The Raven and Other Selected Poems. Эдгар Аллан По

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СКАЧАТЬ 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 walked together on the crown

      Of a high mountain which looked 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

      Seemed to become a queenly throne

      Too well that I should let it be

      Light in the wilderness alone.

      I wrapped myself in grandeur then,

      And donned a visionary crown—

      Yet it was not that Fantasy

      Had thrown her mantle over me—

      But that, among the rabble—men,

      Lion ambition is chained 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 she not 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 diademed 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-withered 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 towered, could see

      No cliff beyond him in the sky,

      His pinions were bent droopingly—

      And homeward turned his softened 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—tho’ 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 reached my home—my home no more—

      For all had flown who made it so.

      I passed 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,

      An humbler heart—a deeper woe.

      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 СКАЧАТЬ