THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 GIFT OF 
 
 Sara Bard Field Wood 
 
World Series 
 
 THE POEMS 
 
 OF 
 EDGAR ALLAN POE 
 
FROM visions of Apollo 
 And of Astarte s bliss, 
 He ga^ed into the hollow 
 
 And hopeless vale of Dis ; 
 And though earth were surrounded 
 By heaven, it still was mounded 
 With graves. His soul had sounded 
 The dolorous abyss. 
 
 No singer of old story 
 
 Luting accustomed lays, 
 No harper for new glory, 
 
 No mendicant for praise, 
 He struck high chords and splendid, 
 Wherein were fiercely blended 
 Tones that unfinished ended 
 
 With his unfinished days. 
 
 JOHN HENRY BONER 
 
EDOAK ALLAN POE 
 
 FHOM A DAGUERREOTYPE TAKEN IN PROVIDENCE NOV. 14. 13-18. AND 
 PRESENTED BY POE. ON THE SAME DAY, TO MRS. SARAH HELEN 
 WHITMAN; NOW THE PROPERTY OF BROWN UNIVERSITY LIBRARY. 
 
THE POEMS OF 
 EDGAR ALLAN POE 
 
 WITH AN ESSAY ON HIS POETRY 
 BY ANDREW LANG 
 
 Portland, Maine 
 17/0 WAS *B. 
 
 Mdccccvi 
 
This Second Edition 
 on Van Gelder paper 
 consists of 925 copies. 
 
 GIFT 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 FOREWORD ix 
 
 THE POETRY OF EDGAR ALLAN POE xv 
 
 PREFACE, 1845 2 
 
 DEDICATION, 1845 .... 3 
 POEMS : 
 
 I THE RAVEN ... 5 
 
 II THE BELLS .... 12 
 
 III ULALUME 16 
 
 IV BRIDAL BALLAD 2O 
 V LENORE .... 22 
 
 VI TO HELEN .... 24 
 
 VII ANNABEL LEE ... 27 
 
 VIII FOR ANNIE .... 29 
 
 IX TO F S S. O D. . . 33 
 
 315 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 x TO ... 34 
 
 XI THE CITY IN THE SEA . . 35 
 
 XII THE CONQUEROR WORM . 37 
 
 XIII THE SLEEPER 39 
 
 XIV THE COLISEUM ... 42 
 
 XV DREAM-LAND ... 44 
 
 XVI EULALIE .... 46 
 
 XVII TO MY MOTHER ... 47 
 
 XVIII ELDORADO .... 48 
 
 xix TO F .... 49 
 
 XX TO ONE IN PARADISE . . 50 
 
 XXI HYMN 51 
 
 XXII A DREAM WITHIN A DREAM 52 
 
 XXIII TO ZANTE 53 
 
 XXIV THE HAUNTED PALACE . 54 
 
 XXV SILENCE .... 56 
 
 XXVI ISRAFEL .... 57 
 
 XXVII TO M. L. S ... 59 
 
 XXVIII THE VALLEY OF UNREST . 60 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 POEMS WRITTEN IN YOUTH: 
 
 NOTE, 1845 62 
 
 I TO HELEN .... 63 
 
 II SONNET TO SCIENCE . 64 
 
 III SPIRITS OF THE DEAD . . 65 
 
 IV FAIRY-LAND ... 66 
 
 V THE LAKE TO - . . 68 
 
 VI A DREAM .... 69 
 
 VII ALONE .... 70 
 
 VIII TO . . . . 71 
 
 IX TO THE RIVER . .72 
 
 x TO- . 73 
 
 xi SONG ..... 74 
 
 XTI ROMANCE 75 
 
 To EDGAR ALLAN POE ... 77 
 
FOREWORD 
 
" I would define, in brief, the Poetry 
 of words as The Rhythmical Creation 
 of Beauty." 
 
 EDGAR ALLAN POE. 
 
FOREWORD 
 
 IN this edition of the poems of Edgar 
 Allan Poe, Tamerlane, Al Aaraaf and 
 the unfinished Politian which, according to 
 Mr. E. C. Stedman, "were the outcome of 
 perseverance, and not written with the zest 
 that ministers to one doing what he is born 
 to do," are not to be found. To have 
 brought together every scrap of verse and its 
 variant was, in our opinion, to have rendered 
 scant justice or even fair play to Poe s fame 
 as a great metrical artist. If his Note to 
 this early work is accepted as truthful it 
 should also be more literally and liberally 
 construed to his advantage. According to 
 that Note what we find there was reprinted 
 with specific " reference to the sin of plagia 
 rism and to the date of Tennyson s first 
 poems." Surely, if ever, the time has come 
 when we can safely relegate such juvenilia 
 to the limbo of dead things : it has had its 
 day and should now cease to rise up and 
 vex us. 
 
 After all it is not so much that we do take 
 away ; for out of a total of forty-six poems, 
 
 xi 
 
FOREWORD 
 
 exclusive of the three longer pieces named 
 above, six only are omitted, two of which 
 it is some satisfaction to know originally 
 appeared under Gris wold s editorship,^ while 
 the other four belong to the volume of 1827. 
 One might indeed wish to cancel the later 
 To Helen, the lines To M. L. S , and To 
 
 , written as they are in the language 
 
 of mere literary philandering: banal expres 
 sions of long faded compliment that placed 
 beside the earlier To Helen and the later if 
 not the last invocation to a beloved woman 
 For Annie suffer an immeasurable and 
 most miserable sea change ! 
 
 To restate our position without risk of 
 misunderstanding: the text as here pre 
 sented contains what, with the few excep 
 tions just noted, will endure as long as 
 American literature endures. If the youth 
 ful outpourings are ever again put forth 
 
 i The Works of the Late Edgar Allan Poe: with 
 notices of His Life and Genius by N. P. Willis, J. R. 
 Lowell, and R. W . Griswold. New York: J. S. 
 Redfield. 1850. 2 vols. lamo. Portrait. Pp. xx 
 
 483 5495- 
 
 The same. 3 vols. i2mo. Portrait. 1850. 
 
 The same. 4 vols. lamo. 1853. 
 
 Griswold printed A Valentine and A n Enigma, 
 which are as near absolute rubbish as verse can be. 
 The four earlier pieces are " The happiest day, the 
 happiest hour ," (24 lines,) Stanzas, (32 lines,) Evening- 
 Star, (23 lines,) and Dreams, (34 lines). 
 
FOREWORD 
 
 they should not be obtruded and made 
 much of ; rather, if needs must be, given in 
 the shape of verbatim or facsimile reprints, 
 a proceeding both desirable and justifiable, 
 if only from the extreme rarity of Foe s 
 three earliest volumes. 1 
 
 But for the lover of verse who is not par 
 ticularly attracted by various readings and 
 critical annotations^ who on the contrary 
 delights in poetry without alloy, the great 
 things of the Master which will perish never, 
 should be set forth with befitting austerity. 
 
 1 Tamerlane, and Other Poems. By a Bostonian. 
 Boston: Calvin F. S. Thomas, 1827. i2mo. Wrap 
 pers. 40 pp. 
 
 A i A araaf, Tamerlane, and Minor Poems, By 
 Edgar Allan Poe. Baltimore : Hatch and Dunning, 
 1829. 8vo. 71 pp. 
 
 Poems by Edgar Allan Poe. Second edition. New 
 York : Elam Bliss, 1831. i2mo. 124 pp. 
 
 The first and only collected edition prepared by the 
 poet was The Raven and Other Poems. By Edgar 
 Allan Poe. New York: Wiley and Putnam, 1845. 
 i2ino. Pp. viii-r-gi. 
 
 2 For those who seek all possible aid in reconstruct 
 ing the poetic mind in its successive stages of rhythmic 
 evolution The Works of Edgar Allan Poe, newly col 
 lected and edited, with a Memoir, Critical Introdtic- 
 tion, and Notes, by Edmund Clarence Stedman and 
 George Edward Woodberry, (octavo, 10 vols., Chicago, 
 1894-5,) must be taken as the culmination of half a 
 century s appreciation and research. 
 
FOREWORD 
 
 Once the minor deductions indicated by us 
 are made and the poetic necessity for so 
 doing admitted, we may enter into the full 
 joy of what for all time is the unmatched 
 and unmatchable book of Beauty. 
 
 Group as you will The Haunted Palace, 
 Israfel, The City in the Sea, Ulalume, The 
 Conqueror Worm, To One in Paradise, 
 Dream-Land, The Sleeper, For Annie, and 
 Annabel Lee, they are each and every minted 
 gold and bear the image and superscription 
 of the king. Let us then concern ourselves 
 only with these the real and undying 
 glories of Poe s genius. To hold the cour 
 age of one s convictions in such a matter 
 is in the deepest sense to render the highest 
 possible service to the memory of that most 
 unhappy master of imperishable lyric verse. 
 
 " Farewell, thou Titan fairer than the Gods ! 
 
 Farewell, farewell, thou swift and lovely spirit. 
 Thou splendid warrior with the world at odds, 
 
 Unpraised, unpraisable, beyond thy merit ; 
 Chased, like Orestes, by the Furies rods, 
 
 Like him at length thy peace dost thou inherit ! 
 Beholding whom, men think how fairer far 
 Than all the steadfast stars the wandering star ! 
 
THE POETRY 
 
 OF 
 EDGAR ALLAN POE 
 
4 4 T ET the dullard go home and thank God 
 Lrf for that superior virtue which per 
 mits him to drink his muddy beer in peace ; let 
 him also reflect that ho wine could purchase 
 for him the dreams, the poems, the hopes which 
 it purchased for Poe. That his death was 
 tragic and premature is, alas! indisputable. 
 And here, again, has been an occasion for much 
 foolishness. He died, like Marlowe and many 
 another man of genius, in the street, unheeded, 
 almost unrecognised. But he died at his own 
 time, when his work was done, a victim to the 
 stolid stupidity of circumstance. He was 
 great, not on account of his fraility, which the 
 foolish sometimes mistake for talent, but in his 
 fraility s despite ; and he yields not in good 
 fortune to the mirror of respectability, whose 
 sole congratulation is that his unremembered 
 and useless life trickles out amiably in bed." 
 
 CHARLES WHIBLEY. 
 
 (Studies in Frankness, 1898.) 
 
THE POETRY 
 
 OF 
 EDGAR ALLAN POE 
 
 THE life of Edgar Allan Poe is, fortunately, 
 a subject that but little concerns readers 
 of his poetry. As far as the events of his 
 career illustrate the enigmatic character of 
 his genius, we have, perhaps, a right to 
 inquire about them. We may imagine that 
 from parents of semi-Celtic stock and artistic 
 profession he inherited his genius, and that 
 his pride and perversity came from his train 
 ing by a wealthy injudicious foster-father. 
 But the legend or myth of his errors and 
 misfortunes, so often told and retold by 
 posthumous malice or by too fond indul 
 gence, is really no affair of ours. Poe s 
 career is still a topic that excites controversy 
 in America. The spite of his first biographer, 
 Griswold, was begetting a natural reaction 
 when Mr. Ingram published his " Edgar Allan 
 Poe " (London, 1880), and unwittingly stirred 
 up the hatred of surviving scandal-mongers. 
 Men are alive who knew Poe, and who 
 suffered from his scornful criticism. To find 
 
THE POETRY OF 
 
 their dead enemy defended by an Englishman 
 excited their spleen, and, for other reasons, 
 fairer American critics were not conciliated. 
 The defence of this luckless man of genius is 
 not, and cannot be, a wholly successful one. 
 The viler charges and insinuations of Gris- 
 wold may be refuted, but no skill can make 
 Poe seem an amiable or an ascetic human 
 being. It is natural that admirers of a 
 poet s genius should wish to think well of 
 the man, should wish to see him among the 
 honourable, gentle, kindly, and wise. But 
 Poe wanted as a man what his poetry also 
 lacks; he wanted humanity. Among the 
 passions, he was familiar with pride, and with 
 the intolerable regret, the life-long desiderium 
 which, having lost the solitary object of its 
 love, can find among living men and women 
 no more than the objects of passing sentiment 
 and affectionate caprice. Love, as the poets 
 have known it, from Catullus to Coventry 
 Patmore, love, whether wild and feverish or 
 stable and domestic, appears to have been 
 to him unknown. And by this it is not 
 meant that Poe was not an affectionate 
 husband of his wife, but that the stronger 
 part of his affections, the better element of 
 his heart, had burned away before he was a 
 man. He knew what he calls " that sorrow 
 which the living love to cherish for the dead, 
 
EDGAR ALLAN POE 
 
 and which, in some minds, resembles the 
 delirium of opium." His spirit was always 
 beating against the gate of the grave, and 
 the chief praise he could confer on a woman 
 in his maturity was to compare her to one 
 whom he had lost while he was still a boy. 
 "For months after her decease," says Mr. 
 Ingram, " Poe . . . would go nightly to visit 
 the tomb of his revered friend, and when the 
 nights were very drear and cold, when the 
 autumnal rains fell, and the winds w r ailed 
 mournfully over the graves, he lingered 
 longest and came away most regretfully." 
 
 The truth of this anecdote will be more 
 important for our purpose than a world of 
 controversies as to whether Poe was expelled 
 from school, or gambled, or tippled, or why 
 he gave up the editorship of this or that 
 journal. We see him preoccupied, even in 
 his boyhood, with the thought of death and 
 of the condition of the dead. In his prose 
 romances his imagination is always morbidly 
 busy with the secrets of the sepulchre. His 
 dead men speak, his corpses hold long collo 
 quies with themselves, his characters are 
 prematurely buried and explore the veiled 
 things of corruption, his lovers are led wan 
 dering among the hie jacets of the dead. 
 This is the dominant note of all his poetry, 
 this wistful regret, almost hopeless of any 
 
THE POETRY OF 
 
 reunion of departed souls in "the distant 
 Aidenn," and almost fearful that the sleep 
 of the dead is not dreamless. 
 
 " The lady sleeps ! Oh may her sleep, 
 Which is enduring, so be deep ! 
 
 I pray to God that she may lie 
 
 Forever with unopened eye, 
 
 While the dim sheeted ghosts go by!" 
 
 Thus Poe s verse is so far from being a 
 "criticism of life," that it is often, in literal 
 earnest, a criticism of death ; and even when 
 his thoughts are not busy with death, even 
 when his heart is not following some Lenore 
 or Annabel Lee or Ulalume, his fancy does 
 not deal with solid realities, with human 
 passions. He dwells in a world more vapor 
 ous than that of Shelley s " Witch of Atlas," 
 in a region where dreaming cities crumble 
 into fathomless seas, in a fairyland with 
 " dim vales and shadowy woods," in haunted 
 palaces, or in a lost and wandering star. 
 
 Not only was Poe s practice thus limited, 
 but his theory of poetry was scarcely more 
 extensive. He avowed that " melancholy is 
 the most legitimate of all the poetical tones." 
 This preference was, doubtless, caused by 
 Poe s feeling that melancholy is the emotion 
 
 xx 
 
EDGAR ALLAN POE 
 
 most devoid of actual human stuff, the most 
 etherealised, so to speak, the least likely to 
 result in action. Poetry he defined as " the 
 rhythmical creation of beauty," and beauty 
 was in his eyes most beautiful when it was 
 least alloyed with matter. Thus such topics 
 as war, patriotism, prosperous love, religion, 
 duty, were absolutely alien to the genius of 
 Poe. He carried his theory to the absurd 
 length of preferring Fouque s "Undine" to 
 the works of " fifty Molieres." There is no 
 poet more full of humanity than Moliere, and 
 no creature of fancy so empty as Undine, a 
 sprite who is no more substantial than a 
 morning shower, a vapour more evanescent 
 than a solar myth. Poe, who liked the mel 
 ancholy moods of this waste-watery sprite 
 better than all the mirth and tenderness and 
 passion of the Mascarilles and Alcestes, the 
 Don Juans and Tartuffes, was also of opinion 
 that no poem could be long. The " Iliad " 
 and the "Odyssey," he thought, were mis 
 takes; they carried too heavy a weight of 
 words and matter. When examined, this 
 theory or paradox of Poe s shrinks into the 
 commonplace observations that Poe preferred 
 lyric poetry and that lyrics are essentially 
 brief. In considering Poe s theory and 
 practice, we must not forget that both were, 
 in part, the result of reaction. American 
 
THE POETRY OF 
 
 literature then intended to be extremely 
 moral, and respectable, and didactic, and 
 much of it was excessively uninspired. 
 Poetry was expected, as she so often is 
 expected, to teach morality as her main duty. 
 We have always plenty of critics who cry 
 out that poetry should be " palpitating with 
 actuality," should struggle with "the living 
 facts of the hour," should dignify industrial 
 ism, and indite paeans, perhaps, to sewing- 
 machines and patent electric lights. Poe s 
 nature was essentially rebellious, scornful, 
 and aristocratic. If democratic ecstasies are 
 a tissue of historical errors and self-compla 
 cent content with the commonplace, no one 
 saw that more clearly than Poe. Thus he 
 was the more encouraged by his rebellious 
 instinct to take up what was then a singular 
 and heterodox critical position. He has 
 lately been called immoral in America for 
 writing these words : " Beyond the limits of 
 beauty the province of poetry does not 
 extend. Its sole arbiter is taste. With the 
 intellect or the conscience it has only collat 
 eral relations. It has no dependence, unless 
 incidentally, upon either duty or truth." 
 
 To any one who believes that the best, the 
 immortal poetry, is nobly busied with great 
 actions and great passions, Poe s theory 
 seems fatally narrow. Without the concep- 
 
EDGAR ALLAN POE 
 
 tions of duty and truth we can have no 
 " Antigone " and no " Prometheus." These 
 great and paramount ideas have always been 
 the inspirers of honourable actions, and by 
 following them men and women are led into 
 the dramatic situations which are the mate 
 rials of Shakespeare, ^Eschylus, and Homer. 
 There is an immortal strength in the stories 
 of great actions; but Poe in theory and 
 practice disdains all action and rejects this 
 root of immortality. He deliberately dis 
 cards sanity, he deliberately chooses fantasy 
 for his portion. Now, while it is not the 
 business of poetry to go about distributing 
 tracts, she can never neglect actions and 
 situations which, under her spell, become 
 unconscious lessons of morality. But, as 
 we have said, Poe s natural bent, and his 
 reaction against the cheap didactic criticism 
 of his country and his time, made him 
 neglect all actions and most passions, both 
 in his practice and his theory. When he 
 spoke of Keats as the most flawless of 
 English poets, and of Mr. Tennyson as 
 "the noblest poet that ever lived," he was 
 attracted by that in them which is most 
 magical, most intangible, and most undefin- 
 able the inimitable and inexpressible charm 
 of their music, by the delicious languor of 
 the "Ode to the Nightingale" and of the 
 
THE POETRY OF 
 
 " Lotus-Eaters." These poems are, indeed, 
 examples of the "rhythmical creation of 
 beauty," which, to Poe s mind, was the 
 essence and function of poetry. 
 
 As to the nature of Poe s secret and the 
 technique by which he produced his melodies, 
 much may be attributed to the singular 
 musical appropriateness of his words and 
 epithets, much to his elaborate care for the 
 details of his art. George Sand, in "Un 
 Hiver a Majorque," describes a rainy night 
 which Chopin passed in the half-ruinous 
 monastery where they lived. She tells us 
 how the melodies of the wind and rain 
 seemed to be magically transmuted into his 
 music, so that, without any puerile attempt 
 at direct imitation of sounds, his composi 
 tions were alive with the air of the tempest. 
 "Son genie etait plein des mysterieuses 
 harmonies de la nature traduites par des 
 equivalents sublimes dans sa pensee musi- 
 cale, et non par une repetition servile des sons 
 exterieurs." In Poe s genius, too, there was 
 a kind of pre-established harmony between 
 musical words and melancholy thoughts. 
 As Mr. Saintsbury points out to me, though 
 " his language not unf requently passes from 
 vagueness into mere unmeaningness in the 
 literal and grammatical sense of it, yet it 
 never fails to convey the proper suggestion 
 
EDGAR ALLAN POE 
 
 in sound if not in sense. Take the lines in 
 Ulalume: 
 
 It was night in the lonesome October 
 Of my most immemorial year? 
 
 Here it would puzzle the most adroit student 
 of words to attach a distinct usual sense, 
 authenticated by lexicons, to immemorial. 
 And yet no one with an ear can fail to see 
 that it is emphatically the right word, and 
 supplies the necessary note of suggestion." 
 As to Poe s management of his metres, one 
 cannot do better than quote Mr. Saintsbury s 
 criticism again. "The same indefinite but 
 intensely poetic effect is produced still more 
 obviously by Poe s management of his 
 metres. Every one who is acquainted with 
 his critical work knows the care (a care that 
 brought on him the ridicule of sciolists and 
 poetasters) which he bestowed on metrical 
 subjects. The Raven, Ulalume, The 
 Haunted Palace, Annabel Lee, For Annie, 
 are, each in its own way, metrical marvels, 
 and it is not till long after we have enjoyed 
 and admired the beauty of each as a sym 
 phony that we discern the exquisite selection 
 and skilful juxtaposition of the parts and 
 constituent elements of each. Every one of 
 these remains unapproached and uncopied 
 
THE POETRY OF 
 
 as a concerted piece. In The Haiinted 
 Palace, the metre, stately at the beginning, 
 slackens and dies towards the close. In 
 Annabel Lee and For Annie, on the con 
 trary, there is a steady crescendo from first 
 to last, while, in the two other pieces the 
 metre ebbs and flows at uncertain but skil 
 fully arranged intervals. Poe stands almost 
 alone in this arrangement of his lyric works 
 as a whole. With most poets the line or 
 the stanza is the unit, and the length of the 
 poem is determined rather by the sense than 
 by the sound. But with Poe the music as 
 well as the sense (even more than the sense 
 perhaps) is arranged and projected as a 
 whole, nor would it be possible to curtail or 
 omit a stanza without injuring the metrical 
 as well as the intelligible effect." 
 
 To a critic who himself feels that the 
 incommunicable and inexpressible charm of 
 melodious words is of the essence of song, 
 Poe s practice is a perpetual warning. It is 
 to verse like Poe s, so deficient as it is in all 
 merit but lyric music and vague emotion, so 
 devoid of human passion a faint rhyth 
 mical echo among stars and graves of man s 
 laborious life that we are reduced if we 
 hold the theory of Poe. A critic of his own 
 native land, Mr. Henry James, has spoken 
 of his "valueless verse," and valueless his 
 
EDGAR ALLAN POE 
 
 verse must always appear if we ask from it 
 more than it can give. It has nothing to 
 give but music, and people who want more 
 must go to others that sell a different ware. 
 We shall never appreciate Poe if we keep 
 comparing him to men of stronger and more 
 human natures. We must take him as one 
 of the voices, almost the "shadow of a 
 voice," that sound in the temple of song, 
 and fill a little hour with music. He is not, 
 like Homer, or Scott, or Shakespeare, or 
 Moliere, a poet that men can live with 
 always, by the sea, in the hills, in the mar 
 ket-place. He is the singer of rare hours of 
 languor, when the soul is vacant of the pride 
 of life, and inclined to listen, as it were, to 
 the echo of a lyre from behind the hills of 
 death. He is like a Moschus or Bion who 
 has crossed the ferry and sings to Pluteus a 
 song that faintly reaches the ears of mortals. 
 
 OVK 
 
 " Not unrewarded " indeed is the singing, 
 for the verse of Poe has been prized by men 
 with a far wider range and healthier powers 
 than his own. 
 
 Poe said that with him "poetry was a 
 passion." Yet he spoke of his own verses, 
 
THE POETRY OF 
 
 in a moment of real modesty and insight, as 
 trifles "not of much value to the public, or 
 very creditable to myself." They were, for 
 the greater part, composed in the most mis 
 erable circumstances, when poverty, when 
 neglect, when the cruel indignation of a born 
 man of letters, in a country where letters 
 had not yet won their place, were torturing 
 the poet. He was compelled to be a 
 bookseller s hack. The hack s is indeed " a 
 damnable life," as Goldsmith said, and was 
 doubly or trebly damnable when " The Bells " 
 or "Annabel Lee" were sent the round of 
 the newspaper offices, to be disposed of for 
 the price of a dinner and a pair of boots. 
 Poe s time was spent in writing elaborate 
 masterpieces for a pittance, and in reviewing 
 and crushing, for the sake of bread, the 
 productions of a crowd of mediocrities. 
 Then came violent and venomous quarrels, 
 which, with enforced hackwork, devoured the 
 energy of the poet. It is no wonder that he 
 produced little; but even had he enjoyed 
 happier fortunes, his range is so narrow that 
 we could not have looked for many volumes 
 from him. He declared that he could not 
 and would not excite his muse, " with an eye 
 to the paltry compensations or the more 
 paltry commendations of mankind." Thus 
 it may, at least, be said of him, that he 
 
EDGAR ALLAN POE 
 
 was himself in his poetry, though, in writing 
 prose, he often deserted his true inspiration. 
 In his earlier verses he is very plainly the 
 pupil of Shelley, as any one may see who 
 has the courage to read through "Tamer 
 lane" and "Al Aaraaf." His reputation 
 does not rest on these poems, which are 
 longer than his own canon admitted, but on 
 pieces of verbal music like "The Haunted 
 Palace," " The Sleeper," " To One in Para 
 dise," " Israfel," and the lines " To Helen." 
 . . . . Though this beautiful piece of 
 verse did not appear in the very earliest 
 editions of Poe s poems, he always declared 
 that it was written in boyhood for the woman 
 whose death caused him, in Beddoes phrase, 
 " with half his heart to inhabit other worlds." 
 Poe was well aware that his " Raven," despite 
 its immense popularity, was not among his 
 best works. Indeed, it is almost too clever 
 to be poetical, and has in it a kind of echo 
 of Mrs. Browning, whose verse, floating in 
 the poet s mind probably suggested the 
 composition. " To Helen," " The Haunted 
 Palace," and "The Sleeper," are perhaps 
 the most coherent and powerful as well as 
 the most melodious of Poe s verses. As his 
 life sank in poverty, bereavement, misfor 
 tune, and misery, his verse more and more 
 approached the vagueness of music, appealing 
 
THE POETRY OF 
 
 often to mere sensation rather than to any 
 emotion which can be stated in words. " The 
 Bells" was written in the intervals of an 
 unnatural lethargy; "Ulalume" scarcely 
 pretends to remain within the limits of the 
 poetical art, and attracts or repels by mere 
 sounds as vacant as possible of meaning. 
 Mr. Stedman says, truly and eloquently, that 
 "Ulalume" "seems an improvisation, such 
 as a violinist might play upon the instrument 
 which had become his one thing of worth 
 after the death of a companion who had left 
 him alone with his own soul." The odd 
 definition of the highest poetry as "sense 
 swooning into nonsense" seems made for 
 such verse as " Ulalume." People are so 
 constituted that, if a critic confesses his 
 pleasure in such a thing as " Ulalume," he is 
 supposed to admit his inability to admire 
 any other poetry. Thus it may require 
 some moral courage to assert one s belief 
 that even "Ulalume" has an excuse for its 
 existence. It is curious and worth observing 
 that this sort of verse is so rare. It cannot 
 be easy to make, or the herd of imitators 
 who approach art by its weak points would 
 have produced quantities of this enigmatic 
 poetry. Yet, with the exception of Poe s 
 later verse, of Mr. Morris s "Blue Closet," 
 and perhaps of some pieces by Gerard de 
 
EDGAR ALLAN POE 
 
 Nerval, it is difficult to name any successful 
 lines on the further side of the border 
 between verse and music. In this region, 
 this "ultimate dim Thule," Poe seems to 
 reign almost alone. The fact is that the art 
 of hints, of fantasies, of unfinished sugges 
 tions is not an easy one, as many critics, both 
 of poetry and painting, seem to suppose. It 
 is not enough to be obscure, or to introduce 
 forms unexplained and undefined. A certain 
 very rare sort of genius is needed to make 
 productions live which hold themselves thus 
 independent of nature and of the rules of 
 art. We cannot define the nature of the 
 witchery by which the most difficult task of 
 romantic art was achieved. Poe did succeed, 
 as is confessed by the wide acceptance of 
 poems that cannot be defended if any one 
 chooses to attack them. They teach noth 
 ing, they mean little; their melody may be 
 triumphantly explained as the result of a 
 metrical trick. Eut, ne faict ce tour qui veut. 
 The trick was one that only Poe could play. 
 Like Hawthorne in prose, Poe possessed in 
 poetry a style as strange as it was individual, 
 a style trebly remarkable because it was 
 the property of a hack-writer. When all is 
 said, Poe remains a master of fantastic and 
 melancholy sound. Some foolish old legend 
 tells of a musician who surpassed all his 
 
 xxxi 
 
THE POETRY OF POE 
 
 rivals. His strains were unearthly sad, and 
 ravished the ears of those who listened with 
 a strange melancholy. Yet his viol had but 
 a single string, and the framework was fash 
 ioned out of a dead woman s breast-bone. 
 Poe s verse the parallel is much in his own 
 taste resembles that player s minstrelsy. 
 It is morbidly sweet and mournful, and all 
 touched on that single string, which thrills 
 to a dead and immortal affection. 
 
 ANDREW LANG. 
 
POEMS 
 
PREFACE TO THE COLLECTION OF 1845 
 
 These trifles are collected and republished chiefly 
 with a view to their redemption from the many 
 improvements to which they have been subjected while 
 going "the rounds of the press." I am naturally 
 anxious that what I have written should circulate as i 
 wrote it, it it circulate at all. In defence of my own 
 taste, nevertheless, it is incumbent on me to say that 1 
 think nothing in this volume of much value to the 
 public, or very creditable to myself. Events not to be 
 controlled have prevented me from making, at any 
 time, any serious effort in what, under happier circum 
 stances, would have been the field of my choice. With 
 me poetry has been not a purpose, but a passion ; and 
 the passions should be held in reverence ; they must 
 not they cannot at will be excited with an eye to the 
 paltry compensations, or the more paltry commenda 
 tions, of mankind. 
 
 E. A. P. 
 
TO THE NOBLEST OF HER SEX 
 
 TO THE AUTHOR OF 
 
 "THE DRAMA OF EXILE" 
 
 TO MISS ELIZABETH BARRETT BARRETT 
 
 OF ENGLAND 
 
 I DEDICATE THIS VOLUME 
 
 WITH THE MOST ENTHUSIASTIC ADMIRATION 
 AND WITH THE MOST SINCERE ESTEEM. 
 
 E. A. P. 
 
 1845 
 
THE RAVEN 
 
 ONCE upon a midnight dreary, while I 
 pondered, weak and weary, 
 Over many a quaint and curious volume of 
 
 forgotten lore, 
 While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly 
 
 there came a tapping, 
 As of some one gently rapping, rapping at 
 
 my chamber door. 
 
 " Tis some visitor," I mattered, "tapping at 
 my chamber door, 
 
 Only this, and nothing more." 
 
 Ah, distinctly I remember it was in the bleak 
 
 December, 
 And each separate dying ember wrought its 
 
 ghost upon the floor. 
 Eagerly I wished the morrow; vainly I had 
 
 sought to borrow 
 From my books surcease of sorrow, sorrow 
 
 for the lost Lenore, 
 For the rare and radiant maiden whom the 
 
 angels name Lenore, 
 
 Nameless here for evermore. 
 
And the silken sad uncertain rustling of each 
 purple curtain 
 
 Thrilled me filled me with fantastic ter 
 rors never felt before; 
 
 So that now, to still the beating of my heart, 
 I stood repeating 
 
 " Tis some visitor entreating entrance at my 
 chamber door, 
 
 Some late visitor entreating entrance at my 
 chamber door. 
 
 This it is, and nothing more." 
 
 Presently my soul grew stronger: hesitating 
 then no longer, 
 
 " Sir," said I, " or Madam, truly your forgive 
 ness I implore : 
 
 But the fact is I was napping, and so gently 
 you came rapping, 
 
 And so faintly you came tapping, tapping at 
 my chamber door, 
 
 That I scarce was sure I heard you." Here 
 I opened wide the door. 
 
 Darkness there, and nothing more. 
 
 Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood 
 there, wondering, fearing, 
 
 Doubting, dreaming dreams no mortal ever 
 dared to dream before. 
 
 But the silence was unbroken, and the still 
 ness gave no token, 
 
 And the only word there spoken was the 
 whispered word, " Lenore ! " 
 
This I whispered, and an echo murmured 
 back the word, "Lenore!" 
 
 Merely this, and nothing more. 
 
 Back into the chamber turning, all my soul 
 
 within me burning, 
 Soon again I heard a tapping, something 
 
 louder than before. 
 "Surely," said I, "surely that is something 
 
 at my window-lattice: 
 Let me see, then, what thereat is, and this 
 
 mystery explore, 
 Let my heart .be still a moment, and this 
 
 mystery explore : 
 
 Tis the wind, and nothing more." 
 
 Open here I flung the shutter, when, with 
 
 many a flirt and flutter, 
 In there stepped a stately Raven of the 
 
 saintly days of yore. 
 Nor the least obeisance made he, not a 
 
 minute stopped or stayed he, 
 But, with mien of lord or lady, perched above 
 
 my chamber door, 
 Perched upon a bust of Pallas just above my 
 
 chamber door, 
 
 Perched, and sat, and nothing more. 
 
 Then this ebon bird beguiling my sad fancy 
 into smiling, 
 
 By the grave and stern decorum of the coun 
 tenance it wore, 
 
"Though thy crest be shorn and shaven, 
 thou," T said, " art sure no craven, 
 
 Ghastly, grim, and ancient Raven, wandering 
 from the Nightly shore. 
 
 Tell me what thy lordly name is on the 
 Night s Plutonian shore ! " 
 
 Quoth the Raven, "Nevermore." 
 
 Much T marvelled this ungainly fowl to hear 
 
 discourse so plainly, 
 Though its answer little meaning little 
 
 relevancy bore ; 
 For we cannot help agreeing that no living 
 
 human being 
 Ever yet was blessed with seeing bird above 
 
 his chamber door, 
 Bird or beast upon the sculptured bust above 
 
 his chamber door, 
 
 With such name as " Nevermore." 
 
 But the Raven, sitting lonely on that placid 
 
 bust, spoke only 
 That one word, as if his soul in that one 
 
 word he did outpour. 
 Nothing further then he uttered; not a 
 
 feather then he fluttered, 
 Till I scarcely more than muttered, " Other 
 
 friends have flown before ! 
 On the morrow he will leave me, as my hopes 
 
 have flown before ! " 
 
 Then the bird said " Nevermore." 
 
Startled at the stillness broken by reply so 
 
 aptly spoken, 
 "Doubtless," said I, "what it utters is its 
 
 only stock and store, 
 Caught from some unhappy master whom 
 
 unmerciful Disaster 
 Followed fast and followed faster till his 
 
 songs one burden bore, 
 Till the dirges of his Hope that melancholy 
 
 burden bore 
 
 Of Never, nevermore ! " 
 
 But the Raven still beguiling all my sad soul 
 into smiling, 
 
 Straight I wheeled a cushioned seat in front 
 of bird and bust and door; 
 
 Then, upon the velvet sinking, I betook 
 myself to linking 
 
 Fancy unto fancy, thinking what this omi 
 nous bird of yore 
 
 What this grim, ungainly, ghastly, gaunt, 
 and ominous bird of yore 
 
 Meant in croaking " Nevermore." 
 
 This I sat engaged in guessing, but no sylla 
 ble expressing 
 
 To the fowl whose fiery eyes now burned 
 into my bosom s core : 
 
 This and more I sat divining, with my head 
 at ease reclining 
 
 On the cushion s velvet lining that the lamp 
 light gloated o er, 
 
But whose velvet violet lining, with the 
 lamplight gloating o er, 
 
 She shall press, ah, nevermore ! 
 
 Then, methought, the air grew denser, per 
 fumed from an unseen censer 
 
 Swung by Seraphim whose footfalls tinkled 
 on the tufted floor. 
 
 " Wretch ! " I cried, " thy God hath lent thee 
 by these angels he hath sent thee 
 
 Respite respite and nepenthe from thy 
 memories of Lenore ! 
 
 Quaff, oh quaff this kind nepenthe, and 
 forget the lost Lenore ! " 
 
 Quoth the Raven, "Nevermore." 
 
 "Prophet!" cried I, "thing of evil! 
 
 prophet still, if bird or devil ! 
 Whether Tempter sent, or whether tempest 
 
 tossed thee here ashore, 
 Desolate yet all undaunted, on this desert 
 
 land enchanted 
 On this Home by horror haunted tell me 
 
 truly, I implore 
 Is there is there balm in Gilead ? Tell 
 
 me! tell me, I implore!" 
 
 Quoth the Raven, "Nevermore." 
 
 "Prophet!" cried I, "thing of evil! 
 prophet still, if bird or devil! 
 
 By that Heaven that bends above us by 
 that God we both adore ! 
 
Tell this soul with sorrow laden, if, within 
 
 the distant Aidenn, 
 It shall clasp a sainted maiden whom the 
 
 angels name Lenore, 
 Clasp a rare and radiant maiden whom the 
 
 angels name Lenore." 
 
 Quoth the Raven, " Nevermore." 
 
 " Be that word our sign of parting, bird or 
 
 fiend I " I shrieked, upstarting. 
 "Get thee back into the tempest and the 
 
 Night s Plutonian shore! 
 Leave no black plume as a token of that lie 
 
 thy soul hath spoken ! 
 Leave my loneliness unbroken! quit the 
 
 bust above my door! 
 Take thy beak from out my heart, and take 
 
 thy form from off my door ! " 
 
 Quoth the Raven, "Nevermore." 
 
 And the Raven, never flitting, still is sitting, 
 
 still is sitting 
 On the pallid bust of Pallas, just above my 
 
 chamber door; 
 And his eyes have all the seeming of a 
 
 demon s that is dreaming, 
 And the lamplight o er him streaming throws 
 
 his shadow on the floor; 
 And my soul from out that shadow that lies 
 
 floating on the floor 
 
 Shall be lifted nevermore! 
 
THE BELLS 
 
 H 
 
 EAR the sledges with the bells, 
 
 Silver bells! 
 
 What a world of merriment their melody foretells ! 
 How they tinkle, tinkle, tinkle, 
 
 In the icy air of night 1 
 While the stars that oversprinkle 
 All the heavens, seem to twinkle 
 
 With a crystalline delight ; 
 Keeping time, time, time, 
 In a sort of Runic rhyme, 
 To the tintinabulation that so musically wells 
 From the bells, bells, bells, bells, 
 
 Bells, bells, bells 
 From the jingling and the tinkling of the bells. 
 
 II 
 
 Hear the mellow wedding bells, 
 
 Golden bells ! 
 
 What a world of happiness their harmony foretells I 
 Through the balmy air of night 
 How they ring out their delight ! 
 From the molten golden notes, 
 
 And all in tune, 
 What a liquid ditty floats 
 
 To the turtle-dove that listens, while she gloats 
 On the moon ! 
 
 12 
 
Oh, from out the sounding cells, 
 What a gush of euphony voluminously wells I 
 How it swells ! 
 How it dwells 
 
 On the Future ! How it tells 
 Of the rapture that impels 
 To the swinging and the ringing 
 Of the bells, bells, bells, 
 Of the bells, bells, bells, bells, 
 
 Bells, bells, bells, 
 To the rhyming and the chiming of the bells ! 
 
 Ill 
 
 Hear the loud alarum bells, 
 
 Brazen bells 1 
 
 What a tale of terror, now, their turbulency tells 1 
 In the startled ear of night 
 How they scream out their affright ! 
 Too much horrified to speak, 
 They can only shriek, shriek, shriek, 
 
 Out of tune, 
 
 In a clamorous appealing to the mercy of the fire, 
 In a mad expostulation with the deaf and frantic fire, 
 Leaping higher, higher, higher, 
 With a desperate desire, 
 And a resolute endeavor 
 Now now to sit, or never, 
 By the side of the pale-faced moon. 
 Oh, the bells, bells, bells ! 
 What a tale their terror tells 
 Of Despair ! 
 
How they clang, and clash, and roar ! 
 What a horror they outpour 
 On the bosom of the palpitating air ! 
 Yet the ear it fully knows, 
 By the twanging, 
 And the clanging, 
 How the danger ebbs and flows ; 
 Yet the ear distinctly tells, 
 In the jangling, 
 And the wrangling, 
 How the danger sinks and swells, 
 By the sinking or the swelling in the anger of the bells, 
 
 Of the bells, 
 Of the bells, bells, bells, bells, 
 
 Bells, bells, bells, 
 In the clamor and the clangor of the bells ! 
 
 IV 
 
 Hear the tolling of the bells, 
 
 Iron bells ! 
 
 What a world of solemn thought their monody compels ! 
 In the silence of the night, 
 How we shiver with affright 
 At the melancholy menace of their tone ! 
 For every sound that floats 
 From the rust within their throats 
 
 Is a groan. 
 
 And the people ah, the people 
 They that dwell up in the steeple, 
 All alone, 
 
 1 4 
 
And who tolling, tolling, tolling, 
 
 In that muffled monotone, 
 Feel a glory in so rolling 
 
 On the human heart a stone : 
 They are neither man nor woman, 
 They are neither brute nor human, 
 
 They are Ghouls ; 
 And their king it is who tolls, 
 And he rolls, rolls, rolls, 
 Rolls a paean from the bells! 
 And his merry bosom swells 
 With the paean of the bells, 
 And he dances, and he yells ; 
 Keeping time, time, time, 
 In a sort of Runic rhyme, 
 To the paean of the bells, 
 
 Of the bells : 
 Keeping time, time, time, 
 In a sort of Runic rhyme, 
 
 To the throbbing of the bells, 
 Of the bells, bells, bells, 
 
 To the sobbing of the bells ; 
 Keeping time, time, time, 
 
 As he knells, knells, knells, 
 In a happy Runic rhyme, 
 To the rolling of the bells, 
 Of the bells, bells, bells, 
 To the tolling of the bells, 
 Of the bells, bells, bells, bells- 
 Bells, bells, bells, 
 To the moaning and the groaning of the bells. 
 
ULALUME 
 
 THE skies they were ashen and sober; 
 The leaves they were crisped and sere, 
 The leaves they were withering and sere, 
 It was night in the lonesome October 
 
 Of my most immemorial year; 
 It was hard by the dim lake of Auber, 
 
 In the misty mid-region of Weir, 
 It was down by the dank tarn of Auber, 
 In the ghoul-haunted woodland of Weir. 
 
 Here once, through an alley Titanic, 
 Of cypress, I roamed with my soul, 
 Of cypress, with Psyche, my Soul. 
 
 These were days when my heart was volcanic 
 As the scoriae rivers that roll 
 As the lavas that restlessly roll 
 
 Their sulphurous currents down Yaanek 
 In the ultimate climes of the pole 
 
 That groan as they roll down Mount Yaanek, 
 In the realms of the boreal pole. 
 
 Our talk had been serious and sober, 
 
 But our thoughts they were palsied and sere, 
 Our memories were treacherous and sere, 
 
 For we knew not the month was October, 
 And we marked not the night of the year, 
 (Ah, night of all nights in the year ! ) 
 
We noted not the dim lake of Auber 
 (Though once we had journeyed down here)- 
 
 Remembered not the dank tarn of Auber, 
 Nor the ghoul-haunted woodland of Weir. 
 
 And now, as the night was senescent, 
 And the star-dials pointed to morn, 
 As the star-dials hinted of morn, 
 
 At the end of our path a liquescent 
 And nebulous lustre was born, 
 
 Out of which a miraculous crescent 
 Arose with a duplicate horn, 
 
 Astarte s bediamonded crescent, 
 Distinct with its duplicate horn. 
 
 And I said, " She is warmer than Dian : 
 
 She rolls through an ether of sighs, 
 
 She revels in a region of sighs: 
 She has seen that the tears are not dry on 
 
 These cheeks, where the worm never dies, 
 And has come past the stars of the Lion 
 
 To point us the path to the skies, 
 
 To the Lethean peace of the skies, 
 Come up, in despite of the Lion, 
 
 To shine on us with her bright eyes, 
 Come up through the lair of the Lion, 
 
 With love in her luminous eyes." 
 
 But Pysche, uplifting her ringer, 
 Said, " Sadly this star I mistrust, 
 Her pallor I strangely mistrust : 
 
Oh, hasten! oh, let us not linger! 
 
 Oh, fly I let us fly! for we must." 
 In terror she spoke, letting sink her 
 
 Wings until they trailed in the dust, 
 In agony sobbed, letting sink her 
 
 Plumes till they trailed in the dust, 
 
 Till they sorrowfully trailed in the dust. 
 
 I replied, " This is nothing but dreaming : 
 
 Let us on by this tremulous light ! 
 
 Let us bathe in this crystalline light I 
 Its Sybilic splendor is beaming 
 
 With Hope and in Beauty to-night : 
 
 See! it flickers up the sky through the night! 
 Ah, we safely may trust to its gleaming, 
 
 And be sure it will lead us aright. 
 We safely may trust to a gleaming 
 
 That cannot but guide us aright, 
 
 Since it flickers up to Heaven through the night." 
 
 Thus I pacified Psyche, and kissed her, 
 And tempted her out of her gloom, 
 And conquered her scruples and gloom ; 
 
 And we passed to the end of the vista, 
 
 But were stopped by the door of a tomb, 
 By the door of a legended tomb : 
 
 And I said, " What is written, sweet sister, 
 On the door of this legended tomb ? " 
 
 She replied, " Ulalume ! Ulalume ! 
 
 Tis the vault of thy lost Ulalume ! " 
 
 
Then my heart it grew ashen and sober 
 
 As the leaves that were crisped and sere, 
 As the leaves that were withering and sere: 
 
 And I cried, " It was surely October, 
 On this very night of last year, 
 That I journeyed I journeyed down here, 
 That I brought a dread burden down here : 
 On this night, of all nights in the year, 
 Ah, what demon has tempted me here? 
 
 Well I know, now, this dim lake of Auber, 
 This misty mid-region of Weir, 
 
 Well I know, now, this dank tarn of Auber, 
 This ghoul-haunted woodland of Weir." 
 
BRIDAL BALLAD 
 
 THE ring is on my hand, 
 And the wreath is on my brow ; 
 Satins and jewels grand 
 Are all at my command, 
 And I am happy now. 
 
 And my lord he loves me well ; 
 
 But, when first he breathed his vow, 
 I felt my bosom swell, 
 For the words rang as a knell, 
 And the voice seemed his who fell 
 In the battle down the dell, 
 
 And who is happy now. 
 
 But he spoke to reassure me, 
 
 And he kissed my pallid brow, 
 While a reverie came o er me, 
 And to the churchyard bore me, 
 And I sighed to him before me, 
 Thinking him dead D Elormie, 
 " Oh, I am happy now ! " 
 
 And thus the words were spoken, 
 And this the plighted vow, 
 
 And, though my faith be broken, 
 
 And, though my heart be broken, 
 
 Behold the golden token 
 That proves me happy now ! 
 
 20 
 
Would to God I could awaken ! 
 
 For I dream I know not how; 
 And my soul is sorely shaken 
 Lest an evil step be taken 
 Lest the dead who is forsaken 
 
 May not be happy now. 
 
LENORE 
 
 AH, broken is the golden bowl! the 
 spirit flown forever ! 
 Let the bell toll! a saintly soul floats on 
 
 the Stygian river ; 
 
 And, Guy De Vere, hast thou no tear? 
 weep now, or nevermore ! 
 
 See, on yon drear and rigid bier low lies thy 
 
 love, Lenore ! 
 Come, let the burial rite be read, the 
 
 funeral song be sung! 
 An anthem for the queenliest dead that ever 
 
 died so young, 
 A dirge for her the doubly dead in that she 
 
 died so young. 
 
 " Wretches ! ye loved her for her wealth and 
 
 hated her for her pride ! 
 And when she fell in feeble health, ye 
 
 blessed her that she died! 
 How shall the ritual, then, be read? the 
 
 requiem how be sung 
 By you by yours, the evil eye, by yours, 
 
 the slanderous tongue 
 That did to death the innocence that died, 
 
 and died so young?" 
 
Peccavimus I But rave not thus, and let a 
 
 Sabbath song 
 Go up to God so solemnly tlie dead may 
 
 feel no wrong ! 
 The sweet Lenore hath "gone before," with 
 
 Hope, that flew beside, 
 Leaving thee wild for the dear child that 
 
 should have been thy bride! 
 For her, the fair and debonair, that now so 
 
 lowly lies, 
 The life upon her yellow hair, but not within 
 
 her eyes, 
 The life still there, upon her hair, the 
 
 death upon her eyes. 
 
 " Avaunt ! To-night my heart is light ! No 
 
 dirge will I upraise, 
 But waft the angel on her flight with a paean 
 
 of old days ! 
 Let no bell toll! lest her sweet soul, amid 
 
 its hallowed mirth, 
 Should catch the note, as it doth float up 
 
 from the damned Earth ! 
 To friends above, from fiends below, the 
 
 indignant ghost is riven, 
 From Hell unto a high estate far up within 
 
 the Heaven, 
 From grief and groan to a golden throne, 
 
 beside the King of Heaven." 
 
 2 3 
 
TO HELEN 
 
 I SAW thee once once only years ago: 
 I must not say how many but not many. 
 It was a July midnight: and from out 
 A full-orbed moon, that, like thine own soul, soaring, 
 Sought a precipitate pathway up through heaven, 
 There fell a silvery silken veil of light, 
 With quietude, and sultriness, and slumber, 
 Upon the upturned faces of a thousand 
 Roses that grew in an enchanted garden, 
 Where no wind dared to stir, unless on tiptoe, 
 Fell on the upturned faces of these roses 
 That gave out, in return for the love-light, 
 Their odorous souls in an ecstatic death, 
 Fell on the upturned faces of these roses 
 That smiled and died in this parterre, enchanted 
 By thee, and by the poetry of thy presence. 
 
 Clad all in white, upon a violet bank 
 
 I saw thee half reclining ; while the moon 
 
 Fell on the upturned faces of the roses, 
 
 And on thine own, upturned, alas, in sorrow! 
 
 Was it not Fate, that, on this July midnight 
 
 Was it not Fate (whose name is also Sorrow) 
 
 That bade me pause before that garden-gate 
 
 To breathe the incense of those slumbering roses ? 
 
 No footstep stirred : the hated world all slept, 
 
 Save only thee and me. (Oh, Heaven! oh, God I 
 
 24 
 
How my heart beats in coupling those two words ! ) 
 Save only thee and me! I paused I looked 
 And in an instant all things disappeared. 
 (Ah, bear in mind this garden was enchanted 1 ) 
 
 The pearly lustre of the moon went out : 
 
 The mossy banks and the meandering paths 
 
 The happy flowers and the repining trees 
 
 Were seen no more : the very roses odors 
 
 Died in the arms of the adoring air. 
 
 All all expired save thee save less than thou? 
 
 Save only the divine light in thine eyes 
 
 Save but the soul in thine uplifted eyes. 
 
 I saw but them they were the world to me: 
 
 I saw but them saw only them for hours 
 
 Saw only them until the moon went down. 
 
 What wild heart-histories seemed to lie enwritten 
 
 Upon those crystalline, celestial spheres ! 
 
 How dark a woe ! yet how sublime a hope! 
 
 How silently serene a sea of pride ! 
 
 How daring an ambition! yet how deep 
 
 How fathomless a capacity for love! 
 
 But now, at length, dear Dian sank from sight, 
 
 Into a western couch of thunder-cloud ; 
 
 And thou, a ghost, amid the entombing trees 
 
 Didst glide away. Only thine eyes remained. 
 
 They would not go, they never yet have gone. 
 
 Lighting my lonely pathway home that night, 
 They have not left me (as my hopes have) since. 
 They follow me they lead me through the years 
 They are my ministers yet I their slave. 
 
Their office is to illumine and enkindle, 
 
 My duty to be saved by their bright light, 
 
 And purified in their electric fire, 
 
 And sanctified in their elysian fire. 
 
 They fill my soul with beauty (which is Hope), 
 
 And are far up in Heaven the stars I kneel to 
 
 In the sad, silent watches of my night; 
 
 While even in the meridian glare of day 
 
 I. see them still two sweetly scintillant 
 
 Venuses, unextinguished by the sun ! 
 
ANNABEL LEE 
 
 IT was many and many a year ago, 
 In a kingdom by the sea, 
 That a maiden there lived whom you may know, 
 
 By the name of ANNABEL LEE; 
 And this maiden she lived with no other thought 
 Than to love and be loved by me. 
 
 / was a child and she was a child, 
 
 In this kingdom by the sea: 
 But we loved with a love that was more than love, 
 
 I and my ANNABEL LEE; 
 With a love that the winged seraphs of heaven 
 
 Coveted her and me. 
 
 And this was the reason that, long ago, 
 
 In this kingdom by the sea, 
 A wind blew out of a cloud, chilling 
 
 My beautiful ANNABEL LEE; 
 So that her highborn kinsman came 
 
 And bore her away from me, 
 To shut her up in a sepulchre 
 
 In this kingdom by the sea. 
 
 The angels, not half so happy in heaven, 
 
 Went envying her and me, 
 Yes ! that was the reason (as all men know, 
 
 In this kingdom by the sea) 
 
That the wind came out of the cloud by night, 
 Chilling and killing my ANNABEL LEE. 
 
 But our love it was stronger by far than the love 
 
 Of those who were older than we, 
 
 Of many far wiser than we ; 
 And neither the angels in heaven above, 
 
 Nor the demons down under the sea, 
 Can ever dissever my soul from the soul 
 
 Of the beautiful ANNABEL LEE: 
 For the moon never beams, without bringing me dreams 
 
 Of the beautiful ANNABEL LEE; 
 And the stars never rise, but I feel the bright eyes 
 
 Of the beautiful ANNABEL LEE; 
 And so, all the night-tide, I lie down by the side 
 Of my darling my darling my life and my bride, 
 
 In the sepulchre there by the sea, 
 
 In her tomb by the sounding sea. 
 
FOR ANNIE 
 
 THANK Heaven! the crisis 
 The danger is past, 
 And the lingering illness 
 
 Is over at last, 
 And the fever called " Living " 
 Is conquered at last. 
 
 Sadly, I know, 
 
 I am shorn of my strength, 
 And no muscle I move 
 
 As I lie at full length ; 
 But no matter 1 I feel 
 
 I am better at length. 
 
 And I rest so composed 
 
 Now, in my bed, 
 That any beholder 
 
 Might fancy me dead, 
 Might start at beholding me, 
 
 Thinking me dead. 
 
 The moaning and groaning 
 The sighing and sobbing 
 
 Are quieted now, 
 
 With that horrible throbbing 
 
 At heart: ah, that horrible, 
 Horrible throbbing! 
 
The sickness the nausea 
 
 The pitiless pain 
 Have ceased, with the fever 
 
 That maddened my brain, 
 With the fever called "Living" 
 
 That burned in my brain. 
 
 And oh ! of all tortures, 
 
 That torture the worst 
 Has abated the terrible 
 
 Torture of thirst 
 For the napthaline river 
 
 Of Passion accurst : 
 I have drank of a water 
 
 That quenches all thirst : 
 
 Of a water that flows, 
 With a lullaby sound, 
 
 From a spring but a very few 
 Feet under ground, 
 
 From a cavern not very far 
 Down under ground. 
 
 And ah I let it never 
 
 Be foolishly said 
 That my room it is gloomy, 
 
 And narrow my bed ; 
 For man never slept 
 
 In a different bed, 
 And, to sleep, you must slumber 
 
 In just such a bed. 
 
My tantalized spirit 
 
 Here blandly reposes, 
 Forgetting, or never 
 
 Regretting its roses, 
 Its old agitations 
 
 Of myrtles and roses. 
 
 For now, while so quietly 
 
 Lying, it fancies 
 A holier odor 
 
 About it, of pansies, 
 A rosemary odor 
 
 Commingled with pansies, 
 \Vith rue and the beautiful 
 
 Puritan pansies. 
 
 And so it lies happily, 
 
 Bathing in many 
 A dream of the truth 
 
 And the beauty of Annie, 
 Drowned in a bath 
 
 Of the tresses of Annie. 
 
 She tenderly kissed me, 
 
 She fondly caressed, 
 And then I fell gently 
 
 To sleep on her breast, 
 Deeply to sleep 
 
 From the heaven of her breast. 
 
 When the light was extinguished 
 She covered me warm, 
 
And she prayed to the angels 
 To keep me from harm, 
 
 To the queen of the angels 
 To shield me from harm. 
 
 And I lie so composedly, 
 
 Now, in my bed, 
 (Knowing her love) 
 
 That you fancy me dead, 
 And I rest so contentedly, 
 
 Now in my bed, 
 (With her love at my breast) 
 
 That you fancy me dead, 
 That you shudder to look at me, 
 
 Thinking me dead. 
 
 But my heart it is brighter 
 
 Than all of the many 
 Stars in the sky, 
 
 For it sparkles with Annie, 
 It glows with the light 
 
 Of the love of my Annie, 
 With the thought of the light 
 
 Of the eyes of my Annie. 
 
 3 2 
 
TO F S S. O D 
 
 THOU wouldst be loved? Then let thy heart 
 From its present pathway part not ! 
 Being everything which now thou art, 
 
 Be nothing which thou art not. 
 So with the world thy gentle ways, 
 Thy grace, thy more than beauty, 
 Shall be an endless theme of praise, 
 And love a simple duty. 
 
TO 
 
 NOT long ago, the writer of these lines, 
 In the mad pride of intellectuality, 
 Maintained "the power of words," denied that ever 
 A thought arose within the human brain 
 Beyond the utterance of the human tongue : 
 And now, as if in mockery of that boast, 
 Two words two foreign soft dissyllables 
 Italian tones, made only to be murmured 
 By angels dreaming in the moonlit " dew 
 That hangs like chains of pearl on Hermon hill," 
 Have stirred from out the abysses of his heart, 
 Unthought-like thoughts that are the souls of thought, 
 Richer, far wider, far diviner visions 
 Than even the seraph harper Israfel 
 (Who has "the sweetest voice of all God s creatures") 
 Could hope to utter. And I ! my spells are broken. 
 The pen falls powerless from my shivering hand. 
 With thy dear name as text, though bidden by thee, 
 I cannot write I cannot speak or think 
 Alas, I cannot feel ; for tis not feeling, 
 This standing motionless upon the golden 
 Threshold of the wide open gate of dreams, 
 Gazing, entranced, adown the gorgeous vista, 
 And thrilling as I see, upon the right, 
 Upon the left, and all the way along, 
 Amid unpurpled vapors, far away, 
 To where the prospect terminates thee only. 
 
THE CITY IN THE SEA 
 
 Lo ! Death has reared himself a throne 
 In a strange city lying alone 
 Far down within the dim West, 
 
 Where the good and the bad and the worst and the best 
 Have gone to their eternal rest. 
 There shrines and palaces and towers 
 (Time-eaten towers that tremble not ! ) 
 Resemble nothing that is ours. 
 Around, by lifting winds forgot, 
 Resignedly beneath the sky 
 The melancholy waters lie. 
 
 No rays from the holy heaven come down 
 On the long night-time of that town ; 
 But light from out the lurid sea 
 Streams up the turrets silently 
 Gleams up the pinnacles far and free 
 Up domes up spires up kingly halls 
 Up fanes up Babylon-like walls 
 Up shadowy long-forgotten bowers 
 Of sculptured ivy and stone flowers 
 Up many and many a marvellous shrine 
 Whose wreathed friezes intertwine 
 The viol, the violet, and the vine. 
 
 Resignedly, beneath the sky 
 
 The melancholy waters lie. 
 
 So blend the turrets and shadows there 
 
 That all seem pendulous in air ; 
 
 .o 
 
While, from a proud tower in the town 
 Death looks gigantically down. 
 
 There open fanes and gaping graves 
 
 Yawn level with the luminous waves, 
 
 But not the riches there that lie 
 
 In each idol s diamond eye, 
 
 Not the gayly-jewelled dead 
 
 Tempt the waters from their bed ; 
 
 For no ripples curl, alas ! 
 
 Along that wilderness of glass ; 
 
 No swellings tell that winds may be 
 
 Upon some far-off happier sea; 
 
 No heavings hint that winds have been 
 
 On scenes less hideously serene. 
 
 But lo 1 a stir is in the air I 
 The wave there is a movement there! 
 As if the towers had thrust aside, 
 In slightly sinking, the dull tide, 
 As if their tops had feebly given 
 A void within the filmy Heaven. 
 The waves have now a redder glow, 
 The hours are breathing faint and low ; 
 And when, amid no earthly moans, 
 Down, down that town shall settle hence, 
 Hell, rising from a thousand thrones, 
 Shall do it reverence. 
 
THE CONQUEROR WORM 
 
 Lo 1 tis a gala night 
 Within the lonesome latter years. 
 An angel throng, bewinged, bedight 
 
 In veils, and drowned in tears, 
 Sit in a theatre, to see 
 
 A play of hopes and fears, 
 While the orchestra breathes fitfully 
 The music of the spheres. 
 
 Mimes, in the form of God on high, 
 
 Mutter and mumble low, 
 And hither and thither fly, 
 
 Mere puppets they, who come and go 
 At bidding of vast formless things 
 
 That shift the scenery to and fro, 
 Flapping from out their Condor wings 
 
 Invisible Woe 1 
 
 That motley drama oh, be sure 
 
 It shall not be forgot 1 
 With its Phantom chased for evermore, 
 
 By a crowd that seize it not, 
 Through a circle that ever returneth in 
 
 To the self-same spot, 
 And much of Madness, and more of Sin, 
 
 And Horror the soul of the plot. 
 
But see, amid the mimic rout 
 
 A crawling shape intrude ! 
 A blood-red thing that writhes from out 
 
 The scenic solitude ! 
 It writhes 1 it writhes ! with mortal pangs 
 
 The mimes become its food, 
 And the angels sob at vermin fangs 
 
 In human gore imbrued. 
 
 Out out are the lights out all 1 
 
 And, over each quivering form, 
 The curtain, a funeral pall, 
 
 Comes down with the rush of a storm, 
 And the angels, all pallid and wan, 
 
 Uprising, unveiling, affirm 
 That the play is the tragedy, " Man," 
 
 And its hero the Conqueror Worm. 
 
THE SLEEPER 
 
 AT midnight, in the month of June, 
 I stand beneath the mystic moon. 
 An opiate vapor, dewy, dim, 
 Exhales from out her golden rim, 
 And, softly dripping, drop by drop, 
 Upon the quiet mountain-top, 
 Steals drowsily and musically 
 Into the universal valley. 
 The rosemary nods upon the grave ; 
 The lily lolls upon the wave; 
 Wrapping the fog about its breast, 
 The ruin moulders into rest ; 
 Looking like Lethe, see 1 the lake 
 A conscious slumber seems to take, 
 And would not, for the world, awake. 
 All Beauty sleeps I And lo ! where lies 
 (Her casement open to the skies) 
 Irene, with her Destinies ! 
 Oh, lady bright 1 can it be right 
 This window open to the night? 
 The wanton airs, from the tree-top, 
 Laughingly through the lattice drop, 
 The bodiless airs, a wizard rout, 
 Flit through thy chamber in and out, 
 And wave the curtain canopy 
 So fitfully so fearfully 
 
 39 
 
Above the closed and fringed lid 
 Neath which thy slumb ring soul lies hid, 
 That, o er the floor and down the wall, 
 Like ghosts the shadows rise and fall ! 
 Oh, lady dear, hast thou no fear? 
 Why and what art thou dreaming here ? 
 Sure thou art come o er far-off seas, 
 A wonder to these garden-trees ! 
 Strange is thy pallor ! strange thy dress ! 
 Strange, above all, thy length of tress, 
 And this all solemn silentness ! 
 
 The lady sleeps ! Oh, may her sleep, 
 Which is enduring, so be deep 1 
 Heaven have her in its sacred keep ! 
 This chamber changed for one more holy, 
 This bed for one more melancholy, 
 I pray to God that she may lie 
 Forever with unopened eye, 
 While the dim sheeted ghosts go by I 
 
 My love, she sleeps ! Oh, may her sleep, 
 
 As it is lasting, so be deep ! 
 
 Soft may the worms about her creep ! 
 
 Far in the forest, dim and old, 
 
 For her may some tall vault unfold, 
 
 Some vault that oft hath flung its black 
 
 And winged panels fluttering back, 
 
 Triumphant, o er the crested palls 
 
 Of her grand family funerals, 
 
 Some sepulchre, remote, alone, 
 
 Against whose portal she hath thrown, 
 
 i 
 
In childhood many an idle stone, 
 Some tomb from out whose sounding door 
 She ne er shall force an echo more, 
 Thrilling to think, poor child of sinl 
 It was the dead who groaned within. 
 
THE COLISEUM 
 
 TYPE of the antique Rome ! Rich reliquary 
 Of lofty contemplation left to Time 
 By buried centuries of pomp and power! 
 At length at length after so many days 
 Of weary pilgrimage and burning thirst, 
 (Thirst for the springs of lore that in thee lie,) 
 I kneel, an altered and an humble man, 
 Amid thy shadows, and so drink within 
 My very soul thy grandeur, gloom, and glory ! 
 
 Vastness ! and Age I and Memories of Eld ! 
 Silence! and Desolation! and dim Night! 
 I feel ye now I feel ye in your strength 
 Oh, spells more sure than e er Judean king 
 Taught in the gardens of Gethsemane ! 
 Oh, charms more potent than the rapt Chaldee 
 Ever drew down from out the quiet stars ! 
 
 Here, where a hero fell, a column falls 1 
 
 Here, where a mimic eagle glared in gold, 
 
 A midnight vigil holds the swarthy bat ! 
 
 Here, where the dames of Rome their gilded hair 
 
 Waved to the wind, now wave the reed and thistle I 
 
 Here, where on golden throne the monarch lolled, 
 
 Glides, spectre-like, unto his marble home, 
 
 Lit by the wan light of the horned moon, 
 
 The swift and silent lizard of the stones! 
 
 But stay ! These walls these ivy-clad arcades 
 
 1 2 
 
These mouldering plinths these sad and blackened 
 
 shafts 
 
 These vague entablatures this crumbling frieze 
 These shattered cornices this wreck this ruin 
 These stones alas ! these gray stones are they all 
 All of the famed and the colossal left 
 By the corrosive Hours to Fate and me ? 
 
 " Not all 1 " the echoes answered me. " Not all ! 
 
 Prophetic sounds and loud, arise forever 
 
 From us, and from all Ruin, unto the wise, 
 
 As melody from Memnon to the Sun. 
 
 We rule the hearts of mightiest men! we rule 
 
 With a despotic sway all giant minds ! 
 
 We are not impotent we pallid stones. 
 
 Not all our power is gone! not all our fame! 
 
 Not all the magic of our high renown ! 
 
 Not all the wonder that encircles usl 
 
 Not all the mysteries that in us lie ! 
 
 Not all the memories that hang upon 
 
 And cling around about us as a garment, 
 
 Clothing us in a robe of more than glory." 
 
 
DREAM-LAND 
 
 BY a route obscure and lonely, 
 Haunted by ill angels only, 
 Where an Eidolon, named NIGHT, 
 On a black throne reigns upright, 
 I have reached these lands but newly, 
 From an ultimate dim Thule, 
 From a wild weird clime that lieth, sublime, 
 Out of SPACE out of TIME. 
 
 Bottomless vales and boundless floods, 
 And chasms, and caves, and Titan woods, 
 With forms that no man can discover 
 For the dews that drip all over; 
 Mountains toppling evermore 
 Into seas without a shore; 
 Seas that restlessly aspire, 
 Surging, into skies of fire; 
 Lakes that endlessly outspread 
 Their lone waters lone and dead, 
 Their still waters still and chilly 
 With the snows of the lolling lily. 
 
 By the lakes that thus outspread 
 Their lone waters, lone and dread, 
 Their sad waters, sad and chilly 
 With the snows of the lolling lily, 
 By the mountains near the river 
 Murmuring lowly, murmuring ever, 
 
 I ! 
 
By the gray woods, by the swamp 
 Where the toad and the newt encamp, 
 By the dismal tarns and pools 
 Where dwell the Ghouls, 
 By each spot the most unholy, 
 In each nook most melancholy, 
 There the traveller meets aghast 
 Sheeted Memories of the Past, 
 Shrouded forms that start and sigh 
 As they pass the wanderer by, 
 White-robed forms of friends long given 
 In agony, to the Earth, and Heaven. 
 
 For the heart whose woes are legion 
 Tis a peaceful, soothing region, 
 For the spirit that walks in shadow 
 Tis oh, tis an Eldorado! 
 But the traveller, travelling through it, 
 May not dare not openly view it; 
 Never its mysteries are exposed 
 To the weak human eye unclosed ; 
 So wills its King, who hath forbid 
 The uplifting of the fringed lid ; 
 And thus the sad Soul that here passes 
 Beholds it but through darkened glasses. 
 By a route obscure and lonely, 
 Haunted by ill angels only, 
 Where an Eidolon, named NIGHT, 
 On a black throne reigns upright, 
 I have wandered home but newly 
 From this ultimate dim Thule. 
 
 45 
 
EULALIE 
 
 I DWELT alone 
 In a world of moan, 
 And my soul was a stagnant tide, 
 Till the fair and gentle Eulalie became my blushing 
 
 bride, 
 
 Till the yellow-haired young Eulalie became my smiling 
 bride. 
 
 Ah, less less bright 
 The stars of the night 
 Than the eyes of the radiant girl ; 
 And never a flake 
 That the vapor can make 
 With the moon-tints of purple and pearl, 
 Can vie with the modest Eulalie s most unregarded 
 
 curl, 
 
 Can compare with the bright-eyed Eulalie s most 
 humble and careless curl. 
 
 Now Doubt now Pain 
 Come never again, 
 For her soul gives me sigh for sigh, 
 And all day long 
 Shines bright and strong, 
 Astarte within the sky, 
 While ever to her dear Eulalie upturns her matron 
 
 eye, 
 
 While ever to her young Eulalie upturns her violet 
 eye. 
 
 46 
 
TO MY MOTHER 
 
 BECAUSE I feel that, in the Heavens above, 
 The angels, whispering to one another, 
 Can find, among their burning terms of love, 
 
 None so devotional as that of " Mother," 
 Therefore by that dear name I long have called you, 
 
 You who are more than mother unto me, 
 And fill my heart of hearts, where Death installed you, 
 
 In setting my Virginia s spirit free. 
 My mother my own mother, who died early, 
 
 Was but the mother of myself; but you 
 Are mother to the one I loved so dearly, 
 
 And thus are dearer than the mother I knew 
 By that infinity with which my wife 
 Was dearer to my soul than its own soul-life. 
 
 47 
 
ELDORADO 
 
 AYLY bedight, 
 
 A gallant knight, 
 In sunshine and in shadow, 
 Had journeyed long, 
 Singing a song, 
 In search of Eldorado. 
 
 But he grew old, 
 
 This knight so bold, 
 And o er his heart a shadow 
 
 Fell as he found 
 
 No spot of ground 
 That looked like Eldorado. 
 
 And, as his strength 
 Failed him at length, 
 
 He met a pilgrim Shadow. 
 " Shadow," said he, 
 " Where can it be 
 
 This land of Eldorado ? " 
 
 " Over the Mountains 
 
 Of the Moon, 
 Down the Valley of the Shadow, 
 
 Ride, boldly ride," 
 
 The Shade replied, 
 " If you seek for Eldorado 1 " 
 
 48 
 
TO F 
 
 BELOVED, amid the earnest woes 
 That crowd around my earthly path,- 
 ( Drear path, alas! where grows 
 Not even one lonely rose), 
 
 My soul at least a solace hath 
 In dreams of thee, and therein knows 
 An Eden of bland repose. 
 
 And thus my memory is to me 
 Like some enchanted far-off isle 
 
 In some tumultuous sea, 
 
 Some ocean throbbing far and free 
 With storms, but where meanwhile 
 
 Serenest skies continually 
 
 Just o er that one bright island smile. 
 
TO ONE IN PARADISE 
 
 THOU wast that all to me, love, 
 For which my soul did pine, 
 A green isle in the sea, love, 
 
 A fountain and a shrine, 
 All wreathed with fairy fruits and flowers, 
 And all the flowers were mine. 
 
 Ah, dream too bright to last ! 
 
 Ah, starry Hope ! that didst arise 
 But to be overcast ! 
 
 A voice from out the future cries, 
 " On 1 on ! " But o er the Past 
 
 (Dim gulf !) my spirit hovering lies 
 Mute, motionless, aghast! 
 
 For, alas 1 alas ! with me 
 
 The light of Life is o er 1 
 "No more no more no more " 
 
 (Such language holds the solemn sea 
 To the sands upon the shore) 
 
 Shall bloom the thunder-blasted tree, 
 Or the stricken eagle soar ! 
 
 And all my days are trances, 
 
 And all my nightly dreams 
 Are where thy dark eye glances, 
 
 And where thy footstep gleams, 
 In what ethereal dances, 
 
 By what eternal streams. 
 
HYMN 
 
 AT morn at noon at twilight dim 
 Maria, thou hast heard my hymn ! 
 In joy and woe in good and ill 
 Mother of God, be with me still 1 
 When the Hours flew brightly by, 
 And not a cloud obscured the sky, 
 My soul, lest it should truant be, 
 Thy grace did guide to thine and thee : 
 Now, when storms of Fate o ercast 
 Darkly my Present and my Past, 
 Let my Future radiant shine 
 With sweet hopes of thee and thine 1 
 
A DREAM WITHIN A DREAM 
 
 TAKE this kiss upon the brow ! 
 And, in parting from you now, 
 Thus much let me avow : 
 You are not wrong, who deem 
 That my days have been a dream ; 
 Yet if Hope has flown away 
 In a night, or in a day, 
 In a vision, or in none, 
 Is it therefore the less gone ? 
 All that we see or seem 
 Is but a dream within a dream. 
 
 I stand amid the roar 
 Of a surf -tormented shore, 
 And I hold within my hand 
 Grains of the golden sand : 
 How few! yet how they creep 
 Through my ringers to the deep, 
 While I weep, while I weep ! 
 Oh, God 1 can I not grasp 
 Them with a tighter clasp ? 
 Oh, God ! can I not save 
 One from the pitiless wave ? 
 Is all that we see or seem 
 But a dream within a dream? 
 
TO ZANTE 
 
 FAIR isle, that from the fairest of all flowers, 
 Thy gentlest of all gentle names dost take ! 
 How many memories of what radiant hours 
 
 At sight of thee and thine at once awake ! 
 How many scenes of what departed bliss ! 
 
 How many thoughts of what entombed hopes I 
 How many visions of a maiden that is 
 
 No more no more upon thy verdant slopes 1 
 No more ! Alas, that magical sad sound 
 
 Transforming all ! Thy charms shall please no more, 
 Thy memory no more! Accursed ground 
 
 Henceforth I hold thy flower-enamelled shore, 
 Oh, hyacinthine isle! Oh, purple Zantel 
 " Isola d oro ! Fior di Levante ! " 
 
 ! 
 
THE HAUNTED PALACE 
 
 IN the greenest of our valleys 
 By good angels tenanted, 
 Once a fair and stately palace 
 
 Radiant palace reared its head. 
 In the monarch Thought s dominion 
 
 It stood there ! 
 Never seraph spread a pinion 
 Over fabric half so fair! 
 
 Banners yellow, glorious, golden, 
 
 On its roof did float and flow, 
 (This all this was in the olden 
 
 Time long ago,) 
 And every gentle air that dallied, 
 
 In that sweet day, 
 Along the ramparts plumed and pallid, 
 
 A winged odor went away. 
 
 Wanderers in that happy valley, 
 
 Through two luminous windows, saw 
 Spirits moving musically, 
 
 To a lute s well-tuned law, 
 Round about a throne where, sitting 
 
 (Porphyrogene !) 
 In state his glory well befitting, 
 
 The ruler of the realm was seen. 
 
And all with pearl and ruby glowing 
 
 Was the fair palace door, 
 Through which came flowing, flowing, flowing, 
 
 And sparkling ever more, 
 A troop of Echoes, whose sweet duty 
 
 Was but to sing, 
 In voices of surpassing beauty, 
 
 The wit and wisdom of their king. 
 
 But evil things, in robes of sorrow, 
 
 Assailed the monarch s high estate. 
 (Ah, let us mourn ! for never morrow 
 
 Shall dawn upon him desolate 1 ) 
 And round about his home the glory 
 
 That blushed and bloomed, 
 Is but a dim-remembered story 
 
 Of the old time entombed. 
 
 And travellers, now, within that valley, 
 
 Through the red-litten windows see 
 Vast forms, that move fantastically 
 
 To a discordant melody, 
 While, like a ghastly rapid river, 
 
 Through the pale door 
 A hideous throng rush out forever 
 
 And laugh, but smile no more. 
 
 55 
 
SILENCE 
 
 THERE are some qualities some incorporate things- 
 That have a double life, which thus is made 
 A type of that twin entity which springs 
 
 From matter and light, evinced in solid and shade. 
 There is a twofold Silence sea and shore 
 
 Body and soul. One dwells in lonely places, 
 
 Newly with grass o ergrown ; some solemn graces, 
 Some human memories, and tearful lore, 
 Render him terrorless : his name s " No More." 
 He is the corporate Silence : dread him not I 
 
 No power hath he of evil in himself ; 
 But should some urgent fate (untimely lot 1 ) 
 
 Bring thee to meet his shadow (nameless elf, 
 That haunteth the lone regions where hath trod 
 No foot of man), commend thyself to God! 
 
 ; 
 
ISRAFEL 
 
 IN Heaven a spirit doth dwell, 
 " Whose heartstrings are a lute." 
 None sing so wildly well 
 As the angel, Israfel, 
 And the giddy stars (so legends tell) 
 Ceasing their hymns, attend the spell 
 Of his voice, all mute. 
 
 Tottering above, 
 
 In her highest noon, 
 
 The enamoured moon 
 Blushes with love, 
 
 While, to listen, the red leven 
 
 (With the rapid Pleiades, even, 
 
 Which were seven,) 
 
 Pauses in Heaven. 
 
 And they say (the starry choir 
 And the other listening things) 
 
 That Israfeli s fire 
 
 Is owing to that lyre 
 
 By which he sits and sings, 
 
 The trembling living wire 
 
 Of those unusual strings. 
 
 i And the angel Israfel, whose heartstrings are a 
 lute, and who has the sweetest voice of all God s 
 rreatures. KORAN. 
 
 : - 
 
But the skies that angel trod, 
 
 Where deep thoughts are a duty 
 
 Where Love s a grown-up God, 
 Where the Houri glances are 
 
 Imbued with all the beauty 
 Which we worship in a star. 
 
 Therefore, thou art not wrong, 
 
 Israfeli, who despisest 
 An unimpassioned song: 
 To thee the laurels belong, 
 
 Best bard, because the wisest ! 
 Merrily live, and long 1 
 
 The ecstasies above 
 
 With thy burning measures suit 
 Thy grief, thy joy, thy hate, thy love, 
 
 With the fervor of thy lute : 
 
 Well may the stars be mute! 
 
 Yes, Heaven is thine; but this 
 Is a world of sweets and sours : 
 Our flowers are merely flowers, 
 
 And the shadow of thy perfect bliss 
 Is the sunshine of ours. 
 
 If I could dwell 
 Where Israfel 
 
 Hath dwelt, and he where I, 
 He might not sing so wildly well 
 
 A mortal melody, 
 While a bolder note than this might swell 
 
 From my lyre within the sky. 
 
TO L. M. S 
 
 OF all who hail thy presence as the morning, 
 Of all to whom thine absence is the night, 
 The blotting utterly from out high heaven 
 The sacred sun, of all who, weeping, bless thee 
 Hourly for hope for life ah! above all, 
 For the resurrection of deep-buried faith 
 In Truth in Virtue in Humanity, 
 Of all who, on Despair s unhallow d bed 
 Lying down to die, have suddenly arisen 
 At thy soft-murmured words, "Let there be light!" 
 At the soft-murmured words that were fulfilled 
 In the seraphic glancing of thine eyes, 
 Of all who owe thee most, whose gratitude 
 Nearest resembles worship, oh, remember 
 The truest the most fervently devoted, 
 And think that these weak lines are written by him,- 
 By him who, as he pens them, thrills to think 
 His spirit is communing with an angel s. 
 
 59 
 
THE VALLEY OF UNREST 
 
 ONCE it smiled a silent dell 
 Where the people did not dwell; 
 They had gone unto the wars, 
 Trusting to the mild-eyed stars, 
 Nightly, from their azure towers, 
 To keep watch above the flowers, 
 In the midst of which all day 
 The red sunlight lazily lay. 
 Now each visitor shall confess 
 The sad valley s restlessness. 
 Nothing there is motionless, 
 Nothing save the airs that brood 
 Over the magic solitude. 
 Ah, by no wind are stirred those trees 
 That palpitate like the chill seas 
 Around the misty Hebrides ! 
 Ah, by no wind those clouds are driven 
 That rustle through the unquiet Heaven 
 Uneasily, from morn till even, 
 Over the violets there that lie 
 In myriad types of the human eye, 
 Over the lilies there that wave 
 And weep above a nameless grave 1 
 They wave: from out their fragrant tops 
 Eternal dews come down in drops. 
 They weep: from off their delicate stems 
 Perennial tears descend in gems. 
 
POEMS WRITTEN IN YOUTH 
 
Private reasons some of which have 
 reference to the sin of plagiarism, and 
 others to the date of Tennyson s first 
 poems have induced me, after some 
 hesitation, to republish these, the crude 
 compositions of my earliest boyhood. 
 They are printed -verbatim, without 
 alteration from the original edition, the 
 date of which is too remote to be 
 judiciously acknowledged. E. A. P. 
 
TO HELEN 
 
 HELEN, thy beauty is to me 
 Like those Nicean barks of yore, 
 That gently, o er a perfumed sea, 
 The weary, wayworn wanderer bore 
 To his own native shore. 
 
 On desperate seas long wont to roam, 
 Thy hyacinth hair, thy classic face, 
 
 Thy Naiad airs have brought me home 
 To the glory that was Greece 
 
 And the grandeur that was Rome. 
 
 Lo ! in yon brilliant window-niche 
 How statue-like I see thee stand ! 
 
 The agate lamp within thy hand, 
 Ah I Psyche,, from the regions which 
 
 Are Holy Land! 
 
SONNET TO SCIENCE 
 
 SCIENCE ! True daughter of Old Time thou art ! 
 Who alterest all things with thy peering eyes. 
 Why preyest thou thus upon the poet s heart, 
 
 Vulture, whose wings are dull realities ? 
 How should he love thee ? or how deem thee wise, 
 
 Who wouldst not leave him in his wandering 
 To seek for treasure in the jeweled skies, 
 
 Albeit he soared with an undaunted wing ? 
 Hast thou not dragged Diana from her car ? 
 
 And driven the Hamadryad from the wood 
 To seek a shelter in some happier star ? 
 
 Hast thou not torn the Naiad from her flood, 
 The Elfin from the green grass, and from me 
 The summer dream beneath the tamarind tree ? 
 
 64 
 
SPIRITS OF THE DEAD 
 
 THY soul shall find itself alone 
 Mid dark thoughts of the gray tombstone 
 Not one, of all the crowd, to pry 
 Into thine hour of secrecy. 
 
 Be silent in that solitude 
 
 Which is not loneliness, for then 
 The spirits of the dead who stood 
 
 In life before thee are again 
 In death around thee, and their will 
 Shall overshadow thee : be still. 
 
 The night, though clear, shall frown, 
 
 And the stars shall not look down 
 
 From their high thrones in Heaven, 
 
 With light like Hope to mortals given: 
 
 But their red orbs, without beam, 
 
 To thy weariness shall seem 
 
 As a burning and a fever 
 
 Which would cling to thee forever. 
 
 Now are thoughts thou shalt not banish, 
 
 Now are visions ne er to vanish : 
 
 From thy spirit shall they pass 
 
 No more like dewdrops from the grass. 
 
 The breeze the breath of God is still; 
 And the mist upon the hill 
 Shadowy shadowy yet unbroken, 
 Is a symbol and a token, 
 How it hangs upon the trees, 
 A mystery of mysteries ! 
 
 65 
 
FAIRY- LAND 
 
 DIM vales and shadowy floods 
 And cloudy-looking woods, 
 Whose forms we can t discover 
 For the tears that drip all over : 
 Huge moons there wax and wane, 
 Again again again 
 Every moment of the night, 
 Forever changing places, 
 And they put out the starlight 
 With the breath from their pale faces. 
 About twelve by the moon-dial, 
 One more filmy than the rest 
 Comes down still down and down 
 With its centre on the crown 
 Of a mountain s eminence, 
 While its wide circumference 
 In easy drapery falls 
 Over hamlets, over halls, 
 Wherever they may be : 
 O er the strange woods o er the sea 
 Over spirits on the wing 
 Over every drowsy thing 
 And buries them up quite 
 In a labyrinth of light ; 
 And then, how deep ! oh, deep 
 Is the passion of their sleep. 
 In the morning they arise, 
 
 66 
 
And their moony covering 
 
 Is soaring in the skies, 
 
 With the tempests as they toss, 
 
 Like almost anything 
 
 Or a yellow albatross. 
 
 They use that moon no more 
 
 For the same end as before, 
 
 Videlicet, a tent, 
 
 Which I think extravagant : 
 
 Its atomies, however, 
 
 Into a shower dissever, 
 
 Of which those butterflies 
 
 Of Earth who seek the skies, 
 
 And so come down again 
 
 (Never-contented things ! ) 
 
 Have brought a specimen 
 
 Upon their quivering wings. 
 
THE LAKE. TO 
 
 IN spring of youth it was my lot 
 To haunt of the wide world a spot 
 The which I could not love the less, 
 So lovely was the loveliness 
 Of a wild lake, with black rock bound, 
 And the tall pines that towered around. 
 But when the night had thrown her pall 
 Upon that spot, as upon all, 
 And the mystic wind went by 
 Murmuring in melody, 
 Then ah, then I would awake 
 To the terror of the lone lake. 
 Yet that terror was not fright, 
 But a tremulous delight, 
 A feeling not the jewelled mine 
 Could teach or bribe me to define, 
 Nor Love although the Love were thine. 
 
 Death was in that poisonous wave, 
 
 And its gulf a fitting grave 
 
 For him who thence could solace bring 
 
 To his lone imagining, 
 
 Whose solitary soul could make 
 
 An Eden of that dim lake. 
 
 68 
 
A DREAM 
 
 IN visions of the dark night 
 I have dream d of joy departed ; 
 But a waking dream of life and light 
 Hath left me broken-hearted. 
 
 Ah, what is not a dream by day 
 
 To him whose eyes are cast 
 On things around him with a ray 
 
 Turned back upon the past? 
 
 That holy dream that holy dream, 
 While all the world were chiding, 
 
 Hath cheered me as a lovely beam 
 A lonely spirit guiding. 
 
 What tho that light, thro storm and night 
 
 So trembled from afar, 
 What could there be more purely bright 
 
 In Truth s day star ? 
 
 69 
 
ALONE 
 
 FROM childhood s hour I have not been 
 As others were, I have not seen 
 As others saw, I could not bring 
 My passions from a common spring. 
 From the same source I have not taken 
 My sorrow ; I could not awaken 
 My heart to joy at the same tone ; 
 And all I loved, /loved alone. 
 Then in my childhood in the dawn 
 Of a most stormy life was drawn 
 From every depth of good and ill 
 The mystery which binds me still : 
 From the torrent, or the fountain, 
 From the red cliff of the mountain, 
 From the sun that round me roll d 
 In its autumn tint of gold, 
 From the lightning in the sky 
 As it pass d me flying by, 
 From the thunder and the storm, 
 And the cloud that took the form 
 (When the rest of Heaven was blue) 
 Of a demon in my view. 
 
 70 
 
TO - 
 
 THE bowers whereat, in dreams, I see 
 The wantonest singing birds, 
 Are lips and all thy melody 
 Of lip-begotten words. 
 
 Thine eyes, in Heaven of heart enshrin d, 
 
 Then desolately fall, 
 Oh, God ! on my funereal mind 
 
 Like starlight on a pall. 
 
 Thy heart thy heart I wake and sigh, 
 
 And sleep to dream till day 
 Of the truth that gold can never buy 
 
 Of the baubles that it may. 
 
TO THE RIVER 
 
 FAIR river 1 in thy bright, clear flow 
 Of crystal, wandering water, 
 Thou art an emblem of the glow 
 
 Of beauty the unhidden heart 
 The playful maziness of art 
 In old Alberto s daughter; 
 
 But when within thy wave she looks, 
 
 Which glistens then, and trembles, 
 Why, then, the prettiest of brooks 
 
 Her worshipper resembles; 
 For in his heart, as in thy stream, 
 
 Her image deeply lies, 
 His heart which trembles at the beam 
 
 Of her soul-searching eyes. 
 
 - 
 
TO 
 
 I HEED not that my earthly lot 
 Hath little of Earth in it, 
 That years of love have been forgot 
 
 In the hatred of a minute : 
 I mourn not that the desolate 
 Are happier, sweet, than I ; 
 But that you sorrow for my fate 
 Who am but a passer-by. 
 
SONG 
 
 I SAW thee on the bridal day, 
 When a burning blush came o er thee, 
 Though happiness around thee lay, 
 The world all love before thee : 
 
 And in thine eye a kindling light 
 
 (Whatever it might be) 
 Was all on Earth my aching sight 
 
 Of Loveliness could see. 
 
 That blush, perhaps, was maiden shame, 
 
 As such it well may pass, 
 Though its glow hath raised a fiercer flame 
 
 In the breast of him, alas! 
 
 Who saw thee on that bridal day, 
 
 When that deep blush would come o er thee, 
 Though happiness around thee lay, 
 
 The world all love before thee. 
 
 74 
 
ROMANCE 
 
 ROMANCE, who loves to nod and sing, 
 With drowsy head and folded wing, 
 Among the green leaves as they shake 
 Far down within some shadowy lake, 
 
 To me a painted paroquet 
 Hath been a most familiar bird, 
 
 Taught me my alphabet to say 
 To lisp my very earliest word 
 While in the wild wood I did lie, 
 A child with a most knowing eye. 
 
 Of late, eternal Condor years 
 
 So shake the very Heaven on high 
 With tumult as they thunder by, 
 
 I have no time for idle cares 
 
 Through gazing on the unquiet sky. 
 
 And when an hour with calmer wings 
 
 Its down upon my spirit flings 
 That little time with lyre and rhyme 
 
 To while aw T ay forbidden things! 
 My heart would feel to be a crime, 
 
 Unless it trembled with the strings. 
 
 75 
 
TO EDGAR ALLAN POE 
 
Reprinted from Letters to Dead 
 A utkors by Andrew Lang. London, 
 1886. 
 
TO EDGAR ALLAN POE 
 
 SIR, Your English readers, better 
 acquainted with your poems and 
 romances than with your criticisms, have 
 long wondered at the indefatigable hatred 
 which pursues your memory. You, who 
 knew the men, will not marvel that certain 
 microbes of letters, the survivors of your 
 own generation, still harass your name with 
 their malevolence, while old women twitter 
 out their incredible and unheeded slanders in 
 the literary papers of New York. But their 
 persistent animosity does not quite suffice to 
 explain the dislike with which many Ameri 
 can critics regard the greatest poet, perhaps 
 the greatest literary genius, of their country. 
 With a commendable patriotism, they are 
 not apt to rate native merit too low; and 
 you, I think, are the only example of an 
 American prophet almost without honour in 
 his own country. 
 
 The recent publication of a cold, careful, 
 and in many respects admirable study of 
 your career ( " Edgar Allan Poe," by George 
 Woodberry : Houghton, Mifflin and Co., Bos- 
 
 79 
 
TO EDGAR ALLAN POE 
 
 ton) reminds English readers who have for 
 gotten it, and teaches those who never knew 
 it, that you were, unfortunately, a Reviewer. 
 How unhappy were the necessities, how 
 deplorable the vein, that compelled or 
 seduced a man of your eminence into the 
 dusty and stony ways of contemporary criti 
 cism! About the writers of his own gen 
 eration a leader of that generation should 
 hold his peace. He should neither praise 
 nor blame nor defend his equals ; he should 
 not strike one blow at the buzzing ephem 
 erae of letters. The breath of their life is in 
 the columns of "Literary Gossip;" and 
 they should be allowed to perish with the 
 weekly advertisements on which they pas 
 ture. Reviewing, of course, there must 
 needs be; but great minds should only 
 criticise the great who have passed beyond 
 the reach of eulogy or fault-finding. 
 
 Unhappily, taste and circumstances com 
 bined to make you a censor; you vexed a 
 continent, and you are still unforgiven. 
 What "irritation of a sensitive nature, 
 chafed by some indefinite sense of wrong," 
 drove you (in Mr. Longfellow s own words) 
 to attack his pure and beneficent Muse we 
 may never ascertain. But Mr. Longfellow 
 forgave you easily ; for pardon comes easily 
 to the great. It was the smaller men, the 
 
 80 
 
TO EDGAR ALLAN POE 
 
 Daweses, Gris wolds, and the like, that 
 knew not how to forget. " The New Yorkers 
 never forgave him," says your latest biog 
 rapher; and one scarcely marvels at the 
 inveteracy of their malice. It was not indi 
 vidual vanity alone, but the whole literary 
 class that you assailed. " As a literary peo 
 ple," you wrote, "we are one vast perambu 
 lating humbug." After that declaration of 
 war you died, and left your reputation to 
 the vanities yet writhing beneath your scorn. 
 They are writhing and writing still. He 
 who knows them need not linger over the 
 attacks and defences of your personal char 
 acter; he will not waste time on calumnies, 
 tale-bearing, private letters, and all the 
 noisome dust which takes so long in settling 
 above your tomb. 
 
 For us it is enough to know that you were 
 compelled to live by your pen, and that in 
 an age when the author of " To Helen " 
 and "The Cask of Amontillado" was paid 
 at the rate of a dollar a column. When 
 such poverty was the mate of such pride as 
 yours, a misery more deep than that of 
 Burns, an agony longer than Chatterton s 
 were inevitable and assured. No man was 
 less fortunate than you in the moment of 
 his birth infelix opportunitate vita. Had 
 you lived a generation later, honour, wealth, 
 
 81 
 
TO EDGAR ALLAN POE 
 
 applause, success in Europe and at home, 
 would all have been yours. Within thirty 
 years so great a change has passed over the 
 profession of letters in America; and it is 
 impossible to estimate the rewards which 
 would have fallen to Edgar Poe, had chance 
 made him the contemporary of Mark Twain 
 and of "Called Back." It may be that 
 your criticisms helped to bring in the new 
 era, and to lift letters out of the reach of 
 quite unlettered scribblers. Though not a 
 scholar, at least you had a respect for schol 
 arship. You might still marvel over such 
 words as " obj ectional " in the new biogra 
 phy of yourself, and might ask what is 
 meant by such a sentence as "his connec 
 tion with it had inured to his own benefit by 
 the frequent puffs of himself," and so forth. 
 Best known in your own day as a critic, it 
 is as a poet and a writer of short tales that 
 you must live. But to discuss your few and 
 elaborate poems is a waste of time, so com 
 pletely does your own brief definition of 
 poetry, " the rhythmic creation of the beau 
 tiful," exhaust your theory, and so perfectly 
 is the theory illustrated by the poems. Nat 
 ural bent, and reaction against the example 
 of Mr. Longfellow, combined to make you 
 too intolerant of what you call the "didac 
 tic " element in verse. Even if morality be 
 
 82 
 
TO EDGAR ALLAN POE 
 
 not seven-eighths of our life (the exact pro 
 portion as at present estimated), there was a 
 place even on the Hellenic Parnassus for 
 gnomic bards, and theirs in the nature of 
 the case must always be the largest public. 
 
 "Music is the perfection of the soul or 
 the idea of poetry," so you wrote; "the 
 vagueness of exaltation aroused by a sweet 
 air (which should be indefinite and never too 
 strongly suggestive), is precisely what we 
 should aim at in poetry." You aimed at 
 that mark, and struck it again and again, 
 notably in " Helen, thy beauty is to me," in 
 "The Haunted Palace," "The Valley of 
 Unrest," and "The City in the Sea." But 
 by some Nemesis which might, perhaps, 
 have been foreseen, you are, to the world, 
 the poet of one poem "The Raven:" a 
 piece in which the music is highly artificial, 
 and the " exaltation " (what there is of it) by 
 no means particularly "vague." So a por 
 tion of the public know little of Shelley but 
 the "Skylark," and those two incongruous 
 birds, the lark and the raven, bear each of 
 them a poet s name, vivu j per ora virum. 
 Your theory of poetry, if accepted, would 
 make you (after the author of " Kubla 
 Khan") the foremost of the poets of the 
 world ; at no long distance would come Mr. 
 William Morris as he was when he wrote 
 
TO EDGAR ALLAN POE 
 
 "Golden Wings," "The Blue Closet," and 
 " The Sailing of the Sword ; " and, close up, 
 Mr. Lear, the author of " The Yongi Bongi 
 Bo," and the lay of the " Jumblies." 
 
 On the other hand Homer would sink 
 into the limbo to which you consigned 
 Moliere. If we may judge a theory by its 
 results, when compared with the deliberate 
 verdict of the world, your aesthetic does not 
 seem to hold water. The " Odyssey " is not 
 really inferior to " Ulalume," as it ought to 
 be if your doctrine of poetry were correct, 
 nor "Le Festin de Pierre" to "Undine." 
 Yet you deserve the praise of having been 
 constant, in your poetic practice, to your 
 poetic principles principles commonly 
 deserted by poets who, like Wordsworth, 
 have published their aesthetic system. Your 
 pieces are few; and Dr. Johnson would 
 have called you, like Fielding, "a barren 
 rascal." But how can a writer s verses be 
 numerous if with him, as with you, " poetry 
 is not a pursuit but a passion . . . which 
 cannot at will be excited with an eye to the 
 paltry compensations or the more paltry 
 commendations of mankind ! " Of you it 
 may be said, more truly than Shelley said it 
 of himself, that "to ask you for anything 
 human, is like asking at a gin-shop for a leg 
 of mutton." 
 
 84 
 
TO EDGAR ALLAN POE 
 
 Humanity must always be, to the majority 
 of men, the true stuff of poetry; and only a 
 minority will thank you for that rare music 
 which (like the strains of the fiddler in the 
 story) is touched on a single string, and on 
 an instrument fashioned from the spoils of 
 the grave. You chose, or you were destined 
 
 To vary from the kindly race of men ; 
 
 and the consequences, which wasted your 
 life, pursue your reputation. 
 
 For your stories has been reserved a 
 boundless popularity, and that highest suc 
 cess the success of a perfectly sympa 
 thetic translation. By this time, of course, 
 you have made the acquaintance of your 
 translator, M. Charles Baudelaire, who so 
 strenuously shared your views about Mr. 
 Emerson and the Transcendentalists, and 
 who so energetically resisted all those ideas 
 of "progress" which "came from Hell or 
 Boston." On this point, however, the world 
 continues to differ from you and M. Baude 
 laire, and perhaps there is only the choice 
 between our optimism and universal suicide 
 or universal opium-eating. But to discuss 
 your ultimate ideas is perhaps a profitless 
 digression from the topic of your prose 
 romances. 
 
 An English critic (probably a Northerner 
 
 85 
 
TO EDGAR ALLAN POE 
 
 at heart) has described them as " Hawthorne 
 and delirium tremens." I am not aware 
 that extreme orderliness, masterly elabora 
 tion, and unchecked progress towards a pre 
 determined effect are characteristics of the 
 visions of delirium. If they be, then there is 
 a deal of truth in the criticism, and a good 
 deal of delirium tremens in your style. But 
 your ingenuity, your completeness, your 
 occasional luxuriance of fancy and wealth of 
 jewel-like words, are not, perhaps, gifts 
 which Mr. Hawthorne had at his command. 
 He was a great writer the greatest writer 
 in prose fiction whom America has produced. 
 But you and he had not much in common, 
 except a certain mortuary turn of mind and 
 a taste for gloomy allegories about the 
 workings of conscience. 
 
 I forbear to anticipate your verdict about 
 the latest essays of American fiction. These 
 by no means follow in the lines which you 
 laid down about brevity and the steady 
 working to one single effect. Probably you 
 would not be very tolerant (tolerance was 
 not your leading virtue) of Mr. Roe, now 
 your countrymen s favourite novelist. He is 
 long, he is didactic, he is eminently unin 
 spired. In the works of one who is, not what 
 you once called yourself, a Bostonian, you 
 would admire, at least, the acute observa- 
 
TO EDGAR ALLAN POE 
 
 tion, the subtlety, and the unfailing distinc 
 tion. But, destitute of humour as you unhap 
 pily but undeniably were, you would miss, I 
 fear, the charm of "Daisy Miller." You 
 would admit the unity of effect secured 
 in " Washington Square," though that effect 
 is as remote as possible from the terror of 
 "The House of Usher" or the vindictive 
 triumph of "The Cask of Amontillado." 
 
 Farewell, farewell, thou sombre and soli 
 tary spirit: a genius tethered to the hack 
 work of the press, a gentleman among 
 canaille^ a poet among poetasters, dowered 
 with a scholar s taste without a scholar s 
 training, embittered by his sensitive scorn, 
 and all unsupported by his consolations. 
 
 i No reference, of course, is intended to the great 
 American writers of Poe s day, but to the lower set of 
 hacks who were his enemies. 
 
14 DAY USE 
 
 RETURN TO DESK FROM WHICH BORROWED 
 
 LOAN DEPT. 
 
 This book is due on the last date stamped below, or 
 
 on the date to which renewed. 
 Renewed books are subject to immediate recall. 
 
 ff- 
 
 NOV25196906 
 
BERKELEY LIBRARIES 
 
Jl