, presents a more pleasing appearance, to the eye at\nleast.\n\n\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\n\n\n32. \"To Helen\" first appeared in the 1831 volume, as did also \"The\nValley of Unrest\" (as \"The Valley Nis\"), \"Israfel,\" and one or two\nothers of the youthful pieces.\n\nThe poem styled \"Romance\" constituted the Preface of the 1829 volume,\nbut with the addition of the following lines:\n\n\n  Succeeding years, too wild for song,\n  Then rolled like tropic storms along,\n  Where, though the garish lights that fly\n  Dying along the troubled sky,\n  Lay bare, through vistas thunder-riven,\n  The blackness of the general Heaven,\n  That very blackness yet doth fling\n  Light on the lightning's silver wing.\n\n  For being an idle boy lang syne,\n  Who read Anacreon and drank wine,\n  I early found Anacreon rhymes\n  Were almost passionate sometimes--\n  And by strange alchemy of brain\n  His pleasures always turned to pain--\n  His naïveté to wild desire--\n  His wit to love--his wine to fire--\n  And so, being young and dipt in folly,\n  I fell in love with melancholy.\n\n  And used to throw my earthly rest\n  And quiet all away in jest--\n  I could not love except where Death\n  Was mingling his with Beauty's breath--\n  Or Hymen, Time, and Destiny,\n  Were stalking between her and me.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\n  But _now_ my soul hath too much room--\n  Gone are the glory and the gloom--\n  The black hath mellow'd into gray,\n  And all the fires are fading away.\n\n  My draught of passion hath been deep--\n  I revell'd, and I now would sleep--\n  And after drunkenness of soul\n  Succeeds the glories of the bowl--\n  An idle longing night and day\n  To dream my very life away.\n\n  But dreams--of those who dream as I,\n  Aspiringly, are damned, and die:\n  Yet should I swear I mean alone,\n  By notes so very shrilly blown,\n  To break upon Time's monotone,\n  While yet my vapid joy and grief\n  Are tintless of the yellow leaf--\n  Why not an imp the greybeard hath,\n  Will shake his shadow in my path--\n  And e'en the greybeard will o'erlook\n  Connivingly my dreaming-book.\n\n\n\n\n\n       *       *       *       *       *",
    "author": "Edgar Allan Poe",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Edgar Allan Poe",
    "period": "1827–1849"
  },
  {
    "title": "Doubtful Poems.",
    "body": "       *       *       *       *       *",
    "author": "Edgar Allan Poe",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Edgar Allan Poe",
    "period": "1827–1849"
  },
  {
    "title": "Alone.",
    "body": "  From childhood's hour I have not been\n  As others were--I have not seen\n  As others saw--I could not bring\n  My passions from a common spring--\n  From the same source I have not taken\n  My sorrow--I could not awaken\n  My heart to joy at the same tone--\n  And all I loved--_I_ loved alone--\n  _Thou_--in my childhood--in the dawn\n  Of a most stormy life--was drawn\n  From every depth of good and ill\n  The mystery which binds me still--\n  From the torrent, or the fountain--\n  From the red cliff of the mountain--\n  From the sun that round me roll'd\n  In its autumn tint of gold--\n  From the lightning in the sky\n  As it passed me flying by--\n  From the thunder and the storm--\n  And the cloud that took the form\n  (When the rest of Heaven was blue)\n  Of a demon in my view.\n\n\nMarch 17, 1829.\n\n\n\n\n\n       *       *       *       *       *",
    "author": "Edgar Allan Poe",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Edgar Allan Poe",
    "period": "1827–1849"
  },
  {
    "title": "To Isadore.",
    "body": "I.       Beneath the vine-clad eaves,\n             Whose shadows fall before\n             Thy lowly cottage door--\n         Under the lilac's tremulous leaves--\n         Within thy snowy clasped hand\n             The purple flowers it bore.\n         Last eve in dreams, I saw thee stand,\n         Like queenly nymph from Fairy-land--\n         Enchantress of the flowery wand,\n             Most beauteous Isadore!\n\n\nII.      And when I bade the dream\n             Upon thy spirit flee,\n             Thy violet eyes to me\n         Upturned, did overflowing seem\n         With the deep, untold delight\n             Of Love's serenity;\n         Thy classic brow, like lilies white\n         And pale as the Imperial Night\n         Upon her throne, with stars bedight,\n             Enthralled my soul to thee!\n\n\nIII.     Ah! ever I behold\n             Thy dreamy, passionate eyes,\n             Blue as the languid skies\n         Hung with the sunset's fringe of gold;\n         Now strangely clear thine image grows,\n             And olden memories\n         Are startled from their long repose\n         Like shadows on the silent snows\n         When suddenly the night-wind blows\n             Where quiet moonlight lies.\n\n\nIV.      Like music heard in dreams,\n             Like strains of harps unknown,\n             Of birds for ever flown,--\n         Audible as the voice of streams\n         That murmur in some leafy dell,\n             I hear thy gentlest tone,\n         And Silence cometh with her spell\n         Like that which on my tongue doth dwell,\n         When tremulous in dreams I tell\n             My love to thee alone!\n\nV.       In every valley heard,\n             Floating from tree to tree,\n             Less beautiful to me,\n         The music of the radiant bird,\n         Than artless accents such as thine\n             Whose echoes never flee!\n         Ah! how for thy sweet voice I pine:--\n         For uttered in thy tones benign\n         (Enchantress!) this rude name of mine\n             Doth seem a melody!\n\n\n\n\n\n       *       *       *       *       *",
    "author": "Edgar Allan Poe",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Edgar Allan Poe",
    "period": "1827–1849"
  },
  {
    "title": "The Village Street.",
    "body": "  In these rapid, restless shadows,\n    Once I walked at eventide,\n  When a gentle, silent maiden,\n    Walked in beauty at my side.\n  She alone there walked beside me\n  All in beauty, like a bride.\n\n  Pallidly the moon was shining\n    On the dewy meadows nigh;\n  On the silvery, silent rivers,\n    On the mountains far and high,--\n  On the ocean's star-lit waters,\n    Where the winds a-weary die.\n\n  Slowly, silently we wandered\n    From the open cottage door,\n  Underneath the elm's long branches\n    To the pavement bending o'er;\n  Underneath the mossy willow\n    And the dying sycamore.\n\n  With the myriad stars in beauty\n    All bedight, the heavens were seen,\n  Radiant hopes were bright around me,\n    Like the light of stars serene;\n  Like the mellow midnight splendor\n    Of the Night's irradiate queen.\n\n  Audibly the elm-leaves whispered\n    Peaceful, pleasant melodies,\n  Like the distant murmured music\n    Of unquiet, lovely seas;\n  While the winds were hushed in slumber\n    In the fragrant flowers and trees.\n\n  Wondrous and unwonted beauty\n    Still adorning all did seem,\n  While I told my love in fables\n    'Neath the willows by the stream;\n  Would the heart have kept unspoken\n    Love that was its rarest dream!\n\n  Instantly away we wandered\n    In the shadowy twilight tide,\n  She, the silent, scornful maiden,\n    Walking calmly at my side,\n  With a step serene and stately,\n    All in beauty, all in pride.\n\n  Vacantly I walked beside her.\n    On the earth mine eyes were cast;\n  Swift and keen there came unto me\n    Bitter memories of the past--\n  On me, like the rain in Autumn\n    On the dead leaves, cold and fast.\n\n  Underneath the elms we parted,\n    By the lowly cottage door;\n  One brief word alone was uttered--\n    Never on our lips before;\n  And away I walked forlornly,\n  Broken-hearted evermore.\n\n  Slowly, silently I loitered,\n    Homeward, in the night, alone;\n  Sudden anguish bound my spirit,\n    That my youth had never known;\n  Wild unrest, like that which cometh\n    When the Night's first dream hath flown.\n\n  Now, to me the elm-leaves whisper\n    Mad, discordant melodies,\n  And keen melodies like shadows\n    Haunt the moaning willow trees,\n  And the sycamores with laughter\n    Mock me in the nightly breeze.\n\n  Sad and pale the Autumn moonlight\n    Through the sighing foliage streams;\n  And each morning, midnight shadow,\n    Shadow of my sorrow seems;\n  Strive, O heart, forget thine idol!\n    And, O soul, forget thy dreams!\n\n\n\n\n\n       *       *       *       *       *",
    "author": "Edgar Allan Poe",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Edgar Allan Poe",
    "period": "1827–1849"
  },
  {
    "title": "The Forest Reverie.",
    "body": "      'Tis said that when\n      The hands of men\n    Tamed this primeval wood,\n  And hoary trees with groans of wo,\n  Like warriors by an unknown foe,\n    Were in their strength subdued,\n      The virgin Earth\n      Gave instant birth\n    To springs that ne'er did flow--\n      That in the sun\n      Did rivulets run,\n  And all around rare flowers did blow--\n      The wild rose pale\n      Perfumed the gale,\n  And the queenly lily adown the dale\n      (Whom the sun and the dew\n      And the winds did woo),\n  With the gourd and the grape luxuriant grew.\n\n      So when in tears\n      The love of years\n    Is wasted like the snow,\n  And the fine fibrils of its life\n  By the rude wrong of instant strife\n    Are broken at a blow--\n      Within the heart\n      Do springs upstart\n    Of which it doth now know,\n      And strange, sweet dreams,\n      Like silent streams\n  That from new fountains overflow,\n      With the earlier tide\n      Of rivers glide\n  Deep in the heart whose hope has died--\n  Quenching the fires its ashes hide,--\n    Its ashes, whence will spring and grow\n      Sweet flowers, ere long,--\n    The rare and radiant flowers of song!\n\n\n\n\n\n       *       *       *       *       *",
    "author": "Edgar Allan Poe",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Edgar Allan Poe",
    "period": "1827–1849"
  },
  {
    "title": "Prose Poems.",
    "body": "       *       *       *       *       *",
    "author": "Edgar Allan Poe",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Edgar Allan Poe",
    "period": "1827–1849"
  },
  {
    "title": "The Island Of The Fay.",
    "body": "    \"Nullus enim locus sine genio est.\"\n\n    _Servius_.\n\n\n\"_La musique_,\" says Marmontel, in those \"Contes Moraux\"[1] which in all\nour translations we have insisted upon calling \"Moral Tales,\" as if in\nmockery of their spirit--\"_la musique est le seul des talens qui jouisse\nde lui-meme: tous les autres veulent des temoins_.\" He here confounds\nthe pleasure derivable from sweet sounds with the capacity for creating\nthem. No more than any other _talent_, is that for music susceptible of\ncomplete enjoyment where there is no second party to appreciate its\nexercise; and it is only in common with other talents that it produces\n_effects_ which may be fully enjoyed in solitude. The idea which the\n_raconteur_ has either failed to entertain clearly, or has sacrificed in\nits expression to his national love of _point_, is doubtless the very\ntenable one that the higher order of music is the most thoroughly\nestimated when we are exclusively alone. The proposition in this form\nwill be admitted at once by those who love the lyre for its own sake and\nfor its spiritual uses. But there is one pleasure still within the reach\nof fallen mortality, and perhaps only one, which owes even more than\ndoes music to the accessory sentiment of seclusion. I mean the happiness\nexperienced in the contemplation of natural scenery. In truth, the man\nwho would behold aright the glory of God upon earth must in solitude\nbehold that glory. To me at least the presence, not of human life only,\nbut of life, in any other form than that of the green things which grow\nupon the soil and are voiceless, is a stain upon the landscape, is at\nwar with the genius of the scene. I love, indeed, to regard the dark\nvalleys, and the gray rocks, and the waters that silently smile, and the\nforests that sigh in uneasy slumbers, and the proud watchful mountains\nthat look down upon all,--I love to regard these as themselves but the\ncolossal members of one vast animate and sentient whole--a whole whose\nform (that of the sphere) is the most perfect and most inclusive of all;\nwhose path is among associate planets; whose meek handmaiden is the\nmoon; whose mediate sovereign is the sun; whose life is eternity; whose\nthought is that of a god; whose enjoyment is knowledge; whose destinies\nare lost in immensity; whose cognizance of ourselves is akin with our\nown cognizance of the _animalculæ_ which infest the brain, a being which\nwe in consequence regard as purely inanimate and material, much in the\nsame manner as these _animalculæ_ must thus regard us.\n\nOur telescopes and our mathematical investigations assure us on every\nhand, notwithstanding the cant of the more ignorant of the priesthood,\nthat space, and therefore that bulk, is an important consideration in\nthe eyes of the Almighty. The cycles in which the stars move are those\nbest adapted for the evolution, without collision, of the greatest\npossible number of bodies. The forms of those bodies are accurately such\nas within a given surface to include the greatest possible amount of\nmatter; while the surfaces themselves are so disposed as to accommodate\na denser population than could be accommodated on the same surfaces\notherwise arranged. Nor is it any argument against bulk being an object\nwith God that space itself is infinite; for there may be an infinity of\nmatter to fill it; and since we see clearly that the endowment of matter\nwith vitality is a principle--indeed, as far as our judgments extend,\nthe _leading_ principle in the operations of Deity, it is scarcely\nlogical to imagine it confined to the regions of the minute, where we\ndaily trace it, and not extending to those of the august. As we find\ncycle within cycle without end, yet all revolving around one far-distant\ncentre which is the Godhead, may we not analogically suppose, in the\nsame manner, life within life, the less within the greater, and all\nwithin the Spirit Divine? In short, we are madly erring through\nself-esteem in believing man, in either his temporal or future\ndestinies, to be of
    "author": "Edgar Allan Poe",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Edgar Allan Poe",
    "period": "1827–1849"
  },
  {
    "title": "The Power Of Words.",
    "body": "'Oinos.'\n\n  Pardon, Agathos, the weakness of a spirit new-fledged with\n  immortality!\n\n\n'Agathos.'\n\n  You have spoken nothing, my Oinos, for which pardon is to be demanded.\n  Not even here is knowledge a thing of intuition. For wisdom, ask of\n  the angels freely, that it may be given!\n\n\n'Oinos.'\n\n  But in this existence I dreamed that I should be at once cognizant of\n  all things, and thus at once happy in being cognizant of all.\n\n\n'Agathos.'\n\n  Ah, not in knowledge is happiness, but in the acquisition of\n  knowledge! In forever knowing, we are forever blessed; but to know\n  all, were the curse of a fiend.\n\n\n'Oinos.'\n\n  But does not The Most High know all?\n\n\n'Agathos'.\n\n  _That_ (since he is The Most Happy) must be still the _one_ thing\n  unknown even to HIM.\n\n\n'Oinos.'\n\n  But, since we grow hourly in knowledge, must not _at last_ all things\n  be known?\n\n\n'Agathos.'\n\n  Look down into the abysmal distances!--attempt to force the gaze down\n  the multitudinous vistas of the stars, as we sweep slowly through them\n  thus--and thus--and thus! Even the spiritual vision, is it not at all\n  points arrested by the continuous golden walls of the universe?--the\n  walls of the myriads of the shining bodies that mere number has\n  appeared to blend into unity?\n\n\n'Oinos'.\n\n  I clearly perceive that the infinity of matter is no dream.\n\n\n'Agathos'.\n\n  There are no dreams in Aidenn--but it is here whispered that, of this\n  infinity of matter, the _sole_ purpose is to afford infinite springs\n  at which the soul may allay the thirst _to know_ which is forever\n  unquenchable within it--since to quench it would be to extinguish the\n  soul's self. Question me then, my Oinos, freely and without fear.\n  Come! we will leave to the left the loud harmony of the Pleiades, and\n  swoop outward from the throne into the starry meadows beyond Orion,\n  where, for pansies and violets, and heart's-ease, are the beds of the\n  triplicate and triple-tinted suns.\n\n\n'Oinos'.\n\n  And now, Agathos, as we proceed, instruct me!--speak to me in the\n  earth's familiar tones! I understand not what you hinted to me just\n  now of the modes or of the methods of what during mortality, we were\n  accustomed to call Creation. Do you mean to say that the Creator is\n  not God?\n\n\n'Agathos'.\n\n  I mean to say that the Deity does not create.\n\n\n'Oinos'.\n\n  Explain!\n\n\n'Agathos'.\n\n  In the beginning only, he created. The seeming creatures which are now\n  throughout the universe so perpetually springing into being can only\n  be considered as the mediate or indirect, not as the direct or\n  immediate results of the Divine creative power.\n\n\n'Oinos.'\n\n  Among men, my Agathos, this idea would be considered heretical in the\n  extreme.\n\n\n'Agathos.'\n\n  Among the angels, my Oinos, it is seen to be simply true.\n\n\n'Oinos.'\n\n  I can comprehend you thus far--that certain operations of what we term\n  Nature, or the natural laws, will, under certain conditions, give rise\n  to that which has all the _appearance_ of creation. Shortly before the\n  final overthrow of the earth, there were, I well remember, many very\n  successful experiments in what some philosophers were weak enough to\n  denominate the creation of animalculæ.\n\n\n'Agathos.'\n\n  The cases of which you speak were, in fact, instances of the secondary\n  creation, and of the _only_ species of creation which has ever been\n  since the first word spoke into existence the first law.\n\n\n'Oinos.'\n\n  Are not the starry worlds that, from the abyss of nonentity, burst\n  hourly forth into the heavens--are not these stars, Agathos, the\n  immediate handiwork of the King?\n\n\n'Agathos.'\n\n  Let me endeavor, my Oinos, to lead you, step by step, to the\n  conception I intend. You are well aware that, as no thought can\n  perish, so no act is without infinite result. We moved our hands, for\n  example, when we were dwellers on the earth, and in so doing we gave\n  vibration to the atmosphere which engirdled it. This vib
    "author": "Edgar Allan Poe",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Edgar Allan Poe",
    "period": "1827–1849"
  },
  {
    "title": "The Colloquy Of Monos And Una.",
    "body": "  [Greek: Mellonta  sauta']\n\n  These things are in the future.\n\n  _Sophocles_--'Antig.'\n\n\n\n'Una.'\n\n  \"Born again?\"\n\n\n'Monos.'\n\n  Yes, fairest and best beloved Una, \"born again.\" These were the words\n  upon whose mystical meaning I had so long pondered, rejecting the\n  explanations of the priesthood, until Death itself resolved for me the\n  secret.\n\n\n'Una.'\n\n  Death!\n\n\n'Monos.'\n\n  How strangely, sweet _Una_, you echo my words! I observe, too, a\n  vacillation in your step, a joyous inquietude in your eyes. You are\n  confused and oppressed by the majestic novelty of the Life Eternal.\n  Yes, it was of Death I spoke. And here how singularly sounds that word\n  which of old was wont to bring terror to all hearts, throwing a mildew\n  upon all pleasures!\n\n\n'Una.'\n\n  Ah, Death, the spectre which sate at all feasts! How often, Monos, did\n  we lose ourselves in speculations upon its nature! How mysteriously\n  did it act as a check to human bliss, saying unto it, \"thus far, and\n  no farther!\" That earnest mutual love, my own Monos, which burned\n  within our bosoms, how vainly did we flatter ourselves, feeling happy\n  in its first upspringing that our happiness would strengthen with its\n  strength! Alas, as it grew, so grew in our hearts the dread of that\n  evil hour which was hurrying to separate us forever! Thus in time it\n  became painful to love. Hate would have been mercy then.\n\n\n'Monos'.\n\n  Speak not here of these griefs, dear Una--mine, mine forever now!\n\n\n'Una'.\n\n  But the memory of past sorrow, is it not present joy? I have much to\n  say yet of the things which have been. Above all, I burn to know the\n  incidents of your own passage through the dark Valley and Shadow.\n\n\n'Monos'.\n\n  And when did the radiant Una ask anything of her Monos in vain? I will\n  be minute in relating all, but at what point shall the weird narrative\n  begin?\n\n\n'Una'.\n\n  At what point?\n\n\n'Monos'.\n\n  You have said.\n\n\n'Una'.\n\n  Monos, I comprehend you. In Death we have both learned the propensity\n  of man to define the indefinable. I will not say, then, commence with\n  the moment of life's cessation--but commence with that sad, sad\n  instant when, the fever having abandoned you, you sank into a\n  breathless and motionless torpor, and I pressed down your pallid\n  eyelids with the passionate fingers of love.\n\n\n'Monos'.\n\n  One word first, my Una, in regard to man's general condition at this\n  epoch. You will remember that one or two of the wise among our\n  forefathers--wise in fact, although not in the world's esteem--had\n  ventured to doubt the propriety of the term \"improvement,\" as applied\n  to the progress of our civilization. There were periods in each of the\n  five or six centuries immediately preceding our dissolution when arose\n  some vigorous intellect, boldly contending for those principles whose\n  truth appears now, to our disenfranchised reason, so utterly obvious\n  --principles which should have taught our race to submit to the\n  guidance of the natural laws rather than attempt their control. At\n  long intervals some master-minds appeared, looking upon each advance\n  in practical science as a retrogradation in the true utility.\n  Occasionally the poetic intellect--that intellect which we now feel to\n  have been the most exalted of all--since those truths which to us were\n  of the most enduring importance could only be reached by that\n  _analogy_ which speaks in proof-tones to the imagination alone, and to\n  the unaided reason bears no weight--occasionally did this poetic\n  intellect proceed a step farther in the evolving of the vague idea of\n  the philosophic, and find in the mystic parable that tells of the tree\n  of knowledge, and of its forbidden fruit, death-producing, a distinct\n  intimation that knowledge was not meet for man in the infant condition\n  of his soul. And these men--the poets--living and perishing amid the\n  scorn of the \"utilitarians\"--of rough pedants, who arrogated to\n  themselves a title 
    "author": "Edgar Allan Poe",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Edgar Allan Poe",
    "period": "1827–1849"
  },
  {
    "title": "The Conversation Of Eiros And Charmion.",
    "body": "  I will bring fire to thee.\n\n  _Euripides_.--'Androm'.\n\n\n\n'Eiros'.\n\n  Why do you call me Eiros?\n\n\n'Charmion'.\n\n  So henceforward will you always be called. You must forget, too, _my_\n  earthly name, and speak to me as Charmion.\n\n\n'Eiros'.\n\n  This is indeed no dream!\n\n\n'Charmion'.\n\n  Dreams are with us no more;--but of these mysteries anon. I rejoice to\n  see you looking life-like and rational. The film of the shadow has\n  already passed from off your eyes. Be of heart, and fear nothing. Your\n  allotted days of stupor have expired, and to-morrow I will myself\n  induct you into the full joys and wonders of your novel existence.\n\n\n'Eiros'.\n\n  True--I feel no stupor--none at all. The wild sickness and the\n  terrible darkness have left me, and I hear no longer that mad,\n  rushing, horrible sound, like the \"voice of many waters.\" Yet my\n  senses are bewildered, Charmion, with the keenness of their perception\n  of _the new_.\n\n\n'Charmion'.\n\n  A few days will remove all this;--but I fully understand you, and\n  feel for you. It is now ten earthly years since I underwent what you\n  undergo--yet the remembrance of it hangs by me still. You have now\n  suffered all of pain, however, which you will suffer in Aidenn.\n\n\n'Eiros'.\n\n  In Aidenn?\n\n\n'Charmion'.\n\n  In Aidenn.\n\n\n'Eiros'.\n\n  O God!--pity me, Charmion!--I am overburthened with the majesty of all\n  things--of the unknown now known--of the speculative Future merged in\n  the august and certain Present.\n\n\n'Charmion'.\n\n  Grapple not now with such thoughts. To-morrow we will speak of this.\n  Your mind wavers, and its agitation will find relief in the exercise\n  of simple memories. Look not around, nor forward--but back. I am\n  burning with anxiety to hear the details of that stupendous event\n  which threw you among us. Tell me of it. Let us converse of familiar\n  things, in the old familiar language of the world which has so\n  fearfully perished.\n\n\n'Eiros'.\n\n  Most fearfully, fearfully!--this is indeed no dream.\n\n\n'Charmion'.\n\n  Dreams are no more. Was I much mourned, my Eiros?\n\n'Eiros'.\n\n  Mourned, Charmion?--oh, deeply. To that last hour of all there hung a\n  cloud of intense gloom and devout sorrow over your household.\n\n\n'Charmion'.\n\n  And that last hour--speak of it. Remember that, beyond the naked fact\n  of the catastrophe itself, I know nothing. When, coming out from among\n  mankind, I passed into Night through the Grave--at that period, if I\n  remember aright, the calamity which overwhelmed you was utterly\n  unanticipated. But, indeed, I knew little of the speculative\n  philosophy of the day.\n\n\n'Eiros'.\n\n  The individual calamity was, as you say, entirely unanticipated; but\n  analogous misfortunes had been long a subject of discussion with\n  astronomers. I need scarce tell you, my friend, that, even when you\n  left us, men had agreed to understand those passages in the most holy\n  writings which speak of the final destruction of all things by fire as\n  having reference to the orb of the earth alone, But in regard to the\n  immediate agency of the ruin, speculation had been at fault from that\n  epoch in astronomical knowledge in which the comets were divested of\n  the terrors of flame. The very moderate density of these bodies had\n  been well established. They had been observed to pass among the\n  satellites of Jupiter without bringing about any sensible alteration\n  either in the masses or in the orbits of these secondary planets. We\n  had long regarded the wanderers as vapory creations of inconceivable\n  tenuity, and as altogether incapable of doing injury to our\n  substantial globe, even in the event of contact. But contact was not\n  in any degree dreaded; for the elements of all the comets were\n  accurately known. That among _them_ we should look for the agency of\n  the threatened fiery destruction had been for many years considered an\n  inadmissible idea. But wonders and wild fancies had been of late days\n  strangely rife among mankind; an
    "author": "Edgar Allan Poe",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Edgar Allan Poe",
    "period": "1827–1849"
  },
  {
    "title": "Shadow.--A Parable.",
    "body": "    Yea! though I walk through the valley of the _Shadow_.\n\n    'Psalm of David'.\n\n\nYe who read are still among the living; but I who write shall have long\nsince gone my way into the region of shadows. For indeed strange things\nshall happen, and secret things be known, and many centuries shall pass\naway, ere these memorials be seen of men. And, when seen, there will be\nsome to disbelieve and some to doubt, and yet a few who will find much\nto ponder upon in the characters here graven with a stylus of iron.\n\nThe year had been a year of terror, and of feeling more intense than\nterror for which there is no name upon the earth. For many prodigies and\nsigns had taken place, and far and wide, over sea and land, the black\nwings of the Pestilence were spread abroad. To those, nevertheless,\ncunning in the stars, it was not unknown that the heavens wore an aspect\nof ill; and to me, the Greek Oinos, among others, it was evident that\nnow had arrived the alternation of that seven hundred and ninety-fourth\nyear when, at the entrance of Aries, the planet Jupiter is enjoined with\nthe red ring of the terrible Saturnus. The peculiar spirit of the skies,\nif I mistake not greatly, made itself manifest, not only in the physical\norb of the earth, but in the souls, imaginations, and meditations of\nmankind.\n\nOver some flasks of the red Chian wine, within the walls of a noble\nhall, in a dim city called Ptolemais, we sat, at night, a company of\nseven. And to our chamber there was no entrance save by a lofty door of\nbrass: and the door was fashioned by the artisan Corinnos, and, being of\nrare workmanship, was fastened from within. Black draperies, likewise in\nthe gloomy room, shut out from our view the moon, the lurid stars, and\nthe peopleless streets--but the boding and the memory of Evil, they\nwould not be so excluded. There were things around us and about of which\nI can render no distinct account--things material and spiritual--\nheaviness in the atmosphere--a sense of suffocation--anxiety--and, above\nall, that terrible state of existence which the nervous experience when\nthe senses are keenly living and awake, and meanwhile the powers of\nthought lie dormant. A dead weight hung upon us. It hung upon our\nlimbs--upon the household furniture--upon the goblets from which we\ndrank; and all things were depressed, and borne down thereby--all things\nsave only the flames of the seven iron lamps which illumined our revel.\nUprearing themselves in tall slender lines of light, they thus remained\nburning all pallid and motionless; and in the mirror which their lustre\nformed upon the round table of ebony at which we sat each of us there\nassembled beheld the pallor of his own countenance, and the unquiet\nglare in the downcast eyes of his companions. Yet we laughed and were\nmerry in our proper way--which was hysterical; and sang the songs of\nAnacreon--which are madness; and drank deeply--although the purple wine\nreminded us of blood. For there was yet another tenant of our chamber in\nthe person of young Zoilus. Dead and at full length he lay,\nenshrouded;--the genius and the demon of the scene. Alas! he bore no\nportion in our mirth, save that his countenance, distorted with the\nplague, and his eyes in which Death had but half extinguished the fire\nof the pestilence, seemed to take such an interest in our merriment as\nthe dead may haply take in the merriment of those who are to die. But\nalthough I, Oinos, felt that the eyes of the departed were upon me,\nstill I forced myself not to perceive the bitterness of their\nexpression, and gazing down steadily into the depths of the ebony\nmirror, sang with a loud and sonorous voice the songs of the son of\nTeos. But gradually my songs they ceased, and their echoes, rolling afar\noff among the sable draperies of the chamber, became weak, and\nundistinguishable, and so faded away. And lo! from among those sable\ndraperies, where the sounds of the song departed, there came forth a\ndark and undefiled shadow--a shadow such as the moon, when low in\nheaven, m
    "author": "Edgar Allan Poe",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Edgar Allan Poe",
    "period": "1827–1849"
  },
  {
    "title": "Silence.--A Fable.",
    "body": "The mountain pinnacles slumber; valleys, crags, and caves _are silent_.\n\n\"LISTEN to _me_,\" said the Demon, as he placed his hand upon my head.\n\"The region of which I speak is a dreary region in Libya, by the borders\nof the river Zäire. And there is no quiet there, nor silence.\n\n\"The waters of the river have a saffron and sickly hue; and they flow\nnot onward to the sea, but palpitate forever and forever beneath the red\neye of the sun with a tumultuous and convulsive motion. For many miles\non either side of the river's oozy bed is a pale desert of gigantic\nwater-lilies. They sigh one unto the other in that solitude, and stretch\ntowards the heaven their long and ghastly necks, and nod to and fro\ntheir everlasting heads. And there is an indistinct murmur which cometh\nout from among them like the rushing of subterrene water. And they sigh\none unto the other.\n\n\"But there is a boundary to their realm--the boundary of the dark,\nhorrible, lofty forest. There, like the waves about the Hebrides, the\nlow underwood is agitated continually. But there is no wind throughout\nthe heaven. And the tall primeval trees rock eternally hither and\nthither with a crashing and mighty sound. And from their high summits,\none by one, drop everlasting dews. And at the roots, strange poisonous\nflowers lie writhing in perturbed slumber. And overhead, with a rustling\nand loud noise, the gray clouds rush westwardly forever until they roll,\na cataract, over the fiery wall of the horizon. But there is no wind\nthroughout the heaven. And by the shores of the river Zäire there is\nneither quiet nor silence.\n\n\"It was night, and the rain fell; and, falling, it was rain, but, having\nfallen, it was blood. And I stood in the morass among the tall lilies,\nand the rain fell upon my head--and the lilies sighed one unto the other\nin the solemnity of their desolation.\n\n\"And, all at once, the moon arose through the thin ghastly mist, and was\ncrimson in color. And mine eyes fell upon a huge gray rock which stood\nby the shore of the river and was lighted by the light of the moon. And\nthe rock was gray and ghastly, and tall,--and the rock was gray. Upon\nits front were characters engraven in the stones; and I walked through\nthe morass of water-lilies, until I came close unto the shore, that I\nmight read the characters upon the stone. But I could not decipher them.\nAnd I was going back into the morass when the moon shone with a fuller\nred, and I turned and looked again upon the rock and upon the\ncharacters;--and the characters were DESOLATION.\n\n\"And I looked upwards, and there stood a man upon the summit of the\nrock; and I hid myself among the water-lilies that I might discover the\naction of the man. And the man was tall and stately in form, and wrapped\nup from his shoulders to his feet in the toga of old Rome. And the\noutlines of his figure were indistinct--but his features were the\nfeatures of a deity; for the mantle of the night, and of the mist, and\nof the moon, and of the dew, had left uncovered the features of his\nface. And his brow was lofty with thought, and his eye wild with care;\nand in the few furrows upon his cheek, I read the fables of sorrow, and\nweariness, and disgust with mankind, and a longing after solitude.\n\n\"And the man sat upon the rock, and leaned his head upon his hand, and\nlooked out upon the desolation. He looked down into the low unquiet\nshrubbery, and up into the tall primeval trees, and up higher at the\nrustling heaven, and into the crimson moon. And I lay close within\nshelter of the lilies, and observed the actions of the man. And the man\ntrembled in the solitude;--but the night waned, and he sat upon the\nrock.\n\n\"And the man turned his attention from the heaven, and looked out upon\nthe dreary river Zäire, and upon the yellow ghastly waters, and upon the\npale legions of the water-lilies. And the man listened to the sighs of\nthe water-lilies, and to the murmur that came up from among them. And I\nlay close within my covert and observed the actions of the man.
    "author": "Edgar Allan Poe",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Edgar Allan Poe",
    "period": "1827–1849"
  },
  {
    "title": "Essays.",
    "body": "       *       *       *       *       *",
    "author": "Edgar Allan Poe",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Edgar Allan Poe",
    "period": "1827–1849"
  },
  {
    "title": "The Poetic Principle.",
    "body": "In speaking of the Poetic Principle, I have no design to be either\nthorough or profound. While discussing very much at random the\nessentiality of what we call Poetry, my principal purpose will be to\ncite for consideration some few of those minor English or American poems\nwhich best suit my own taste, or which, upon my own fancy, have left the\nmost definite impression. By \"minor poems\" I mean, of course, poems of\nlittle length. And here, in the beginning, permit me to say a few words\nin regard to a somewhat peculiar principle, which, whether rightfully or\nwrongfully, has always had its influence in my own critical estimate of\nthe poem. I hold that a long poem does not exist. I maintain that the\nphrase, \"a long poem,\" is simply a flat contradiction in terms.\n\nI need scarcely observe that a poem deserves its title only inasmuch as\nit excites, by elevating the soul. The value of the poem is in the ratio\nof this elevating excitement. But all excitements are, through a psychal\nnecessity, transient. That degree of excitement which would entitle a\npoem to be so called at all, cannot be sustained throughout a\ncomposition of any great length. After the lapse of half an hour, at the\nvery utmost, it flags--fails--a revulsion ensues--and then the poem is,\nin effect, and in fact, no longer such.\n\nThere are, no doubt, many who have found difficulty in reconciling the\ncritical dictum that the \"Paradise Lost\" is to be devoutly admired\nthroughout, with the absolute impossibility of maintaining for it,\nduring perusal, the amount of enthusiasm which that critical dictum\nwould demand. This great work, in fact, is to be regarded as poetical\nonly when, losing sight of that vital requisite in all works of Art,\nUnity, we view it merely as a series of minor poems. If, to preserve its\nUnity--its totality of effect or impression--we read it (as would be\nnecessary) at a single sitting, the result is but a constant alternation\nof excitement and depression. After a passage of what we feel to be true\npoetry, there follows, inevitably, a passage of platitude which no\ncritical prejudgment can force us to admire; but if, upon completing the\nwork, we read it again; omitting the first book--that is to say,\ncommencing with the second--we shall be surprised at now finding that\nadmirable which we before condemned--that damnable which we had\npreviously so much admired. It follows from all this that the ultimate,\naggregate, or absolute effect of even the best epic under the sun, is a\nnullity--and this is precisely the fact.\n\nIn regard to the Iliad, we have, if not positive proof, at least very\ngood reason, for believing it intended as a series of lyrics; but,\ngranting the epic intention, I can say only that the work is based in an\nimperfect sense of Art. The modern epic is, of the supposititious\nancient model, but an inconsiderate and blindfold imitation. But the day\nof these artistic anomalies is over. If, at any time, any very long poem\n_were_ popular in reality--which I doubt--it is at least clear that no\nvery long poem will ever be popular again.\n\nThat the extent of a poetical work is _ceteris paribus_, the measure of\nits merit, seems undoubtedly, when we thus state it, a proposition\nsufficiently absurd--yet we are indebted for it to the Quarterly\nReviews. Surely there can be nothing in mere _size_, abstractly\nconsidered--there can be nothing in mere _bulk_, so far as a volume is\nconcerned, which has so continuously elicited admiration from these\nsaturnine pamphlets! A mountain, to be sure, by the mere sentiment of\nphysical magnitude which it conveys, _does_ impress us with a sense of\nthe sublime--but no man is impressed after _this_ fashion by the\nmaterial grandeur of even \"The Columbiad.\" Even the Quarterlies have not\ninstructed us to be so impressed by it. _As yet_, they have not\n_insisted_ on our estimating Lamartine by the cubic foot, or Pollock by\nthe pound--but what else are we to _infer_ from their continual prating\nabout \"sustained effort\"? If, by \"sustained effor
    "author": "Edgar Allan Poe",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Edgar Allan Poe",
    "period": "1827–1849"
  },
  {
    "title": "The Philosophy Of Composition.",
    "body": "Charles Dickens, in a note now lying before me, alluding to an\nexamination I once made of the mechanism of _Barnaby Rudge_, says--\"By\nthe way, are you aware that Godwin wrote his _Caleb Williams_ backwards?\nHe first involved his hero in a web of difficulties, forming the second\nvolume, and then, for the first, cast about him for some mode of\naccounting for what had been done.\"\n\nI cannot think this the _precise_ mode of procedure on the part of\nGodwin--and indeed what he himself acknowledges is not altogether in\naccordance with Mr. Dickens's idea--but the author of _Caleb Williams_\nwas too good an artist not to perceive the advantage derivable from at\nleast a somewhat similar process. Nothing is more clear than that every\nplot, worth the name, must be elaborated to its _dénouement_ before\nanything be attempted with the pen. It is only with the _dénouement_\nconstantly in view that we can give a plot its indispensable air of\nconsequence, or causation, by making the incidents, and especially the\ntone at all points, tend to the development of the intention.\n\nThere is a radical error, I think, in the usual mode of constructing a\nstory. Either history affords a thesis--or one is suggested by an\nincident of the day--or, at best, the author sets himself to work in the\ncombination of striking events to form merely the basis of his\nnarrative---designing, generally, to fill in with description, dialogue,\nor autorial comment, whatever crevices of fact or action may, from page\nto page, render themselves apparent.\n\nI prefer commencing with the consideration of an _effect._ Keeping\noriginality _always_ in view--for he is false to himself who ventures to\ndispense with so obvious and so easily attainable a source of\ninterest--I say to myself, in the first place, \"Of the innumerable\neffects or impressions of which the heart, the intellect, or (more\ngenerally) the soul is susceptible, what one shall I, on the present\noccasion, select?\" Having chosen a novel first, and secondly, a vivid\neffect, I consider whether it can be best wrought by incident or\ntone--whether by ordinary incidents and peculiar tone, or the converse,\nor by peculiarity both of incident and tone--afterwards looking about me\n(or rather within) for such combinations of events or tone as shall best\naid me in the construction of the effect.\n\nI have often thought how interesting a magazine paper might be written\nby any author who would--that is to say, who could--detail, step by\nstep, the processes by which any one of his compositions attained its\nultimate point of completion. Why such a paper has never been given to\nthe world, I am much at a loss to say--but perhaps the autorial vanity\nhas had more to do with the omission than any one other cause. Most\nwriters--poets in especial--prefer having it understood that they\ncompose by a species of fine frenzy--an ecstatic intuition--and would\npositively shudder at letting the public take a peep behind the scenes,\nat the elaborate and vacillating crudities of thought--at the true\npurposes seized only at the last moment--at the innumerable glimpses of\nidea that arrived not at the maturity of full view--at the fully-matured\nfancies discarded in despair as unmanageable--at the cautious selections\nand rejections--at the painful erasures and interpolations,--in a word,\nat the wheels and pinions, the tackle for scene-shifting, the\nstep-ladders and demon-traps, the cock's feathers, the red paint, and\nthe black patches, which, in ninety-nine cases out of the hundred,\nconstitute the properties of the literary _histrio._\n\nI am aware, on the other hand, that the case is by no means common, in\nwhich an author is at all in condition to retrace the steps by which his\nconclusions have been attained. In general, suggestions, having arisen\npell-mell, are pursued and forgotten in a similar manner.\n\nFor my own part, I have neither sympathy with the repugnance alluded to,\nnor, at any time, the least difficulty in recalling to mind the\nprogressive steps of any of my compo
    "author": "Edgar Allan Poe",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Edgar Allan Poe",
    "period": "1827–1849"
  },
  {
    "title": "Old English Poetry. [1]",
    "body": "It should not be doubted that at least one-third of the affection with\nwhich we regard the elder poets of Great Britain should be attributed to\nwhat is, in itself, a thing apart from poetry--we mean to the simple\nlove of the antique--and that, again, a third of even the proper _poetic\nsentiment_ inspired by their writings, should be ascribed to a fact\nwhich, while it has strict connection with poetry in the abstract, and\nwith the old British poems themselves, should not be looked upon as a\nmerit appertaining to the authors of the poems. Almost every devout\nadmirer of the old bards, if demanded his opinion of their productions,\nwould mention vaguely, yet with perfect sincerity, a sense of dreamy,\nwild, indefinite, and he would perhaps say, indefinable delight; on\nbeing required to point out the source of this so shadowy pleasure, he\nwould be apt to speak of the quaint in phraseology and in general\nhandling. This quaintness is, in fact, a very powerful adjunct to\nideality, but in the case in question it arises independently of the\nauthor's will, and is altogether apart from his intention. Words and\ntheir rhythm have varied. Verses which affect us to-day with a vivid\ndelight, and which delight, in many instances, may be traced to the one\nsource, quaintness, must have worn in the days of their construction a\nvery commonplace air. This is, of course, no argument against the poems\n_now_--we mean it only as against the poets _then_. There is a growing\ndesire to overrate them. The old English muse was frank, guileless,\nsincere and although very learned, still learned without art. No general\nerror evinces a more thorough confusion of ideas than the error of\nsupposing Donne and Cowley metaphysical in the sense wherein Wordsworth\nand Coleridge are so. With the two former ethics were the end--with the\ntwo latter the means. The poet of the \"Creation\" wished, by highly\nartificial verse, to inculcate what he supposed to be moral truth--the\npoet of the \"Ancient Mariner\" to infuse the Poetic Sentiment through\nchannels suggested by analysis. The one finished by complete failure\nwhat he commenced in the grossest misconception; the other, by a path\nwhich could not possibly lead him astray, arrived at a triumph which is\nnot the less glorious because hidden from the profane eyes of the\nmultitude. But in this view even the \"metaphysical verse\" of Cowley is\nbut evidence of the simplicity and single-heartedness of the man. And he\nwas in this but a type of his _school_--for we may as well designate in\nthis way the entire class of writers whose poems are bound up in the\nvolume before us, and throughout all of whom there runs a very\nperceptible general character. They used little art in composition.\nTheir writings sprang immediately from the soul--and partook intensely\nof that soul's nature. Nor is it difficult to perceive the tendency of\nthis _abandon_--to elevate immeasurably all the energies of mind--but,\nagain, so to mingle the greatest possible fire, force, delicacy, and all\ngood things, with the lowest possible bathos, baldness, and imbecility,\nas to render it not a matter of doubt that the average results of mind\nin such a school will be found inferior to those results in one\n(_ceteris paribus_) more artificial.\n\nWe cannot bring ourselves to believe that the selections of the \"Book of\nGems\" are such as will impart to a poetical reader the clearest possible\nidea of the beauty of the _school_--but if the intention had been merely\nto show the school's character, the attempt might have been considered\nsuccessful in the highest degree. There are long passages now before us\nof the most despicable trash, with no merit whatever beyond that of\ntheir antiquity. The criticisms of the editor do not particularly please\nus. His enthusiasm is too general and too vivid not to be false. His\nopinion, for example, of Sir Henry's Wotton's \"Verses on the Queen of\nBohemia\"--that \"there are few finer things in our language,\" is\nuntenable and absurd.\n\nIn such lines we can perceive
    "author": "Edgar Allan Poe",
    "source": "Complete Poetical Works of Edgar Allan Poe",
    "period": "1827–1849"
  }
]