The Raven and Other Selected Poems. Эдгар Аллан По

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СКАЧАТЬ should it be—that dream eternally

      Continuing—as dreams have been to me

      In my young boyhood—should it thus be given,

      ’Twere folly still to hope for higher Heaven.

      For I have revelled when the sun was bright

      I’ the summer sky, in dreams of living light

      And loveliness,—have left my very heart

      Inclines of my imaginary 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 power

      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 that that night-wind—let it pass.

      I have been happy, though 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 my own!—

      Than young Hope in his sunniest hour hath known.

      1827

       EVENING STAR

      ’Twas noontide of summer,

      And midtime of night,

      And stars, in their orbits,

      Shone pale, through the light

      Of the brighter, cold moon.

      ’Mid planets her slaves,

      Herself in the Heavens,

      Her beam on the waves.

      I gazed awhile

      On her cold smile;

      Too cold—too cold for me—

      There passed, as a shroud,

      A fleecy cloud,

      And I turned 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 Heaven at night,

      And more I admire

      Thy distant fire,

      Than that colder, lowly light.

      1827

       “IN YOUTH I HAVE KNOWN ONE”

      (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 I have known one with whom the Earth

      In secret communing held—as he with it,

      In daylight, and in beauty, from his birth:

      Whose fervid, flickering 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 moonbeam that hangs o’er,

      But I will half believe that wild light fraught

      With more of sovereignty than ancient lore

      Hath ever told—or is it of a thought

      The unembodied essence, and no more

      That with a quickening 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 loved 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 given

      In beauty by our God, to those alone

      Who otherwise would fall from life and Heaven

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