Collected Works of Poe - Edgar Allan Poe (best fiction books to read .TXT) 📗

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 naphthaline 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! 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 -- With 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.

1849.

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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 thy memory is to me Like some enchanted far-off isle In some tumultuos sea -- Some ocean throbbing far and free With storms -- but where meanwhile Serenest skies continually Just o're that one bright island smile.

1845.

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TO FRANCES S. OSGOOD

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.

1845.

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ELDORADO.

Gaily bedight, A gallant knight, In sunshine and in shadow, Had journeyed long, Singing a song, In search of Eldorado. But he grew old - This knight so bold - And o'er his heart a shadow Fell, as he found No spot of ground That looked like Eldorado. And, as his strength Failed him at length, He met a pilgrim shadow - 'Shadow,' said he, 'Where can it be - This land of Eldorado?' 'Over the Mountains Of the Moon, Down the Valley of the Shadow, Ride, boldly ride,' The shade replied, - 'If you seek for Eldorado!'

1849.

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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 vapour can make With the moon-tints of purple and pearl, Can vie with the modest Eulalie's most unregarded curl - Can compare with the bright-eyed Eulalie's most humble and careless curl. Now Doubt - now Pain Come never again, For her soul gives me sigh for sigh, And all day long Shines, bright and strong, Astart� within the sky, While ever to her dear Eulalie upturns her matron eye - While ever to her young Eulalie upturns her violet eye.

1845.

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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 fingers to the deep, While I weep -- while I weep! O God! can I not grasp Them with a tighter clasp? O God! can I not save One from the pitiless wave? Is all that we see or seem But a dream within a dream?.

1849

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TO MARIE LOUISE (SHEW)

Of all who hail thy presence as the morning -- Of all to whom thine absence is the night -- The blotting utterly from out high heaven The sacred sun -- of all who, weeping, bless thee Hourly for hope- for life -- ah! above all, For the resurrection of deep-buried faith In Truth -- in Virtue -- in Humanity -- Of all who, on Despair's unhallowed bed Lying down to die, have suddenly arisen At thy soft-murmured words, "Let there be light!" At 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.

1847.

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TO MARIE LOUISE (SHEW)

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 can not write-I can not speak or think-- Alas, I can not 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 empurpled vapors, far away To where the prospect terminates-thee only!

1848.

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THE CITY IN THE SEA.

Lo ! Death has reared himself a throne In a strange city lying alone Far down within the dim West, Wherethe 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 scultured ivy and stone flowers - Up many and many a marvellous shrine Whose wreathed friezes intertwine The viol, the violet, and the vine.

Resignedly beneath the sky The melancholy waters lie. So blend the turrets and shadows there That all seem pendulous in air, While from