The Complete Poetry. Эдгар Аллан По
Чтение книги онлайн.

Читать онлайн книгу The Complete Poetry - Эдгар Аллан По страница 10

Название: The Complete Poetry

Автор: Эдгар Аллан По

Издательство: Bookwire

Жанр: Языкознание

Серия:

isbn: 4064066382087

isbn:

СКАЧАТЬ Dream Within a Dream

       Table of Contents

      Take this kiss upon the brow!

       And, in parting from you now,

       Thus much let me avow—

       You are not wrong, who deem

       That my days have been a dream:

       Yet if hope has flown away

       In a night, or in a day,

       In a vision or in none,

       Is it therefore the less gone? All that we see or seem Is but a dream within a dream. I stand amid the roar Of a surf-tormented shore, And I hold within my hand Grains of the golden sand— How few! yet how they creep Through my fingers to the deep While I weep—while I weep! O God! can I not grasp Them with a tighter clasp? O God! can I not save One from the pitiless wave? Is all that we see or seem But a dream within a dream?

      To Marie Louise (Shew)

       Table of Contents

      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!"

       At thy soft-murmured words that were fulfilled

       In thy seraphic glancing of thine eyes—

       Of all who owe thee most, whose gratitude

       Nearest resembles worship,—oh, remember

       The truest, the most fervently devoted,

       And think that these weak lines are written by him—

       By him who, as he pens them, thrills to think

       His spirit is communing with an angel's.

      To Marie Louise

       Table of Contents

      Not long ago, the writer of these lines,

       In the mad pride of intellectuality,

       Maintained "the power of words"—denied that ever

       A thought arose within the human brain

       Beyond the utterance of the human tongue:

       And now, as if in mockery of that boast,

       Two words—two foreign soft dissyllables—

       Italian tones, made only to be murmured

       By angels dreaming in the moonlit "dew

       That hangs like chains of pearl on Hermon hill,"—

       Have stirred from out the abysses of his heart,

       Unthought-like thoughts that are the souls of thought,

       Richer, far wilder, far diviner visions

       Than even the seraph harper, Israfel,

       (Who has "the sweetest voice of all God's creatures,")

       Could hope to utter. And I! my spells are broken.

       The pen falls powerless from my shivering hand.

       With thy dear name as text, though hidden by thee,

       I cannot write—I cannot speak or think—

       Alas, I cannot feel; for 'tis not feeling,

       This standing motionless upon the golden

       Threshold of the wide-open gate of dreams,

       Gazing, entranced, adown the gorgeous vista,

       And thrilling as I see, upon the right,

       Upon the left, and all the way along,

       Amid empurpled vapors, far away

       To where the prospect terminates—thee only!

      The City in the Sea

       Table of Contents

      Lo! Death has reared himself a throne

       In a strange city lying alone

       Far down within the dim West,

       Where the good and the bad and the worst and the best

       Have gone to their eternal rest.

       There shrines and palaces and towers

       (Time-eaten towers and tremble not!)

       Resemble nothing that is ours.

       Around, by lifting winds forgot,

       Resignedly beneath the sky

       The melancholy waters lie.

       No rays from the holy Heaven come down

       On the long night-time of that town;

       But light from out the lurid sea

       Streams up the turrets silently—

       Gleams up the pinnacles far and free—

       Up domes—up spires—up kingly halls—

       Up fanes—up Babylon-like walls—

       Up shadowy long-forgotten bowers

       Of sculptured ivy and stone flowers—

       Up many and many a marvellous shrine

       СКАЧАТЬ