The Complete Tales and Poems of Edgar Allan Poe (Barnes & Noble Collectible Editions)

By Edgar Allan Poe

Edgar Allan Poe is credited with having pioneered the short story, having perfected the tale of psychological horror, and having revolutionized modern poetics. The entirety of Poe's body of imaginative work encompasses detective tales, satires, fables, fantasies, science fiction, verse dramas, and some of the most evocative poetry in the English language. This leatherbound omnibus collects all of Poe's fiction and poetry in a single volume, including "The Fall of the House of Usher," "The Tell-Tale Heart," "The Pit and the Pendulum,." "The Raven," "Annabel Lee," the full-length novel The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket, and much more.   The Complete Tales and Poems of Edgar Allan Poe is part of Barnes & Noble’s series of quality leatherbound volumes. Each title in the series presents a classic work in an attractively designed edition bound in genuine bonded leather. These books make elegant additions to any home library.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Barnes & Noble
• Release date: Oct 5, 2015
• ISBN: 9781435160804

Edgar Allan Poe

New York Times bestselling author Dan Ariely is the James B. Duke Professor of Behavioral Economics at Duke University, with appointments at the Fuqua School of Business, the Center for Cognitive Neuroscience, and the Department of Economics. He has also held a visiting professorship at MIT’s Media Lab. He has appeared on CNN and CNBC, and is a regular commentator on National Public Radio’s Marketplace. He lives in Durham, North Carolina, with his wife and two children.

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Introduction

Self-destructive, melancholic, and usually dressed in black, Edgar Allan Poe (1809–1849) was the rock star of American literature in the 1830s and 1840s. While most writers of his time strove for the appearance of middle-class respectability, Poe was touched by scandal from his earliest days until his death, the circumstances of which remain unresolved. Sadly, the controversial details of his life, which were made to appear even more scandalous by the publication of an unfavorable obituary written by former friend and the executor of his estate, Rufus Griswold, tarnished his reputation as a writer for more than half a century after his death. The rediscovery of Poe’s work in the first half of the twentieth century, and the establishment of his importance as a critical figure in the development of a uniquely American form of literature, have revealed the important influences his work has exerted on both contemporary literature and culture.

The popular view of Poe after his death was that of the son of actor parents who disgraced himself as a gambler and drinker at both West Point and the University of Virginia, and who later became addicted to laudanum. People remembered that he had a huge number of women fans who wrote to him, tried to meet him, and praised him in poetry and in letters to newspapers, and they recalled that he had married his thirteen-year-old cousin Virginia Clemm when he was a man of twenty-seven. What those who scorned Poe in the half-century or more following his death forgot is that he was a prolific writer and perceptive critic who published more than 350 short stories, poems, essays, and critical articles, as well as a novel, The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym, and the drama Politian, under his own name, in addition to numerous anonymous writings.

He was born on January 19, 1809, in a boardinghouse on Carver Street, near the Boston Common, while his actor parents, Elizabeth Arnold Hopkins Poe and David Poe, Jr., were on tour. His father deserted the family and his mother died of tuberculosis in 1811 in Richmond, Virginia, orphaning Poe, his older brother, William Henry Leonard, and his younger sister, Rosalie. Poe was taken into the home of John and Frances Allan, wealthy Richmond citizens whose marriage was childless. After an unhappy childhood, during which he received a private school education, Poe attended the University of Virginia for a year, in 1826, but was forced to leave when Allan refused to cover his gambling and drinking debts. He ran away and joined the army under the pseudonym Edgar A. Perry, then begged Allan to use his connections to obtain him an appointment at the United States Military Academy at West Point. Once there, in 1830, Poe was unhappy and made every effort to be expelled.

After his dismissal from West Point in 1831, Poe began his publishing efforts in earnest. His first book, Tamerlane and Other Poems, had appeared anonymously in 1827, and the second volume of verse—his first to be commercially published—Al Aaraaf, Tamerlane, and Minor Poems, appeared in 1829. Poe’s third book, Poems, appeared in 1831, after which he moved to Baltimore to live with his aunt Maria Poe Clemm and her young daughter, Virginia. With this move Poe began a productive period of writing and publishing short stories while he also worked as an editor and established an important connection with the Southern Literary Messenger, where he served as editor from 1835 through 1837. In 1836, Poe married his thirteen-year-old cousin, Virginia, with Maria Clemm’s approval. During their ten years of marriage, Poe moved the family, including Maria Clemm, to Philadelphia and then to New York City, where he worked as an editor on such periodicals as Burton’s Gentleman’s Magazine, Graham’s Magazine, Alexander’s Weekly Messenger, and Godey’s Magazine and Lady’s Book, among others. During this time, he experienced a period of intense creativity, publishing extensive criticism and numerous poems and short stories in these and other publications, as well as his only novel, The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym, in 1838; Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque, containing 25 stories, in 1840; and The Raven and Other Poems and Tales in 1845. Virginia died in 1847 of tuberculosis. Poe died two years later, on October 7, 1849, in Baltimore.

Edgar Allan Poe’s reputation as a writer has depended largely upon only a relatively small number of his works which have been reprinted in high school anthologies or college textbooks, or which have been made into movies, most by director Roger Corman. His most famous work, The Raven, was written in 1844, thirteen years after he began to publish and five years before his death, yet it remains his best known. Based on this limited experience with Poe’s work, most people think of him as a writer only of horror stories that have to do with death and loss or the reawakening of the dead. Poems such as The Raven, The Bells, and Annabel Lee, and such short stories as The Black Cat, The Cask of Amontillado, The Fall of the House of Usher, The Pit and the Pendulum, and The Tell-Tale Heart are frequently read and have provided source material for television dramas and comedies—some with credit given to the author, but more often evoked as part of a modernized plot line that ignores Poe’s genius.

Most American readers can probably name a few works by Poe, but not many know the full range of Poe’s writings in mystery and science fiction, literary criticism and theory, and philosophy. He is credited by critics with inventing the modern detective story, with the development of C. August Dupin, an investigator who uses reasoning instead of legwork to solve crimes and who appears in The Murders in the Rue Morgue (1841), The Mystery of Marie Roget (1842–1843), and The Purloined Letter (1844). Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, creator of master detective Sherlock Holmes, paid homage to Poe for having created the genre and asked, Where was the detective story until Poe breathed the breath of life into it? Contemporary author Stephen King has praised Poe’s ability to create stories that situate horror among scenes of ordinary human life. Edgar Allan Poe is also believed to have published the first science fiction story, in Hans Phaall (1835).

In addition to writing and publishing poetry and fiction, Poe corresponded extensively with the other leading writers of his day, and many other literary figures who never met him but who admired his work and praised him in print. As a literary critic for various magazines, he had the critical status and the credibility to savagely attack in print the works of other writers who today enjoy stronger reputations than his. His literary criticism includes articles on works of William Cullen Bryant, Edward Bulwer-Lytton, Thomas Carlyle, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Charles Dickens, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Washington Irving, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Oliver Goldsmith, James Russell Lowell, and Sir Walter Scott. These critical assessments appeared in leading literary and popular periodicals of the time, as did his stories and poems.

Why has much of Poe’s large body of work been so long out of print, leaving only the well-known and frequently recycled stories and poems to perpetuate his fame? A review of most libraries shows that many cleared their shelves of his literary criticism long ago and removed most volumes of his collected works to retain only the best-known tales and poems. These decisions seem to have been based on the low regard in which Poe was held during the first half of the twentieth century. Poe biographers attribute this loss of status to the efforts of Griswold, who avenged an old grudge against Poe by publishing the defamatory obituary that suggested the necrophiliac behavior, the madness of the narrators, and the excesses described in Poe’s fiction were renderings of Poe’s own experiences and life, rather than works of imagination. Despite the efforts of Poe’s literary friends to correct this negative image, many decades passed before the literary works were well received in the United States.

Poe’s writings appear to have been heavily influenced by English Romantic poet Lord Byron (1788–1824), as well as by the early loss of his parents and the emotionally cold home provided for him by John Allan. In letters, Allan expressed his hatred for the cult that appeared to surround Lord Byron and for Poe’s admiration of both Byron’s poetry and profligate ways. To appease Allan and to obtain money for the first printing of Al Aaraaf, Poe wrote Allan a letter, dated May 29, 1829, assuring him that he no longer looked at Byron as a model of behavior and asking Allan to give the publishers a guaranty of $100. Despite this assertion, Poe often recited Byron’s poetry during his lectures in later years. He also continued to exhibit the Byronic influence in his choice of wearing black and in some of his poems and tales, in which characters are described as having physical and personality traits that are distinctly Byronic. The most pronounced example of this influence is in the short story The Assignation (1834), which begins with an apostrophe to an expatriate Englishman living in Venice who is clearly modeled on Byron, and whose lineaments conform somewhat to those of Poe’s own most tragic characters:

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. Yes! I repeat it—as thou shouldst be. There are surely other worlds than this—other thoughts than the thoughts of the multitude—other speculations than the speculations of the sophist. Who then shall call thy conduct into question? who blame thee for thy visionary hours, or denounce those occupations as a wasting away of life, which were but the overflowings of thine everlasting energies?

The short stories and poems also exhibit the deep sense of loss that Poe experienced throughout his life. His young and beautiful mother had died a slow and painful death due to tuberculosis with her children present. Although he was only two years old when Rosalie Poe died, he may have had faint memories of her pale skin, flushed cheeks, and ghostly feverish appearance as she neared the end of her illness. A large number of Poe’s poems and tales relate stories of lost love, not necessarily the loss of a romantic love but of an ideal. In his famous essay, The Philosophy of Composition, wherein he describes the meticulous process by which he wrote The Raven, he indicates as much in his analysis of how he settled on the particular impression he hoped the poem would have on the reader:

My next thought concerned the choice of an impression, or effect, to be conveyed: and here I may as well observe that, throughout the construction, I kept steadily in view the design of rendering the work universally appreciable. I should be carried too far out of my immediate topic were I to demonstrate a point upon which I have repeatedly insisted, and which, with the poetical, stands not in the slightest need of demonstration—the point, I mean, that Beauty is the sole legitimate province of the poem. A few words, however, in elucidation of my real meaning, which some of my friends have evinced a disposition to misrepresent. That pleasure which is at once the most intense, the most elevating, and the most pure, is, I believe, found in the contemplation of the beautiful. When, indeed, men speak of Beauty, they mean, precisely, not a quality, as is supposed, but an effect—they refer, in short, just to that intense and pure elevation of soul—not of intellect, or of heart—upon which I have commented, and which is experienced in consequence of contemplating the beautiful. Now I designate Beauty as the province of the poem, merely because it is an obvious rule of Art that effects should be made to spring from direct causes—that objects should be attained through means best adapted for their attainment—no one as yet having been weak enough to deny that the peculiar elevation alluded to, is most readily attained in the poem. Now the object, Truth, or the satisfaction of the intellect, and the object Passion, or the excitement of the heart, are, although attainable, to a certain extent, in poetry, far more readily attainable in prose. Truth, in fact, demands a precision, and Passion, a homeliness (the truly passionate will comprehend me) which are absolutely antagonistic to that Beauty which, I maintain, is the excitement, or pleasurable elevation, of the soul. It by no means follows from any thing here said, that passion, or even truth, may not be introduced, and even profitably introduced, into a poem—for they may serve in elucidation, or aid the general effect, as do discords in music, by contrast—but the true artist will always contrive, first, to tone them into proper subservience to the predominant aim, and, secondly, to enveil them, as far as possible, in that Beauty which is the atmosphere and the essence of the poem.

In such works as The Raven, Annabel Lee, Ligeia, Berenice, and others, the narrator mourns the loss of a young, beautiful woman who dies of an indeterminate cause but whose presence remains. Again, in The Philosophy of Composition, Poe offers a rationale for this recurrent theme in his writing, turning it from a private idée fixe to a universal principle of poetics:

Now, never losing sight of the object—supremeness of perfection at all points, I asked myself—"Of all melancholy topics, what, according to the universal understanding of mankind, is the most melancholy? Death—was the obvious reply. And when, I said, is this most melancholy of topics most poetical? From what I have already explained at some length, the answer, here also, is obvious—When it most closely allies itself to Beauty: the death, then, of a beautiful woman is, unquestionably, the most poetical topic in the world—and equally is it beyond doubt that the lips best suited for such topic are those of a bereaved lover."

In The Fall of the House of Usher, the burial is premature, as it is in several other works, and the theme of reversing the supposed death is explored. William Wilson (1840) incorporates autobiographical elements from Poe’s unhappy experiences in private school and his drinking and gambling in college.

Poe may be best known for his stories of loss and death, but many of his less-read stories are amusing, imaginative, and highly entertaining tales. The Balloon Hoax (1844), written in journalistic style, fooled readers into believing that a manned balloon flight had crossed the Atlantic Ocean in 75 hours. The Spectacles (1844) relates the experience of a man whose vanity in refusing to wear spectacles results in his marriage to his eighty-two-year-old grandmother. X-ing a Paragrab (1849) mocks the literary rivalries of two magazine publishers.

Although Poe was ignored and even scorned by many American literary critics for more than half a century after his death, he achieved significant popularity and respect in France. Poe exercised great influence on the French poet and critic Charles Baudelaire, who wrote several articles about him and translated Poe’s work. The translations attracted the attention of the French Symbolists in the last three decades of the nineteenth century, a group of French poets and prose writers whose works show the influence of the two earlier writers for their interest in the morbid and perverse, as well as for their unconventional social behavior and sensational temperaments (1821–1867). The French Symbolist leaders Stéphane Mallarme, Arthur Rimbaud, and Paul Verlaine expressed strong admiration for Poe’s writings. They aimed to follow what they saw as Poe’s work to depict and explore the human psyche and to re-create—not merely record—human consciousness. Later French critics, such as Paul Claudel and Paul Valéry, who particularly admired Eureka, praised Poe’s genius, and André Gide later credited Poe as being the inventor of the interior monologue.

Numerous composers have also been influenced by the musicality of Poe’s poetry and short stories and have created musical compositions inspired by his works. Renowned French composer Claude Achille-Debussy (1861–1918) left two unfinished operas on Poe themes, Le Diable dans le Beffroi (The Devil in the Belfry) and La Chute de la Maison Usher (The Fall of the House of Usher), on which he had been at work for years and which obsessed him. Other composers created piano pieces through entire symphonies for The Bells, The Island of the Fay, A Tale of the Ragged Mountain, Annabel Lee, Israfel, The Raven, and many other works.

Over 150 years after Poe’s death, his stories and poems continue to retain significance and an attraction for readers. As with any body of work, not all readers will find all of the poems or all of the tales interesting, amusing, or relevant, but every reader will find something that strikes a chord in them among the multitude of human desires, fears, concerns, and observations that Poe’s work offers. And, yes, they also contain a sense of the morbid that is perfectly in harmony with our times.

Dawn B. Sova, Ph.D.

Dawn B. Sova, Ph.D. is author of Edgar Allan Poe, A to Z and winner of the 2002 Mystery Writer of America Award for Best Non-fiction Book. She is author of sixteen other titles, including Agatha Christie, A to Z, which was nominated for the 1997 Mystery Writers of America Award for Best Non-fiction Book.

POETRY

O, Tempora! O, Mores!

O, Times! O, Manners! It is my opinion

That you are changing sadly your dominion—

I mean the reign of manners hath long ceased,

For men have none at all, or bad at least;

And as for times, altho’ ’tis said by many

The good old times were far the worst of any,

Of which sound doctrine l believe each tittle,

Yet still I think these worse than them a little.

I’ve been a thinking—isn’t that the phrase?—

I like your Yankee words and Yankee ways—

I’ve been a thinking, whether it were best

To take things seriously, or all in jest;

Whether, with grim Heraclitus of yore,

To weep, as he did, till his eyes were sore;

Or rather laugh with him, that queer philosopher,

Democritus of Thrace, who used to toss over

The page of life and grin at the dog-ears,

As though he’d say, Why, who the devil cares?

This is a question which, oh heaven, withdraw

The luckless query from a member’s claw!

Instead of two sides, Job has nearly eight,

Each fit to furnish forth four hours debate.

What shall be done? I’ll lay it on the table,

And take the matter up when I’m more able;

And, in the meantime, to prevent all bother,

I’ll neither laugh with one, nor cry with t’other,

Nor deal in flatt’ry or aspersions foul,

But, taking one by each hand, merely growl.

Ah, growl, say you, my friend, and pray at what?

Why, really, sir, I almost had forgot—

But, damn it, sir, I deem it a disgrace

That things should stare us boldly in the face,

And daily strut the street with bows and scrapes,

Who would be men by imitating apes.

I beg your pardon, reader, for the oath

The monkeys make me swear, though something loth;

I’m apt to be discursive in my style,

But pray be patient; yet a little while

Will change me, and as politicians do,

I’ll mend my manners and my measures too.

Of all the cities—and I’ve seen no few;

For I have travelled, friend, as well as you—

I don’t remember one, upon my soul,

But take it generally upon the whole,

(As members say they like their logick taken,

Because divided, it may chance be shaken)

So pat, agreeable and vastly proper

As this for a neat, frisky counter-hopper;

Here he may revel to his heart’s content,

Flounce like a fish in his own element,

Toss back his fine curls from their forehead fair,

And hop o’er counters with a Vester’s air,

Complete at night what he began A.M.,

And having cheated ladies, dance with them;

For, at a ball, what fair one can escape

The pretty little hand that sold her tape,

Or who so cold, so callous to refuse

The youth who cut the ribbon for her shoes!

One of these fish, par excellence the beau—

God help me!—it has been my lot to know,

At least by sight, for I’m a timid man,

And always keep from laughing, if I can;

But speak to him, he’ll make you such grimace,

Lord! to be grave exceeds the power of face.

The hearts of all the ladies are with him,

Their bright eyes on his Tom and Jerry brim

And dove-tailed coat, obtained at cost; while then

Those eyes won’t turn on anything like men.

His very voice is musical delight,

His form, once seen, becomes a part of sight;

In short, his shirt collar, his look, his tone is

The beau ideal fancied for Adonis.

Philosophers have often held dispute

As to the seat of thought in man and brute;

For that the power of thought attends the latter

My friend, the beau, hath made a settled matter,

And spite of all dogmas, current in all ages,

One settled fact is better than ten sages.

For he does think, though I am oft in doubt

If I can tell exactly what about.

Ah, yes! his little foot and ankle trim,

’Tis there the seat of reason lies in him,

A wise philosopher would shake his head,

He then, of course, must shake his foot instead.

At me, in vengeance, shall that foot be shaken—

Another proof of thought, I’m not mistaken—

Because to his cat’s eyes I hold a glass,

And let him see himself, a proper ass!

I think he’ll take this likeness to himself,

But if he won’t, he shall, a stupid elf,

And, lest the guessing throw the fool in fits,

I close the portrait with the name of Pitts.

To Margaret

Who hath seduced thee to this foul revolt

From the pure well of Beauty undefiled?

So banish from true wisdom to prefer

Such squalid wit to honorable rhyme?

To write? To scribble? Nonsense and no more?

I will not write upon this argument

To write is human—not to write divine.

Milton Par. Lost Bk. I

Somebody

Cowper’s Task, Book I

Shakespeare

do. Trolius & Cressida

Pope Essay on Man

To Octavia

When wit, and wine, and friends have met

And laughter crowns the festive hour

In vain I struggle to forget

Still does my heart confess thy power

And fondly turn to thee!

But Octavia, do not strive to rob

My heart of all that soothes its pain

The mournful hope that every throb

Will make it break for thee!

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.

O yearning heart! I did inherit

Thy withering portion with the fame,

The searing glory which hath shone

Amid the Jewels of my throne,

Halo of Hell! and with a pain

Not Hell shall make me fear again—

O craving heart, for the lost flowers

And sunshine of my summer hours!

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 Cæsar—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 winged strife

And tumult of the headlong air

Have nestled in my very hair.

So late from Heaven—that dew—it fell

(’Mid dreams of an unholy night)

Upon me with the touch of Hell,

While the red flashing of the light

From clouds that hung, like banners, o’er,

Appeared to my half-closing eye

The pageantry of monarchy,

And the deep trumpet-thunder’s roar

Came hurriedly upon me, telling

Of human battle, where my voice,

My own voice, silly child!—was swelling

(O! how my spirit would rejoice,

And leap within me at the cry)

The battle-cry of Victory!

The rain came down upon my head

Unshelter’d—and the heavy wind

Rendered me mad and deaf and blind.

It was but man, I thought, who shed

Laurels upon me: and the rush—

The torrent of the chilly air

Gurgled within my ear the crush

Of empires—with the captive’s prayer—

The hum of suitors—and the tone

Of flattery ’round a sovereign’s throne.

My passions, from that hapless hour,

Usurp’d a tyranny which men

Have deem’d, since I have reach’d to power,

My innate nature—be it so:

But, father, there liv’d one who, then,

Then—in my boyhood—when their fire

Burn’d with a still intenser glow

(For passion must, with youth, expire)

E’en then who knew this iron heart

In woman’s weakness had a part.

I have no words—alas!—to tell

The loveliness of loving well!

Nor would I now attempt to trace

The more than beauty of a face

Whose lineaments, upon my mind,

Are——shadows on th’ unstable wind:

Thus I remember having dwelt

Some page of early lore upon,

With loitering eye, till I have felt

The letters—with their meaning—melt

To fantasies—with none.

O, she was worthy of all love!

Love—as in infancy was mine—

’Twas such as angel minds above

Might envy; her young heart the shrine

On which my every hope and thought

Were incense—then a goodly gift,

For they were childish—and upright—

Pure——as her young example taught:

Why did I leave it, and, adrift,

Trust to the fire within, for light?

We grew in age—and love—together,

Roaming the forest, and the wild;

My breast her shield in wintry weather—

And, when the friendly sunshine smil’d,

And she would mark the opening skies,

I saw no Heaven—but in her eyes.

Young Love’s first lesson is——the heart:

For ’mid that sunshine, and those smiles,

When, from our little cares apart,

And laughing at her girlish wiles,

I’d throw me on her throbbing breast,

And pour my spirit out in tears—

There was no need to speak the rest—

No need to quiet any fears

Of her—who ask’d no reason why,

But turn’d on me her quiet eye!

Yet more than worthy of the love

My spirit struggled with, and strove,

When, on the mountain peak, alone,

Ambition lent it a new tone—

I had no being—but in thee:

The world, and all it did contain

In the earth—the air—the sea—

Its joy—its little lot of pain

That was new pleasure——the ideal,

Dim, vanities of dreams by night—

And dimmer nothings which were real—

(Shadows—and a more shadowy light!)

Parted upon their misty wings,

And, so, confusedly, became

Thine image and—a name—a name!

Two separate—yet most intimate things.

I was ambitious—have you known

The passion, father? You have not:

A cottager, I mark’d a throne

Of half the world as all my own,

And murmur’d at such lowly lot—

But, just like any other dream,

Upon the vapor of the dew

My own had past, did not the beam

Of beauty which did while it thro’

The minute—the hour—the day—oppress

My mind with double loveliness.

We walk’d together on the crown

Of a high mountain which look’d down

Afar from its proud natural towers

Of rock and forest, on the hills—

The dwindled hills! begirt with bowers

And shouting with a thousand rills.

I spoke to her of power and pride,

But mystically—in such guise

That she might deem it nought beside

The moment’s converse; in her eyes

I read, perhaps too carelessly—

A mingled feeling with my own—

The flush on her bright cheek, to me

Seem’d to become a queenly throne

Too well that I should let it be

Light in the wilderness alone.

I wrapp’d myself in grandeur then

And donn’d a visionary crown——

Yet it was not that Fantasy

Had thrown her mantle over me—

But that, among the rabble—men,

Lion ambition is chain’d down—

And crouches to a keeper’s hand—

Not so in deserts where the grand—

The wild—the terrible conspire

With their own breath to fan his fire.

Look ’round thee now on Samarcand!—

Is not she queen of Earth? her pride

Above all cities? in her hand

Their destinies? in all beside

Of glory which the world hath known

Stands she not nobly and alone?

Falling—her veriest stepping-stone

Shall form the pedestal of a throne—

And who her sovereign? Timour—he

Whom the astonished people saw

Striding o’er empires haughtily

A diadem’d outlaw!

O human love! thou spirit given,

On Earth, of all we hope in Heaven!

Which fall’st into the soul like rain

Upon the Siroc-wither’d plain,

And, failing in thy power to bless,

But leav’st the heart a wilderness!

Idea! which bindest life around

With music of so strange a sound

And beauty of so wild a birth—

Farewell! for I have won the Earth!

When Hope, the eagle that tower’d, could see

No cliff beyond him in the sky,

His pinions were bent droopingly—

And homeward turn’d his soften’d eye.

’Twas sunset: when the sun will part

There comes a sullenness of heart

To him who still would look upon

The glory of the summer sun.

That soul will hate the ev’ning mist,

So often lovely, and will list

To the sound of the coming darkness (known

To those whose spirits hearken) as one

Who, in a dream of night, would fly

But cannot from a danger nigh.

What tho’ the moon—the white moon

Shed all the splendor of her noon,

Her smile is chilly—and her beam,

In that time of dreariness, will seem

(So like you gather in your breath)

A portrait taken after death.

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 wo.

Father, I firmly do believe—

I know—for Death, who comes for me

From regions of the blest afar,

Where there is nothing to deceive,

Hath left his iron gate ajar,

And rays of truth you cannot see

Are flashing thro’ Eternity——

I do believe that Eblis hath

A snare in every human path—

Else how, when in the holy grove

I wandered of the idol, Love,

Who daily scents his snowy wings

With incense of burnt offerings

From the most unpolluted things,

Whose pleasant bowers are yet so riven

Above with trellic’d rays from Heaven

No mote may shun—no tiniest fly—

The light’ning of his eagle eye—

How was it that Ambition crept,

Unseen, amid the revels there,

Till growing bold, he laughed and leapt

In the tangles of Love’s very hair?

Song

I saw thee on thy 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.

Dreams

Oh! that my young life were a lasting dream!

My spirit not awak’ning till the beam

Of an Eternity should bring the morrow.

Yes! tho’ that long dream were of hopeless sorrow.

’Twere better than the cold reality

Of waking life, to him whose heart must be,

And hath been still, upon the lovely earth,

A chaos of deep passion, from his birth.

But should it be—that dream eternally

Continuing—as dreams have been to me

In my young boyhood—should it thus be giv’n

’Twere folly still to hope for higher Heav’n.

For I have revell’d when the sun was bright

I’ the summer sky, in dreams of living light

And loveliness,—have left my very heart

In climes of my imagining, apart

From mine own home, with beings that have been

Of mine own thought—what more could I have seen?

’Twas once—and only once—and the wild hour

From my remembrance shall not pass—some pow’r

Or spell had bound me—’twas the chilly wind

Came o’er me in the night, and left behind

Its image on my spirit—or the moon

Shone on my slumbers in her lofty noon

Too coldly—or the stars—howe’er it was,

That dream was as that night-wind—let it pass.

I have been happy, tho’ [but] in a dream.

I have been happy—and I love the theme:

Dreams! in their vivid coloring of life,

As in that fleeting, shadowy, misty strife

Of semblance with reality which brings

To the delirious eye, more lovely things

Of Paradise and Love—and all our own!

Than young Hope in his sunniest hour hath known.

Spirits of the Dead

I

Thy soul shall find itself alone

’Mid dark thoughts of the grey tomb-stone—

Not one, of all the crowd, to pry

Into thine hour of secrecy:

II

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.

III

The night—tho’ clear—shall frown—

And the stars shall look not down,

From their high thrones in the 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 for ever.

IV

Now are thoughts thou shalt not banish—

Now are visions ne’er to vanish—

From thy spirit shall they pass

No more—like dew-drop from the grass.

V

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!—

Evening Star

‘Twas noontide of summer,

And mid-time of night,

And stars, in their orbits,

Shone pale, thro’ the light

Of the brighter, cold moon,

’Mid planets her slaves,

Herself in the Heavens,

Her beam on the waves.

I gaz’d awhile

On her cold smile;

Too cold—too cold for me—

There pass’d, as a shroud,

A fleecy cloud,

And I turn’d away to thee,

Proud Evening Star,

In thy glory afar,

And dearer thy beam shall be;

For joy to my heart

Is the proud part

Thou bearest in Heav’n at night,

And more I admire

Thy distant fire,

Than that colder, lowly light.

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.

Stanzas

How often we forget all time, when lone

Admiring Nature’s universal throne;

Her woods—her wilds—her mountains—the intense

Reply of hers to our intelligence!

I

In youth have I known one with whom the Earth

In secret communing held—as he with it,

In day light, and in beauty, from his birth:

Whose fervid, flick’ring torch of life was lit

From the sun and stars, whence he had drawn forth

A passionate light—such for his spirit was fit—

And yet that spirit knew—not in the hour

Of its own fervor—what had o’er it power.

II

Perhaps it may be that my mind is wrought

To a ferver by the moon beam that hangs o’er,

But I will half believe that wild light fraught

With more of sov’reignty than ancient lore

Hath ever told—or is it of a thought

The unembodied essence, and no more

That with a quick’ning spell doth o’er us pass

As dew of the night-time, o’er the summer grass?

III

Doth o’er us pass, when, as th’ expanding eye

To the lov’d object—so the tear to the lid

Will start, which lately slept in apathy?

And yet it need not be—(that object) hid

From us in life—but common—which doth lie

Each hour before us—but then only bid

With a strange sound, as of a harp-string broken

T’ awake us—’Tis a symbol and a token

IV

Of what in other worlds shall be—and giv’n

In beauty by our God, to those alone

Who otherwise would fall from life and Heav’n

Drawn by their heart’s passion, and that tone,

That high tone of the spirit which hath striv’n

Tho’ not with Faith—with godliness—whose throne

With desp’rate energy ’t hath beaten down;

Wearing its own deep feeling as a crown.

A Dream

In visions of the dark night

I have dreamed 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 though that light, thro’ storm and night,

So trembled from afar—

What could there be more purely bright

In Truth’s day-star?

The Happiest Day—the Happiest Hour

The happiest day—the happiest hour

My sear’d and blighted heart hath known,

The highest hope of pride, and power,

I feel hath flown.

Of power! said I? yes! such I ween

But they have vanish’d long alas!

The visions of my youth have been—

But let them pass.

And, pride, what have I now with thee?

Another brow may ev’n inherit

The venom thou hast poured on me—

Be still my spirit.

The happiest day—the happiest hour

Mine eyes shall see—have ever seen

The brightest glance of pride and power

I feel—have been:

But were that hope of pride and power

Now offer’d, with the pain

Ev’n then I felt—that brightest hour

I would not live again:

For on its wing was dark alloy

And as it flutter’d—fell

An essence—powerful to destroy

A soul that knew it well.

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 loneliness

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 in 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.

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 jewelled 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?

*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.

Al Aaraaf

*

PART I

O! nothing earthly save the ray

(Thrown back from flowers) of Beauty’s eye,

As in those gardens where the day

Springs from the gems of Circassy—

O! nothing earthly save the thrill

Of melody in woodland rill—

Or (music of the passion-hearted)

Joy’s voice so peacefully departed

That like the murmur in the shell,

Its echo dwelleth and will dwell—

Oh, nothing of the dross of ours—

Yet all the beauty—all the flowers

That list our Love, and deck our bowers—

Adorn yon world afar, afar—

The wandering star.

’Twas a sweet time for Nesace—for there

Her world lay lolling on the golden air,

Near four bright suns—a temporary rest—

An oasis in desert of the blest.

Away—away—’mid seas of rays that roll

Empyrean splendor o’er th’ unchained soul—

The soul that scarce (the billows are so dense)

Can struggle to its destin’d eminence—

To distant spheres, from time to time, she rode,

And late to ours, the favour’d one of God—

But, now, the ruler of an anchor’d realm,

She throws aside the scepter—leaves the helm,

And, amid incense and high spiritual hymns,

Laves in quadruple light her angel limbs.

Now happiest, loveliest in yon lovely Earth,

Whence sprang the Idea of Beauty into birth,

(Falling in wreaths thro’ many a startled star,

Like woman’s hair ’mid pearls, until, afar,

It lit on hills Achaian, and there dwelt)

She look’d into Infinity—and knelt.

Rich clouds, for canopies, about her curled—

Fit emblems of the model of her world—

Seen but in beauty—not impeding sight

Of other beauty glittering thro’ the light—

A wreath that twined each starry form around,

And all the opal’d air in color bound.

All hurriedly she knelt upon a bed

Of flowers: of lilies such as rear’d the head

* On the fair Capo Deucato, and sprang

So eagerly around about to hang

Upon the flying footsteps of—deep pride—

†Of her who lov’d a mortal—and so died.

The Sephalica, budding with young bees,

Uprear’d its purple stem around her knees:

‡And gemmy flower, of Trebizond misnam’d—

Inmate of highest stars, where erst it sham’d

All other loveliness: its honied dew

(The fabled nectar that the heathen knew)

Deliriously sweet, was dropp’d from Heaven,

And fell on gardens of the unforgiven

In Trebizond—and on a sunny flower

So like its own above that, to this hour,

It still remaineth, torturing the bee

With madness, and unwonted reverie:

In Heaven, and all its environs, the leaf

And blossom of the fairy plant, in grief

Disconsolate linger—grief that hangs her head,

Repenting follies that full long have fled,

Heaving her white breast to the balmy air,

Like guilty beauty, chasten’d, and more fair:

Nyctanthes too, as sacred as the light

She fears to perfume, perfuming the night:

*And Clytia pondering between many a sun,

While pettish tears adown her petals run:

†And that aspiring flower that sprang on Earth—

And died, ere scarce exalted into birth,

Bursting its odorous heart in spirit to wing

Its way to Heaven, from garden of a king:

‡And Valisnerian lotus thither flown

From struggling with the waters of the Rhone:

§And thy most lovely purple perfume, Zante!

Isola d’oro!—Fior di Levante!

‖And the Nelumbo bud that floats for ever

With Indian Cupid down the holy river—

Fair flowers, and fairy! to whose care is given

#To bear the Goddess’ song, in odors, up to Heaven:

"Spirit! that dwellest where,

In the deep sky,

The terrible and fair,

In beauty vie!

Beyond the line of blue—

The boundary of the star

Which turneth at the view

Of thy barrier and thy bar—

Of the barrier overgone

By the comets who were cast

From their pride, and from their throne

To be drudges till the last—

To be carriers of fire

(The red fire of their heart)

With speed that may not tire

And with pain that shall not part—

Who livest—that we know—

In Eternity—we feel—

But the shadow of whose brow

What spirit shall reveal?

Tho’ the beings whom thy Nesace,

Thy messenger hath known

Have dream’d for thy Infinity

*A model of their own—

Thy will is done, Oh, God!

The star hath ridden high

Thro’ many a tempest, but she rode

Beneath thy burning eye;

And here, in thought, to thee—

In thought that can alone

Ascend thy empire and so be

A partner of thy throne—

*By winged Fantasy,

My embassy is given,

Till secrecy shall knowledge be

In the environs of Heaven."

She ceas’d—and buried then her burning cheek

Abash’d, amid the lilies there, to seek

A shelter from the fervor of His eye;

For the stars trembled at the Deity.

She stirr’d not—breath’d not—for a voice was there

How solemnly pervading the calm air!

A sound of silence on the startled ear

Which dreamy poets name the music of the sphere.

Ours is a world of words: Quiet we call

Silence— which is the merest word of all.

All Nature speaks, and ev’n ideal things

Flap shadowy sounds from visionary wings—

But ah! not so when, thus, in realms on high

The eternal voice of God is passing by,

And the red winds are withering in the sky!

†"What tho’ in worlds which sightless cycles run,

Link’d to a little system, and one sun—

Where all my love is folly and the crowd

Still think my terrors but the thunder cloud,

The storm, the earthquake, and the ocean-wrath—

(Ah! will they cross me in my angrier path?)

What tho’ in worlds which own a single sun

The sands of Time grow dimmer as they run,

Yet thine is my resplendency, so given

To bear my secrets thro’ the upper Heaven.

Leave tenantless thy crystal home, and fly,

With all thy train, athwart the moony sky—

*Apart—like fire-flies in Sicilian night,

And wing to other worlds another light!

Divulge the secrets of thy embassy

To the proud orbs that twinkle—and so be

To ev’ry heart a barrier and a ban

Lest the stars totter in the guilt of man!"

Up rose the maiden in the yellow night,

The single-mooned eve!—on Earth we plight

Our faith to one love—and one moon adore—

The birth-place of young Beauty had no more.

As sprang that yellow star from downy hours

Up rose the maiden from her shrine of flowers,

And bent o’er sheeny mountain and dim plain

†Her way—but left not yet her Therasæan reign.

PART II

High on a mountain of enamell’d head—

Such as the drowsy shepherd on his bed

Of giant pasturage lying at his ease,

Raising his heavy eyelid, starts and sees

With many a mutter’d hope to be forgiven

What time the moon is quadrated in Heaven—

Of rosy head, that towering far away

Into the sunlit ether, caught the ray

Of sunken suns at eve—at noon of night,

While the moon danc’d with the fair stranger light—

Uprear’d upon such height arose a pile

Of gorgeous columns on th’ unburthen’d air,

Flashing from Parian marble that twin smile

Far down upon the wave that sparkled there,

And nursled the young mountain in its lair.

*Of molten stars their pavement, such as fall

Thro’ the ebon air, besilvering the pall

Of their own dissolution, while they die—

Adorning then the dwellings of the sky.

A dome, by linked light from Heaven let down,

Sat gently on these columns as a crown—

A window of one circular diamond, there,

Look’d out above into the purple air,

And rays from God shot down that meteor chain

And hallow’d all the beauty twice again,

Save when, between th’ Empyrean and that ring,

Some eager spirit flapp’d his dusky wing.

But on the pillars Seraph eyes have seen

The dimness of this world: that greyish green

That Nature loves the best for Beauty’s grave

Lurk’d in each cornice, round each architrave—

And every sculptur’d cherub thereabout

That from his marble dwelling peeréd out

Seem’d earthly in the shadow of his niche—

Achaian statues in a world so rich?

†Friezes from Tadmor and Persepolis—

From Balbec, and the stilly, clear abyss

‡Of beautiful Gomorrah! O, the wave

Is now upon thee—but too late to save!

Sound loves to revel in a summer night:

Witness the murmur of the grey twilight

*That stole upon the ear, in Eyraco,

Of many a wild star-gazer long ago—

That stealeth ever on the ear of him

Who, musing, gazeth on the distance dim,

And sees the darkness coming as a cloud—

†Is not its form—its voice—most palpable and loud?

But what is this?—it cometh—and it brings

A music with it—’tis the rush of wings—

A pause—and then a sweeping, falling strain

And Nesace is in her halls again.

From the wild energy of wanton haste

Her cheeks were flushing, and her lips apart;

And zone that clung around her gentle waist

Had burst beneath the heaving of her heart.

Within the center of that hall to breathe

She paus’d and panted, Zanthe! all beneath,

The fairy light that kiss’d her golden hair

And long’d to rest, yet could but sparkle there!

‡Young flowers were whispering in melody

To happy flowers that night—and tree to tree;

Fountains were gushing music as they fell

In many a star-lit grove, or moon-lit dell;

Yet silence came upon material things—

Fair flowers, bright waterfalls and angel wings—

And sound alone that from the spirit sprang

Bore burthen to the charm the maiden sang:

" ’Neath blue-bell or streamer—

Or tufted wild spray

That keeps, from the dreamer,

*The moonbeam away—

Bright beings! that ponder,

With half closing eyes,

On the stars which your wonder

Hath drawn from the skies,

Till they glance thro’ the shade, and

Come down to your brow

Like——eyes of the maiden

Who calls on you now—

Arise! from your dreaming

In violet bowers,

To duty beseeming

These star-litten hours—

And shake from your tresses

Encumber’d with dew

The breath of those kisses

That cumber them too—

(O! how, without you, Love!

Could angels be blest?)

Those kisses of true love

That lull’d ye to rest!

Up!—shake from your wing

Each hindering thing:

The dew of the night—

It would weigh down your flight;

And true love caresses—

O! leave them apart!

They are light on the tresses,

But lead on the heart.

Ligeia! Ligeia!

My beautiful one!

Whose harshest idea

Will to melody run,

O! is it thy will

On the breezes to toss?

Or, capriciously still,

*Like the lone Albatross,

Incumbent on night

(As she on the air)

To keep watch with delight

On the harmony there?

Ligeia! whatever

Thy image may be,

No magic shall sever

Thy music from thee.

Thou hast bound many eyes

In a dreamy sleep—

But the strains still arise

Which thy vigilance keep—

The sound of the rain

Which leaps down to the flower,

And dances again

In the rhythm of the shower—

†The murmur that springs

From the growing of grass

Are the music of things—

But are modell’d, alas!—

Away, then my dearest,

O! hie thee away

To springs that lie clearest

Beneath the moon-ray—

To lone lake that smiles,

In its dream of deep rest,

At the many star-isles

That enjewel its breast—

Where wild flowers, creeping,

Have mingled their shade,

On its margin is sleeping

Full many a maid—

Some have left the cool glade, and

*Have slept with the bee—

Arouse them my maiden,

On moorland and lea—

Go! breathe on their slumber,

All softly in ear,

The musical number

They slumber’d to hear—

For what can awaken

An angel so soon

Whose sleep hath been taken

Beneath the cold moon,

As the spell which no slumber

Of witchery may test,

The rythmical number

Which lull’d him to rest?"

Spirits in wing, and angels to the view,

A thousand seraphs burst th’ Empyrean thro’,

Young dreams still hovering on their drowsy flight—

Seraphs in all but Knowledge, the keen light

That fell, refracted, thro’ thy bounds, afar

O Death! from eye of God upon that star:

Sweet was that error—sweeter still that death—

Sweet was that error—ev’n with us the breath

Of Science dims the mirror of our joy—

To them ’t were the Simoom, and would destroy—

For what (to them) availeth it to know

That Truth is Falsehood—or that Bliss is Woe?

Sweet was their death—with them to die was rife

With the last ecstasy of satiate life—

Beyond that death no immortality—

But sleep that pondereth and is not to be—

And there—oh! may my weary spirit dwell—

*Apart from Heaven’s Eternity—and yet how far from Hell!

What guilty spirit, in what shrubbery dim,

Heard not the stirring summons of that hymn?

But two: they fell: for Heaven no grace imparts

To those who hear not for their beating hearts.

A maiden-angel and her seraph-lover—

O! where (and ye may seek the wide skies over)

Was Love, the blind, near sober Duty known?

†Unguided Love hath fallen—’mid tears of perfect moan.

He was a goodly spirit—he who fell:

A wanderer by moss-y-mantled well—

A gazer on the lights that shine above—

A dreamer in the moonbeam by his love :

What wonder? For each star is eye-like there,

And looks so sweetly down on Beauty’s hair—

And they, and ev’ry mossy spring were holy

To his love-haunted heart and melancholy.

The night had found (to him a night of wo)

Upon a mountain crag, young Angelo—

Beetling it bends athwart the solemn sky,

And scowls on starry worlds that down beneath it lie.

Here sate he with his love—his dark eye bent

With eagle gaze along the firmament:

Now turn’d it upon her—but ever then

It tremble’d to the orb of Earth again.

"Iante, dearest, see! how dim that ray!

How lovely ’tis to look so far away!

She seem’d not thus upon that autumn eve

I left her gorgeous halls—nor mourn’d to leave.

That eve—that eve—I should remember well—

The sun-ray dropp’d, in Lemnos, with a spell

On th’ Arabesque carving of a gilded hall

Wherein I sate, and on the draperied wall—

And on my eye-lids—O the heavy light!

How drowsily it weigh’d them into night!

On flowers, before, and mist, and love they ran

With Persian Saadi in his Gulistan:

But O that light!—I slumber’d—Death, the while,

Stole o’er my senses in that lovely isle

So softly that no single silken hair

Awoke that slept—or knew that it was there.

The last spot of Earth’s orb I trod upon

*Was a proud temple call’d the Parthenon—

More beauty clung around her column’d wall

†Than ev’n thy glowing bosom beats withal,

And when old Time my wing did disenthral

Thence sprang I—as the eagle from his tower,

And years I left behind me in an hour.

What time upon her airy bounds I hung

One half the garden of her globe was flung

Unrolling as a chart unto my view—

Tenantless cities of the desert too!

Ianthe, beauty crowded on me then,

And half I wish’d to be again of men."

"My Angelo! and why of them to be?

A brighter dwelling-place is here for thee—

And greener fields than in yon world above,

And women’s loveliness—and passionate love."

"But, list, Ianthe! when the air so soft

*Fail’d, as my pennon’d spirit leapt aloft,

Perhaps my brain grew dizzy—but the world

I left so late was into chaos hurl’d—

Sprang from her station, on the winds apart,

And roll’d, a flame, the fiery Heaven athwart.

Methought, my sweet one, then I ceased to soar

And fell—not swiftly as I rose before,

But with a downward, tremulous motion thro’

Light, brazen rays, this golden star unto!

Nor long the measure of my falling hours,

For nearest of all stars was thine to ours—

Dread star! that came, amid a night of mirth,

A red Dædalion on the timid Earth."

"We came—and to thy Earth—but not to us

Be given our lady’s bidding to discuss:

We came, my love; around, above, below,

Gay fire-fly of the night we come and go,

Nor ask a reason save the angel-nod

She grants to us, as granted by her God—

But, Angelo, than thine grey Time unfurl’d

Never his fairy wing o’er fairier world!

Dim was its little disk, and angel eyes

Alone could see the phantom in the skies,

When first Al Aaraaf knew her course to be

Headlong thitherward o’er the starry sea—

But when its glory swell’d upon the sky,

As glowing Beauty’s bust beneath man’s eye,

We paus’d before the heritage of men,

And thy star trembled—as doth Beauty then!"

Thus, in discourse, the lovers whiled away

The night that waned and waned and brought no day.

They fell: for Heaven to them no hope imparts

Who hear not for the beating of their hearts.

*A star was discovered by Tycho Brahe which appeared suddenly in the heavens—attained, in a few days, a brilliancy surpassing that of Jupiter—then as suddenly disappeared, and has never been seen since.

*On Santa Maura—olim Deucadia.

†Sappho.

‡This flower is much noticed by Lewenhoeck and Tournefort. The bee, feeding upon its blossom, becomes intoxicated.

*Clytia—The Chrysanthemum Peruvianum, or, to employ a better-known term, the turnsol—which turns continually towards the sun, covers itself, like Peru, the country from which it comes, with dewy clouds which cool and refresh its flowers during the most violent heat of the day.—B. de St. Pierre.

†There is cultivated in the king’s garden at Paris, a species of serpentine aloes without prickles, whose large and beautiful flower exhales a strong odor of the vanilla, during the time of its expansion, which is very short. It does not blow till towards the month of July—you then perceive it gradually open its petals—expand them—fade and die.—St. Pierre.

‡There is found, in the Rhone, a beautiful lily of the Valisnerian kind. Its stem will stretch to the length of three or four feet—thus preserving its head above water in the swellings of the river.

§The Hyacinth.

‖It is a fiction of the Indians, that Cupid was first seen floating in one of these down the river Ganges—and that he still loves the cradle of his childhood.

#And golden phials full of odors which are the prayers of the saints.—Rev. St. John.

*The Humanitarians held that God was to be understood as having a really human form.—Vide Clarke’s Sermons,

Reviews for The Complete Tales and Poems of Edgar Allan Poe (Barnes & Noble Collectible Editions)

[brakketh-1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

The stories and poems you have heard of are the strongest of the collection by a mile. I didn't particularly enjoy the stories that were infighting between critics.

[reader1009-863136 · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

early 19th century horror fiction. I got through a couple stories before losing my taste for it--way more grisly than I remember from my high school readings.

[antao-3 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

(Original Review, 1992-12-16)Can a reader in this and age fully appreciate Poe? Maybe the age of the reader is significant - I first encountered Poe over forty decades ago - in the sense that time on the planet, life lived, experiences felt and understood, are part of the maturing process essential to entering Poe's visions and dream-states. Some of the comments I’ve read elsewhere suggest a fidgety class of pre-adolescents who have lost - if ever they had - what might be called attention spans. Then again, maybe Poe is uniquely American and the Europeans cannot fully grasp him.And still again, here's another giveaway (from a comment):"I might also see if I can watch a film adaptation of a story" which implies the commenter in question has never seen any of the Poe adaptations or any of the many, many movies inspired, through the years, by his stories; in fact my jaw dropped when I read that deathless line with its implicit admission - "I might also see if I can watch a film adaptation of a story". Wow. Expecting "scares" and "thrills"... my god, does Poe ever deserve better readers than that? OK dear commenter, I suggest forgetting Poe and taking yourself off to see “The Conjuring”, which boasts some excellent jumps, jolts and scares, plus a lovely performance by Lili Taylor. I think you'll find what you're expecting.And by the way, Poe was also a sly satirist.I think writing about the social is important, but a good deal easier than writing about the self. Society is sick and twisted indeed, and always has been, likely always will be. Why? It is because we, as selves, are what make society, and we as selves are rather like blind moles, or more on point, the creature from Kafka's Burrow. Poe peers relentlessly at the self, his "I" is almost always the "eye" (most vividly perhaps in the “Tell-Tale Heart”), and it is looking right inside ourselves. Poe ferociously anticipates the world to come, the psychoanalytic, the alienated, and the murderous. His tales foreground the serial killers, drug addicts, pedophiles, neurotics and psychotics, and the like which have become the commonplaces of our modern artistic and social environment. It is people, selves that create, and maintain, society. We can all point out what is wrong with society, but it's much harder to find the wrongs in our beloved selves.Raskolnikov seems to me as much a petty, arrogant person with the utmost contempt for all things not himself, as a victim of society. Of course, it's a vicious circle, what we are specifically is engendered and perpetuated by specific societies. But in the end it is always the same. All that redemption in Dostoevsky seems rather naive. Going after Poe, is like going after Freud. Of course, individual human pathology is disagreeable, but it is there, and it is what we are. There is nothing we can do perhaps, but we are all responsible for what we all are.If Poe had had the idea tools of psychoanalysis, complexes, repression, displacement, and so on, all of which would become literary commonplaces in the 20th century, he might not have been taken to task for his style. T. S. Eliot was outraged that Poe said "my most IMMEMORIAL year" (in “Ulalume”), but Poe in that poem, and in stories like “Ligeia”, “Black Cat”, and “Tell-Tale Heart” was inventing memory repression and he didn't have the Freudian term 'repression' to call on.He is certainly not schlock compared to ANYONE.

[headinherbooks_27 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Good collection of Poe's stories and poetry.

[sumisbooks · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

One of my favorite authors of ALL TIME! Please, if you don't read his complete works, read just some. Though his subjects are rather macabre, his use of the English language is astounding! His word usage and sentence structure is matched by no other before or after. Pure genius. ❤❤❤

[sirenremi · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I got the edition Barnes&Noble had and I say, it is a neat leather bound book that offers a little ribbon bookmark. The edge of the pages are silver, which is also pretty neat. I do enjoy a good Edgar Allan Poe poem or story. I've been a fan for a while now! I thought the book was actually a pretty good read and worth the money I had paid for it. It might not have all of his works nor his greatest works, but it is still a book worth reading! I am very glad to have this on my shelf.

[drled_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Review: Some of the poems and many of the stories are very good. The analyses of furniture is horrible!

[peptastic · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I did a school report on this highschool that required using a song from popculture. I recall I played the cure's "all cats are grey" and made up a flimsy reason to use it.

[moonspider-1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I got this collection set today and I couldn't be more pleased. :D It's the leatherbound edition sold by Barnes & Nobles with a ribbon bookmark, which is always very handy. The text is very easy to read and seems to have every last one of his works. Though currently out of print, I was lucky enough to have the last in the store. The book itself is very sturdy and anyone who loves horror and/or literature should have it. The first thing I did on the way home? Read out the first three poems, Lenore, and The Raven on the way home. :)I honestly have no complaints.

[benuathanasia · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

If you're a student of the American school system, you are probably familiar (to some extent) with Edgar Allan Poe. His more popular works are staples of the education system:"Anabel Lee""The Raven""The Bells""The Tell-Tale Heart""The Black Cat""The Cask of Amontillado""The Pit and the Pendulum""The Fall of the House of Usher""The Purloined Letter""The Gold Bug""Murders in the Rue Morgue"...I'm sure most English readers have read at least two of these at one point or another.Poe was, however, an extremely prolific author beyond these works. There is a very good reason that these are the literary fallbacks most teachers rely on. To be perfectly frank, most of his work was absolute crap (and this is coming from someone who has idolized him since I first heard "The Raven" at age five and had it memorized by third grade). I set out a month or so ago to read the collected works of Edgar Allan Poe and very quickly found myself out of love. I'm not sure if his humor no longer translates to modern audiences, but anything of his outside the mystery or horror genre, I could not stand. It was a painful reading experience I hope never to repeat. As far as my particular edition of the works (B&N), it stunk. Poe frequently wrote in Greek, French, Latin and other languages and no translations or footnotes were provided for anything beyond those provided by Poe himself (which means almost no translations of any kind). Let me tell you, it's difficult to Google translate Ancient Greek in the original Greek letters.

[amwsmith-1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Another #1 favorite ever, but this "review" is mainly a reminder that Russell has my copy of this.

[mldavis2 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Much of Poe rates a 5-star. I read the complete works which included many early poems, a genre that Poe professed to love, and some secondary early works that lack the polish and sophistication of his masterpieces, hence the overall 4-star rating. I find Poe somewhat of a humorist with his occasional use of absurd character names and his tongue-in-cheek sophisticated language in many of his tales, including those usually associated with horror.I don't know if I would expect readers to plow through the entire 5-book set of complete works as I did, but as a truly American writer, poet and analyst, Poe has set some benchmarks that led to later writers such as Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes stories and other forensic efforts. This set is well worth exploring for Poe's influence on later writers.

[nmhale_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

At long, long last, I finished this collection. Whew. This is a compilation (as the tile says) of all of Poe's poetry and short stories. Plus, the editor threw in one novel, an essay, and an unfinished play. The book has 1,000 pages of Poe madness, and it took me almost a year to finish it, because I would read it off and on in between reading other books. When you read the completed works of an author, you generally are going to come across really great and really mediocre selections, maybe even some awful ones. Unless the author is exceptional. Unfortunately, Poe is not exceptional. He's good, and he has moments of genius, but having read this anthology I have come to the realization that this trait does not carry across to all of his stories. Some of them I really loved, and others were entertaining, but some were truly awful. He is at his best when he is being macabre or ridiculous; when he started to wax philosophical he lost me every time. The only aspect that kept those stories readable was how interesting it was to read a person's ideas about how spiritual and philosophical ideas will change, from long enough ago that we can now see how wrong he was. I especially liked his ideas that in the future all travel would be via hot air balloon. Well, he was right about air travel, at least. I don't want this review to be too negative - as I wrote, he has some real sparklers in the collection. His famous, most well-known, pieces also tend to be his best written, not surprisingly, but there were plenty of others I had never heard of before that rank up at the top. "The Gold Bug" was one example; it was like his other mystery stories, and I greatly enjoyed all of those. I also really liked his satirical short stores, like "Loss of Breath" or "The Business Man", which made me laugh out loud. I never thought about Poe as a humorous writer, but when you read these, you see that his pen could have a cutting edge wit as sharp as his macabre gloom and doom. Among his classic tales, I still love "The Fall of the House of Usher" and still think "The Pit and the Pendulum" is rather boring; "The Tell Tale Heart" is a masterly tale that nonetheless leaves me with a chill and a desire not to read it again. As for his poetry, not as much stands out there. "The Raven" can never be omitted, it is great, but much of the rest is just average. I liked his riddle poems, I think "The Bells" is a wonderful poem, and there were some other dreamy quiet ones I enjoyed like "Fairy Land", but for the most part they weren't that memorable.Then, at the end, the book contains "Eureka" and The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket, an essay and a novel. Poe called Eureka his prose poem, but it was actually a long essay on the nature of the universe and the meaning of life and eternity, and it was deadly dull. I plodded through it because at that point I was so close to the end that it would have been a shame to stop. The novel, too, was a disappointment. I just don't understand asking the reader to commit so much time and reading to a fictional travel account, and then abruptly ending with no closure and the excuse that author suddenly died. Could Poe not think of a suitable ending? I felt cheated.In sum, the short stories were the best part of the book, the poetry was entertaining but not often wonderful, and you can easily skip the longer pieces at the end. Also, be prepared to experience a wide variety of quality between the stories, as well as a breadth of genre you might not expect from Poe's general reputation. Definitely worth it for the collected short stories, but I have to say, I am happy to be done.

[level250geek · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

No self-respecting purveyor of dark things should be without this book.

[datrappert · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This review was occasioned by re-reading, for the umpteenth time, "The Fall of the House of Usher". Like much of Poe, there are traces of sheer genius and elements, that if you care to look at them that way, are pretty bad writing. In this case, for instance, the narrator says on at least three occasions that words simply cannot describe something. And repeatedly Poe breaks one of the cardinal rules of writing, "Show, don't tell." Yet the overall oppressive atmosphere of the story is brilliant, as is the long opening sentence. I, as I suspect many others did, was fascinated with the stories and particularly the poems of Poe by the time I was 10 years old. There were Poe stories around my parents' house and of course there was the endless series of Roger Corman movies loosely based on Poe's works that one of our local channels showed almost every Friday night. Back them, however, this was one of the stories that interested me the least. The language was way overdone (and still is--even for Poe) and there is a scarcity of dialogue that certainly doesn't make for a quick read. As I've grown older, though, this is a story I have returned to periodically simply to get lost in the darkness. Poe's stories, even if they have physical aspects of horror as this one does, really take place in the heads of his characters. It isn't the horrible thing that matters--it is our impression of it. 160 years after his death, Poe is still feeding those parts of our minds that draw their strength from our innermost fears.

[jimmaclachlan · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I didn't read this particular edition, but have several books by him, so this was easier to add here. He's not my favorite author, but I'm not much of a horror or poetry buff. I can't deny his influence & popularity nor his skill. Some of his ideas have been re-used as much as Shakespeare's. If you've never read him, you should, if only to know where a lot of knock-off plots are coming from.

[terpsichoreus · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Not many people outside of literary study or detective fiction fandom realize that the character of Sherlock Holmes was inspired by Poe's Dupin. Dupin was the brilliant and insightful idle noble who occasionally aided the authorities in particularly difficult cases. However, unlike Holmes, Dupin took it up merely as a hobby, mimicking Holmes' brother Mycroft.I'm not fond of Poe's poetry. Emerson's leveling of 'Jingle Man' is appropriate. Poe puts sounds together, but usually says very little with them. It is unusual that his prose was so varied while his poetry tended to obsessive repetition. Poe presents an example of the turning point when poetry ceased to represent the most complex and dense literary form (as in Milton and Eliot) and became the most frivolous and unrefined (the beat poets), while prose moved contrarily from the light-hearted to the serious.When divorced from his single-minded prosody, Poe's mastery of the language elegantly serves the needs of mood, characterization, and action. This is not always the case: his Ligeia retains his poetic narrowness, but his detective stories have a gentleness and wit found nowhere else in his oeuvre.The three Dupin stories helped to inspire detective fiction, using suspense and convoluted mystery to tantalize and challenge the reader. He may not have been as influential or innovative as Wilkie Collins, but his contribution still stands.Any book of Poe's is worth purchasing simply for these three stories. They are studies in the careful use of language to develop mood, character, and drive--even in a sparse plot. They are not quite the equals of Ambrose Bierce's short fiction, but they are solid enough.

[camarie_2 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Edgar Allen Poe was one of the most creative and captivating authors ever in existence. His stories envelope your imagination and cause you to face your fears. They are very eye-opening and heartily enjoyable. This is a wonderful collection of great classics.

[horatio10 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Having been given this book as a child, I appreciated the finely written horror - made all the more keen by the directness of the first person narrative. 'The Pit and the Pendulum', 'The Tell-Tale Heart' and 'Berenice' all cases in point. 'The Fall of the House of Usher' absolutely terrified me.As I was reading a lot of Conan Doyle at the time, I also couldn't help but notice the parallels between the protagonist in Poe's original detective stories (The Murders in the Rue Morgue, the Mystery of Marie Roget) and Sherlock Holmes. To have been the originator of the short story form as well as the detective story, Poe deserves much credit. To this day I'm struck by the intimacy of his stories, how as readers we're allowed into the world of Poe's personal fears and manias. I'd recommend this book to anyone interested in studying the human condition.

[lostfrog_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Poe's overrated. But still good. I read this a while ago, I remember liking a story about a maelstrom, mainly because I just like that word.

[john257hopper · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Views on a few of the stories within:Purloined LetterI read this because it is one of the books on the 1001 Books You Must Read List. It's clear why it's on there - a clear antecedent of Sherlock Holmes in almost every respect.

[suso711_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Edgar Allan Poe really inspired my love of reading and writing in middle school. If just words on a page can incite such horror and emotion - well, that was just amazing to me.

[vyode_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

[ "he's too verbose for me." - grammie ]the humor ( yes, "humor" ) in his story's often goes unacknowledged. but once you start thinking in his speech there are roflmao moments.

[duranfan · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Most people are familiar with Poe from his Gothic Horror short stories (lovingly translated into some of the Hammer Film Classics) and not his other work.And that's the way it should stay. His non-horror stuff is very dry and not very interesting. Yawn.

[ysar_6 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Genius. I read every word of this as a teen (my copy of the book is actually stolen from my dad's personal library) and have re-read it multiple times since then. From the stories to the poetry, Poe is the master of his art.

[nikkles_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Edgar Allan Poe stories and poems were one of my great loves as a kid. If you've read my other reviews you know that it is well established that I was a strange kid. I believe that reading Poe's work is good for intelligent and creative children, but you should only let them read it in the day light. My love of these stories has stayed with me and they are still endless fun. They may be short, but you can think about them endlessly. If you love to read you have to read a Poe Collection at least once!

[rybeewoods · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Poe is intruiging. He reminds me of Hitchcock in many ways (it should be the other way around right?). Mostly the resemblence has to do with thier M. Night Shamalongadingdong style twists and suspence. I find that we are so acustomed to that type of reading these days that Poe comes across pretty routine. Too bad.

[valentipoetry · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This is the Green leather bound edition that has all the short stories, poems, etc. It has come in very useful for the kids for thier schoolwork.

[caerulius · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I love Poe. He's brilliant.So you may wonder why I gave this 4 stars, instead of 5?It's the book's fault, really. There is an enormous number of stories, articles and poems in this volume, and yet there is no header to the pages, telling you which story you are passing, which is frustrating when you are trying to find something. The print is absolutely tiny, which is difficult. Granted, it is a very large book, so the print issue may have been unavoidable, but the heading thing is a far bigger issue than I would have anticipated.This review assumes that you are familiar with the chilling, marvelous beauty of Poe's writing, because you will note I am not critiquing the content. Poe is well-ensconced in the pantheon of writers. Hands-down.

[jbd1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Classics from Poe, all worth reading.