Edgar Allan Poe

“ Ill-fated and mysterious man!—bewildered in the brilliancy of thine own imagination, and fallen in the flames of thine own youth! Again in fancy I behold thee! Once more thy form hath risen before me!—not—oh! not as thou art—in the cold valley and shadow—but as thou shouldst be—squandering away a life of magnificent meditation in that city of dim visions, thine own Venice—which is a star-beloved Elysium of the sea, and the wide windows of whose Palladian palaces look down with a deep and bitter meaning upon the secrets of her silent waters. ”

“ To and fro in the seven chambers there stalked, in fact, a multitude of dreams. And these—the dreams—writhed in and about taking hue from the rooms, and causing the wild music of the orchestra to seem as the echo of their steps. And, anon, there strikes the ebony clock which stands in the hall of the velvet. And then, for a moment, all is still, and all is silent save the voice of the clock. The dreams are stiff-frozen as they stand. But the echoes of the chime die away—they have endured but an instant—and a light, half-subdued laughter floats after them as they depart. ”

“ They fell: for Heaven to them no hope imparts Who hear not for the beating of their hearts.
TAMERLANE Kind solace in a dying hour! Such, father, is not (now) my theme— I will not madly deem that power Of Earth may shrive me of the sin Unearthly pride hath revell’d in— I have no time to dote or dream: You call it hope—that fire of fire! It is but agony of desire: If I can hope—Oh God! I can— Its fount is holier—more divine— I would not call thee fool, old man, But such is not a gift of thine. Know thou the secret of a spirit Bow’d from its wild pride into shame. ”

“ Yet differently we grew—I, ill of health, and buried in gloom—she, agile, graceful, and overflowing with energy; hers, the ramble on the hill-side—mine the studies of the cloister; I, living within my own heart, and addicted, body and soul, to the most intense and painful meditation—she, roaming carelessly through life, with no thought of the shadows in her path, or the silent flight of the raven-winged hours. Berenice!—I call upon her name—Berenice!—and from the gray ruins of memory a thousand tumultuous recollections are startled at the sound! ”

“ Therefore for me, Morella, thy wife, hath the charnel house no terrors—mark me!—not even the terrors of the worm. The days have never been when thou could'st love me; but her whom in life thou didst abhor, in death thou shalt adore."
"Morella!"
"I repeat that I am dying. But within me is a pledge of that affection—ah, how little!—which you felt for me, Morella. And when my spirit departs shall the child live—thy child and mine, Morella's. But thy days shall be days of sorrow—that sorrow which is the most lasting of impressions, as the cypress is the most enduring of trees. ”

“ 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. ”

“ He was still sitting up in the bed listening—just as I have done, night after night, hearkening to the death watches in the wall.
Presently I heard a slight groan, and I knew it was the groan of mortal terror. It was not a groan of pain or of grief—oh, no!—it was the low stifled sound that arises from the bottom of the soul when overcharged with awe. I knew the sound well. Many a night, just at midnight, when all the world slept, it has welled up from my own bosom, deepening, with it dreadful echo, the terrors that distracted me. ”

“ At times we gasped for breath at an elevation beyond the albatross—at times became dizzy with the velocity of our descent into some watery hell, where the air grew stagnant, and no sound disturbed the slumbers of the kraken.
We were at the bottom of one of these abysses, when a quick scream from my companion broke fearfully upon the night. “See! see!” cried he, shrieking in my ears, “Almighty God! see! see!” As he spoke, I became aware of a dull, sullen glare of red light which streamed down the sides of the vast chasm where we lay, and threw a fitful brilliancy upon our deck. ”

“ Let me call myself, for the present, William Wilson. The fair page now lying before me need not be sullied with my real appellation. This has been already too much an object for the scorn—for the horror—for the detestation of my race. To the uttermost regions of the globe have not the indignant winds bruited its unparalleled infamy? Oh, outcast of all outcasts most abandoned!—to the earth art thou not forever dead? to its honors, to its flowers, to its golden aspirations?—and a cloud, dense, dismal, and limitless, does it not hang eternally between thy hopes and heaven? ”

“ No poet is so little of the earth, earthy. What I am about to read is from his last long poem, “The Princess”:—
Tears, idle tears, I know not what they mean, Tears from the depth of some divine despair Rise in the heart, and gather to the eyes, In looking on the happy Autumn fields, And thinking of the days that are no more. Fresh as the first beam glittering on a sail, That brings our friends up from the underworld, Sad as the last which reddens over one That sinks with all we love below the verge; So sad, so fresh, the days that are no more. ”

“ Meantime from afar Bathe me in light I Thy world has not the dross of ours, Yet all the beauty-all the flowers That list our love or deck our bowers In dreamy gardens, where do lie Dreamy maidens all the day; While the silver winds of Circassy On violet couches faint away. Little—oh “little dwells in thee” Like unto what on earth we see: Beauty’s eye is here the bluest In the falsest and untruest—On the sweetest air doth float The most sad and solemn note— If with thee be broken hearts, Joy so peacefully departs, That its echo still doth dwell, Like the murmur in the shell. ”

“ In the former, the torture of meditation was excessive—in the latter, supreme. When the grim Darkness overspread the Earth, then, with every horror of thought, I shook—shook as the quivering plumes upon the hearse. When Nature could endure wakefulness no longer, it was with a struggle that I consented to sleep—for I shuddered to reflect that, upon awaking, I might find myself the tenant of a grave. And when, finally, I sank into slumber, it was only to rush at once into a world of phantasms, above which, with vast, sable, overshadowing wing, hovered, predominant, the one sepulchral Idea. ”

“ My breast heaved, my knees tottered, my whole spirit became possessed with an objectless yet intolerable horror. Gasping for breath, I lowered the lamp in still nearer proximity to the face. Were these,—these the lineaments of William Wilson? I saw, indeed, that they were his, but I shook as if with a fit of the ague, in fancying they were not. What was there about them to confound me in this manner? I gazed;—while my brain reeled with a multitude of incoherent thoughts. Not thus he appeared—assuredly not thus—in the vivacity of his waking hours. The same name! the same contour of person! ”

“ 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
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!” ”

“ Merrily live, and long! The extacies 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. ”

“ In an instant, a treasure of incalculable value lay gleaming before us. As the rays of the lanterns fell within the pit, there flashed upwards a glow and a glare, from a confused heap of gold and of jewels, that absolutely dazzled our eyes.
I shall not pretend to describe the feelings with which I gazed. Amazement was, of course, predominant. Legrand appeared exhausted with excitement, and spoke very few words. Jupiter's countenance wore, for some minutes, as deadly a pallor as it is possible, in the nature of things, for any negro's visage to assume. ”

“ But may God shield and deliver me from the fangs of the Arch-Fiend! No sooner had the reverberation of my blows sunk into silence, than I was answered by a voice from within the tomb!—by a cry, at first muffled and broken, like the sobbing of a child, and then quickly swelling into one long, loud, and continuous scream, utterly anomalous and inhuman—a howl—a wailing shriek, half of horror and half of triumph, such as might have arisen only out of hell, conjointly from the throats of the damned in their agony and of the demons that exult in the damnation. ”

“ And boyhood is a summer sun Whose waning is the dreariest one— For all we live to know is known, And all we seek to keep hath flown— Let life, then, as the day-flower, fall With the noon-day beauty—which is all. I reach’d my home—my home no more— For all had flown who made it so— I pass’d from out its mossy door, And, tho’ my tread was soft and low, A voice came from the threshold stone Of one whom I had earlier known— O! I defy thee, Hell, to show On beds of fire that burn below, A humbler heart—a deeper woe. ”

“ To muse for long unwearied hours, with my attention riveted to some frivolous device on the margin, or in the typography of a book; to become absorbed, for the better part of a summer’s day, in a quaint shadow falling aslant upon the tapestry or upon the floor; to lose myself, for an entire night, in watching the steady flame of a lamp, or the embers of a fire; to dream away whole days over the perfume of a flower; to repeat, monotonously, some common word, until the sound, by dint of frequent repetition, ceased to convey any idea whatever to the mind ”

“ I love, indeed, to regard the dark valleys, and the grey rocks, and the waters that silently smile, and the forests that sigh in uneasy slumbers, and the proud watchful mountains that look down upon all—I love to regard these as themselves but the colossal members of one vast animate and sentient whole—a whole whose form (that of the sphere) is the most perfect and most inclusive of all; whose path is among associate planets; whose meek handmaiden is the moon; whose mediate sovereign is the sun; whose life is eternity; whose thought is that of a God; whose enjoyment is knowledge ”

“ IMITATION A dark unfathom’d tide Of interminable pride— A mystery, and a dream, Should my early life seem; I say that dream was fraught With a wild, and waking thought Of beings that have been, Which my spirit hath not seen, Had I let them pass me by, With a dreaming eye! Let none of earth inherit That vision on my spirit; Those thoughts I would control As a spell upon his soul: For that bright hope at last And that light time have past, And my worldly rest hath gone With a sigh as it pass’d on I care not tho’ it perish With a thought I then did cherish. ”

“ By gradations, still more imperceptible, this cloud assumes shape, as did the vapor from the bottle out of which arose the genius in the Arabian Nights. But out of this our cloud upon the precipice’s edge, there grows into palpability, a shape, far more terrible than any genius or any demon of a tale, and yet it is but a thought, although a fearful one, and one which chills the very marrow of our bones with the fierceness of the delight of its horror. It is merely the idea of what would be our sensations during the sweeping precipitancy of a fall from such a height. ”

“ That Israfeli’s fire Is owing to that lyre By which he sits and sings— The trembling living wire Of those unusual strings. * And the angel Israfel, whose heart-strings are a lut, and who has the sweetest voice of all God’s creatures.—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 unimpassion’d song: To thee the laurels belong Best bard, because the wisest! Merrily live, and long! ”

“ But, if the contest have proceeded thus far, it is the shadow which prevails,—we struggle in vain. The clock strikes, and is the knell of our welfare. At the same time, it is the chanticleer-note to the ghost that has so long overawed us. It flies—it disappears—we are free. The old energy returns. We will labor now. Alas, it is too late!
We stand upon the brink of a precipice. We peer into the abyss—we grow sick and dizzy. Our first impulse is to shrink from the danger. ”

“ Th’ undying voice of that dead time, With its interminable chime, Rings, in the spirit of a spell, Upon thy emptiness—a knell. I have not always been as now: The fever’d diadem on my brow I claim’d and won usurpingly— Hath not the same fierce heirdom given Rome to the Caesar—this to me? The heritage of a kingly mind, And a proud spirit which hath striven Triumphantly with human kind. On mountain soil I first drew life: The mists of the Taglay have shed Nightly their dews upon my head, And, I believe, the wingèd strife And tumult of the headlong air Have nestled in my very hair. ”

“ Those who know any thing of the vicinity of Paris, know the extreme difficulty of finding seclusion unless at a great distance from its suburbs. Such a thing as an unexplored, or even an unfrequently visited recess, amid its woods or groves, is not for a moment to be imagined. Let any one who, being at heart a lover of nature, is yet chained by duty to the dust and heat of this great metropolis—let any such one attempt, even during the weekdays, to slake his thirst for solitude amid the scenes of natural loveliness which immediately surround us. ”