Poems by Edgar A. Poe — 1831 text — reading text

failing in thy power to bless, But leavest 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. XIX. 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. XX. * * * * * * ’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 evening mist, So often lovely, and will list To the sound of the coming darkness (known To those whose spirits harken) as one Who in a dream of night would fly But cannot from a danger nigh. XXI. What tho' the moon — the white moon — Shed all the beauty 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. * * * * * * XXII. I reach'd my home — what home? above, My home — my hope — my early love, Lonely, like me, the desert rose, Bow'd down with its own glory grows. XXIII. 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 wander'd of the idol, Love, Who daily scents his snowy wings With incense of burnt offerings, From the most undefiled things; Whose pleasant bowers are yet so riven Above with trelliced rays from Heaven, No mote may shun — no tiniest fly The lightning of his eagle eye — How was it that Ambition crept, Unseen amid the revels there, Till growing bold, he laugh'd and leapt In the tangles of Loves [Love's] very hair? XXIV. If my peace hath flown away In a night — or in a day — In a vision — or in none — Is it, therefore, the less gone? I was standing 'mid the roar Of a wind-beaten shore, And I held within my hand Some particles of sand — How bright! and yet to creep Thro' my fingers to the deep! My early hopes? no — they Went gloriously away, Like lightning from the sky — Why in the battle did not I?