Selections from Poe Part 2

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 5 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. 10

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; 15 And when an hour with calmer wings Its down upon my spirit flings, That little time with lyre and rhyme To while away--forbidden things-- My heart would feel to be a crime 20 Unless it trembled with the strings.

TO THE RIVER

Fair river! 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 5 In old Alberto's daughter;

But when within thy wave she looks, Which glistens then, and trembles, Why, then, the prettiest of brooks Her wors.h.i.+pper resembles; 10 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 SCIENCE

A PROLOGUE TO "AL AARAAF"

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, 5 Who wouldst not leave him in his wandering To seek for treasure in the jewelled skies, Albeit he soared with an undaunted wing?

Hast thou not dragged Diana from her car, And driven the Hamadryad from the wood 10 To seek a shelter in some happier star?

Hast thou not torn the Naiad from her flood, The Elfin from the green gra.s.s, and from me The summer dream beneath the tamarind-tree?

TO HELEN

Helen, thy beauty is to me Like those Nicaean barks of yore, That gently, o'er a perfumed sea, The weary, wayworn wanderer bore To his own native sh.o.r.e. 5

On desperate seas long wont to roam, Thy hyacinth hair, thy cla.s.sic face, Thy Naiad airs, have brought me home To the glory that was Greece And the grandeur that was Rome. 10

Lo! in yon brilliant window-niche How statue-like I see thee stand, The agate lamp within thy hand!

Ah, Psyche, from the regions which Are Holy Land! 15

ISRAFEL

And the angel Israfel, whose heart-strings are a lute, and who has the sweetest voice of all G.o.d's creatures.--KORAN

In Heaven a spirit doth dwell Whose heart-strings are a lute; None sing so wildly well As the angel Israfel, And the giddy stars (so legends tell), 5 Ceasing their hymns, attend the spell Of his voice, all mute.

Tottering above In her highest noon, The enamoured moon 10 Blushes with love, While, to listen, the red levin (With the rapid Pleiads, even, Which were seven) Pauses in Heaven. 15

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, 20 The trembling living wire Of those unusual strings.

But the skies that angel trod, Where deep thoughts are a duty, Where Love's a grown-up G.o.d, 25 Where the Houri glances are Imbued with all the beauty Which we wors.h.i.+p in a star.

Therefore thou art not wrong, Israfeli, who despisest 30 An unimpa.s.sioned song; To thee the laurels belong, Best bard, because the wisest: Merrily live, and long!

The ecstasies above 35 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 40 Is a world of sweets and sours; Our flowers are merely--flowers, And the shadow of thy perfect bliss Is the suns.h.i.+ne of ours.

If I could dwell 45 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 50 From my lyre within the sky.

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. 5 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 10 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, 15 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, 20 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. 25 So blend the turrets and shadows there That all seem pendulous in air, While from a proud tower in the town Death looks gigantically down.

There open fanes and gaping graves 30 Yawn level with the luminous waves; But not the riches there that lie In each idol's diamond eye,-- Not the gaily-jewelled dead, Tempt the waters from their bed; 35 For no ripples curl, alas, Along that wilderness of gla.s.s; No swellings tell that winds may be Upon some far-off happier sea; No heavings hint that winds have been 40 On seas less hideously serene!

But lo, a stir is in the air!

The wave--there is a movement there!

As if the towers had thrust aside, In slightly sinking, the dull tide; 45 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, 50 Down, down that town shall settle hence, h.e.l.l, rising from a thousand thrones, Shall do it reverence.

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, 5 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; 10 Wrapping the fog about its breast, The ruin moulders into rest; Looking like Lethe, see! the lake A conscious slumber seems to take, And would not, for the world, awake. 15 All beauty sleeps!--and lo! where lies Irene, with her destinies!

Oh lady bright! can it be right, This window open to the night?

The wanton airs, from the tree-top, 20 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, 25 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? 30 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, 35 And this all solemn silentness!

The lady sleeps. Oh, may her sleep, Which is enduring, so be deep!

Heaven have her in its sacred keep!

This chamber changed for one more holy, 40 This bed for one more melancholy, I pray to G.o.d that she may lie Forever with unopened eye, While the pale sheeted ghosts go by!