 section 43 of the complete poetical works this is a LibriVox recording all LibriVox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org recording by Matthew Bennett the complete poetical works by Edgar Allen Poe section 43 al-Araf one oh 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 Circace oh nothing earthly save the shrill of melody and woodland rill or music of the passion-hearted joy's voice so peacefully departed that like the murmur in the shell it's 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 yawn world afar afar the wandering star it was a sweet time for Nisaki for there her world lay lowling on the golden air near four bright suns a temporary rest an oasis in the desert of the blessed away away mid seas of rays that roll imperian splendor or the unchained soul the soul that scares the billows are so dense can struggle to its destined eminence to distance fears from time to time she rode in late two hours the favored one of God but now the ruler of an anchored realm she throws aside the scepter leaves the helm and amid incense and high spiritual hymns laze in quadruple light her angel limbs now happiest loveliest in yawn lovely earth when sprang the idea of beauty into birth falling and wreaths though many a startled star like a woman's hair mid pearls until afar it lit on hills a cayenne there dwelt she looked into infinity and knelt rich clouds for canopies about her curled fit emblems of the model of her world seen but in beauty not in peating sight of other beauty glittering through the light a wreath that twined each starry form around and all the opal air in color bound all hurriedly she knelt upon a bed of flowers of lilies such as reared the head on the fair capo deocato and sprang so eagerly around about to hang upon the flying footsteps of deep pride of her who loved immortal and so died the sepulica budding with young bees up reared its purple stem around her knees and gemmy flower of trebizond misnamed inmate of highest stars where erst it shamed all other loveliness its honey do the fabled nectar that the heathen knew deliriously sweet was dropped 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 unwanted reverie in heaven and all its environs the leaf and blossom of the fairy plant in grief disconsolid linger grief that hangs her head repenting follies that full long have fled heaving her white breast to the balmy air like guilty beauty chastened more fair nictantes to as sacred as the light she fears to perfume perfuming the night and clitia pondering between many a son while petish tears the down her petals run and that aspiring flower that sprang on earth and died air 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 ron and thy most lovely purple perfume zante isola doro fior de levante and a loombo 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's song and odors up to heaven spirit that dwellest where in the deep sky the terrible and fair and beauty by beyond the line of blue the boundary of the star which turneth at the view of thy barrier and thy bar of the barrier over gone 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 though the beings whom thine isaki thy messenger hath known have dreamed for thy infinity a model of their own thy will is done oh God the star hath ridden high through 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 ceased and buried then there her burning cheek abashed amid the lilies there to seek a shelter from the firmer of his eye for the stars trembled at the deity she stirred not breathed 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 hours as a world of words quiet we call silence which is the nearest word of all all nature speaks an even ideal things flap shadowy sounds from the 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 though in worlds which sightless cycles run linked to a little system and one son where all my love is folly on 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 though in worlds which own a single son the sands of time grow dimmer as they run yet thine is my resplendency so given to bear my secrets through the upper heaven leave tenetless of thy crystal home and fly with all thy train a thwart the moony sky apart like fireflies and Sicilian night and wing to other worlds and other light divulge the secrets of thy embassy to the proud orbs that twinkle and so be to every heart a barrier and a ban lest the stars totter in the guilt of man up rose the maiden and the yellow night the single moon eve on earth we plight our faith to one love and one moon adore the birthplace 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 or sheenie mountains and dim plain her way but left not yet her theresean rain to high on a mountain of enameled heads such as the drowsy shepherd on his bed of giant pasture edge lying at his ease raising his heavy eyelid starts and sees with many a muttered 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 danced with the fair stranger light up reared upon such height arose a pile of gorgeous columns on the unburdened air flashing from perian marble that twin smile far down upon the wave that sparkled there and nursled the young mountain in its lair of molten stars their pavements such as fall through the ebb and air besilvering the pall of their own disillusion while they die adorning them 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 looked out above into the purple air and rays from god shot down that meteor chain and hallowed all the beauty twice again save when between the imperian and that ring some eager spirit flapped his dusky wing but on the pillars seraph eyes have seen the dimness of this world that grayish green that nature loves the best for beauty's grave lurked in each cornice round each architrave and every sculptured cherub there about that from his marble dwelling peered out seemed earthly in the shadow of his niche a cay in statues in a world so rich freezes from tadmore and persiopolis from balbec in the stilly clear abyss of beautiful gamora oh the wave is now upon thee but too late to save sound loves to revel in a summer night witness the murmur of the gray twilight that stole upon the ear in iraqo of many a wild stargazer long ago that steeleth 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 it is the rush of wings a pause and then a sweeping falling strain anisaki is in her halls again from the wild energy of wanton haste her cheeks were flushing and her lips apart the zone that clung around her gentle waist had burst beneath the heaving of her heart within the center of that hall to breathe she paused and panted xanthi all beneath the fairy light that kissed her golden hair and longed 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 and many a starlet grove or moonlight dell yet silence came upon material things fair flowers bright waterfalls and angel wings and sound alone that from the spirit sprang more birthing to the charm the maiden sang neath bluebell 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 through the shade and come down to your brow like eyes of the maiden who calls on you now arise from your dreaming and violet bowers to duty be seeming these starlitten hours and shake from your tresses encumbered with dew the breath of those kisses that cumber them to oh how without you love could angels be blessed those kisses of true love that lulled 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 oh leave them apart their light on the tresses but led on the heart by jea ly jea my beautiful one whose harshest idea will to melody run oh 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 ly jea wherever thy image may be no magic shall sever thy music from thee thou hast bound many eyes in a dreamy sleep but the strain still arise which thy vigilance keep the sound of 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 modeled alas away then my dearest oh he the away to springs that lie clearest beneath the moon ray to lone lake that smiles in its dream of deep rest and the many star aisles that endual 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 lee go breathe on their slumber all softly in ear the musical number they slumbered to hear for what can awaken an angel so soon whose sleep has been taken beneath the cold moon as the spell which no slumber of witchery may test the rhythmical number which lulled him to rest spirits and wing and angels to the view a thousand seraphs burst the imperian through young dreams still hovering on their drowsy flight seraphs in all but knowledge the keen light that fell refracted through thy bounds afar oh death from eye of god upon that star sweet was that error sweeter still that death sweet was that error even with us the breath of science dims the mirror of our joy to them to where the simum 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 last hymn but two they fell for heaven no grace in parts to those who hear not for their beating hearts a maiden angel and her seraph lover oh 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 mossy mantled well a gazer on the light that shine above a dreamer in the moonbeam by his love what wonder for each star is i like there and looks so sweetly down upon beauty's hair and they and every mossy spring were holy to his love haunted heart and melancholy the night had found to him a night of woe upon a mountain crag young angelo beatling it bends a thwart the solemn sky and scowls on starry worlds that down beneath it lie hear satie with his love his dark eye bent with eagle gaze along the firmament now turned it upon her but ever then it trembled to the orb of earth again ianthe dearest see how dim that ray how lovely tiz to look so far away she seemed not thus upon that autumn eve i left her gorgeous halls nor mourned to leave that eve that eve i should remember well the sun ray dropped in lemnos with a spell on the arabesque carving of a gilded hall wherein i sat and on the drapery wall and on my eyelids oh the heavy light how drowsily it weighed them into night on flowers before and missed and love they ran with persian sadi and his gulistan but oh that light i slumbered death the while stole o'er my senses in that lovely isle so softly that no single silk and hair awoke that slept or knew that he was there the last spot of earth's orb i trod upon was a proud temple called the parthenon more beauty clung around her columned wall then even thy glowing bosom beats with all and when old time my wing did disenthrall then sprang i as the eagle from his tower and years i left spent 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 onto my view tenetless cities of the desert two yanthe beauty crowded on me then and half i wished 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 woman's loveliness and passionate love but list yanthe when the air so soft failed as my pen and spirit lept aloft perhaps my brain grew dizzy but the world i left so late was into chaos hurled sprang from her station on the winds apart and rolled aflame the fiery heaven a thwart me thought my sweet one then i ceased to soar and fell not swiftly as i rose before but with a downward tremulous motion through light braze and raise this golden star unto not long the measure of my falling hours for nearest of all stars was a dying two hours dread star that came amid a night of mirth a red dyda leon on the timid earth we came and to thy earth but not to us be given our ladies bidding to discuss we came my love around above below gay firefly 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 then thine gray time unfurled never his fairy wing or fair world dim was its little disk and angel eyes alone could see the phantom in the skies when first al-arraf knew her course to be headlong thither word or the starry sea but when its glory swelled upon the sky as glowing beauty bust beneath man's eye we paused before the heritage of men and thy star trembled as doth beauty then thus in discourse the lovers wild away the night that waned and waned and brought no day they fell for heaven to them no hope in parts who hear not for the beating of their hearts footnote one a star was discovered by tico 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 footnote two on santa mara olim de ukalia footnote three saffo footnote four this flower is much noticed by liwan hook and tornafort the b feeding upon its blossom becomes intoxicated footnote five clitia the chrysanthemum peruvianum or to employ a better known term the turnsall 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 desampières footnote six there is cultivated in the king's garden at paris a species of serpentine aloe 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 sempierre footnote seven there is found in the ron a beautiful lily of the valesnarian 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 footnote eight the hyacinth footnote nine 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 footnote ten and golden vials full of odors which are the prayers of the saints revelations st. john footnote eleven the humanitarians held that god was to be understood as having really a human form v. day clark's sermons the drift of milton's argument leads him to employ language which would appear at first sight to verge upon their doctrine but it will be seen immediately that he guards himself against the charge of having adopted one of the most ignorant errors of the dark ages of the church dr. sumner's notes on milton's christian doctrine this opinion in spite of many testimonies to the contrary could never have been very general and deus a serian of mesopotamia was condemned for the opinion as heretical he lived in the beginning of the fourth century his disciples were called anthropomorphites vide dupin among milton's minor poems are these lines the chitchat sacrorum precedes nemoreum desae etc who is ill a primus kuyus ex immacinae natura soler's fingset umanum genus eternus incorruptus aquavaius polo onus quae et universus exemplar day and afterwards non qui profundum cai citas lumendedit dir kais augur vidit hung alto sinu etc footnote 12 zeltzemen tochter jovis signum sroskinde der fantasi goethe footnote 13 sightless too small to be seen lege footnote 14 i have often noticed a peculiar movement of the fireflies that will collect in a body and fly off from a common center into innumerable radii footnote 15 teresia or teresia the island mentioned by senica which in a moment arose from the sea to the eyes of astonished mariners footnote 16 some star which from the ruined roof of shake delimpus by miss chance did fall milton footnote 17 voltair in speaking of persiapolis says desert footnote 18 oh the wave ula de goisi is the turkish appellation but on its own shores it is called balia loth or al montana there were undoubtedly more than two cities engulfed in the dead sea in the valley of sidim were five adra zeboin zohar sodom and gomorrah steven of bizantium mentions eight and strabo 13 engulfed but the last is out of all reason it is said tacitus strabo josephus daniel of saint saba now andrell troilo dar view that after an excessive drought the vestiges of columns walls etc are seen above the surface at any season such remains may be discovered by looking down into the transparent lake and at such distance as would argue the existence of many settlements in the space now were served by the asphalt ites footnote 19 iraco caldia footnote 20 i have often thought i could distinctly hear the sound of the darkness as it's stole over the horizon footnote 21 ferries use flowers for their character Mary wives of windsor footnote 22 in scripture is this passage the sun shall not harm thee by day nor the moon by night it is perhaps not generally known that the moon in egypt has the effect of producing blindness to those who sleep with the face exposed to its rays to which circumstances the passage evidently eludes footnote 23 the albatross is said to sleep on the wing footnote 24 i met with this idea in an old english tale which i am now unable to obtain and quote from memory the very essence and as it were spring ahead and origine of all musique is the very a pleasant the sound of which the trees of the forest do make when they grow footnote 25 the wild bee will not sleep in the shade if there be moonlight the rhyme in the verse as in one about 60 lines before has an appearance of affectation it is however imitated from sir w scott or rather from claud halkrow in whose mouth i admired its effect oh were there an island though ever so wild where woman might smile and no man be beguiled footnote 26 with the arabians there is a medium between heaven and hell where men suffer no punishment but yet do not attain that tranquil and even happiness which they supposed to be characteristic of heavenly enjoyment sorrow is not excluded from al-arraf but it is that sorrow which the living love to cherish for the dead and which in some minds resembles the delirium of opium the passionate excitement of love and the buoyancy of spirit attendant upon intoxication are less its holy pleasures the price of which to those souls who make choice of al-arraf as their residence afterlife is final death and annihilation footnote 27 there be tears of perfect moan wept for thee in helicon milton footnote 28 it was entire in 1687 the most elevated spot in Athens footnote 29 shadowing more beauty in their airy brows than have the white breasts of the queen of love marlowe footnote 30 penon for pineon milton end of section 43 section 44 of the complete poetical works this is a libra vox according all libra vox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit libra vox.org the complete poetical works by edgar allen poh section 44 tamerling kind solace in a dying hour such father is not now my theme i will not madly deem that power of earth may strive me of the sin unearthly pride hath reveled 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 the fool old man but such is not a gift of thine know thou the secret of a spirit bowed from its wild pride into shame oh 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 oh craving heart for the lost flowers and sunshine of my summer hours the 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 fevered diadem on my brow i claimed and won usurpingly hath not the same fierce airdom given roam to the caesar this to me the heritage of a kingly mind and a proud spirit which hath striven triumphantly with humankind on mountain soil i first drew life the mists of the taglay have shed nightly their dues 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 middreams of an unholy night upon me with the touch of hell while the red flashing of the light from clouds that hung like banners or appear 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 oh how my spirit would rejoice and leap within me at the cry the battle cry of victory the rain came down upon my head unsheltered 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 usurped a tyranny which men have deemed since i have reached power my innate nature be it so but father there lived one who then then in my boyhood when their fire burned with a still in tensor glow for passion must with youth expire in 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 liniments upon my mind are shadows on the 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 oh she was worthy of all love love as in infancy was mine to as 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 the fire within for light we grew in age and love together roaming the forest and the wild my breast her shield in wintery weather and when the friendly sunshine smiled 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 asked no reason why but turned 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 linted 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 marked a throne of half the world as all my own and murmured at such lowly lot but just like any other dream upon the vapor of the dew my own had passed did not the beam of beauty which did while it threw 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 a far 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 not 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 dawned a visionary crown yet it was not that fantasy had thrown her mantle over me but that among the rabble men lion ambitions 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 samarkand is she not queen of earth her pride above all cities in her hand their destinies in all beside of glory which the world has known stands she not nobly and alone falling her various stepping stone shall form the pedestal of a throne and who her sovereign timor he whom the astonished people saw striding or empires hotly a diademed outlaw oh human love thou spirit given on earth of all we hope in heaven which falls into the soul like rain upon the syroc withered plain and failing in thy power to bless but leave us the heart of 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 homework 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 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 what though the moon though 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 noonday 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 though my tread was soft and low a voice came from the threshold stone of one whom i had earlier known oh i defy the 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 blessed afar where there is nothing to deceive has left his iron gate ajar and rays of truth you cannot see are flashing through eternity i do believe that ebless hath a snare in every human path else how when in the holy grove i wandered of the idle love who daily sense his snowy wings with incense of burnt offerings from the most unpolluted things whose pleasant bowers are yet so riven above with trellis to raise from heaven no moat 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 laughed and leapt in the tangles of love's very hair end of poem this recording is in the public domain to helen by egger allen poe read for liver vox the dog helen thy beauty is to me like those nicyon barks of yore that gently or a perfumed sea the weary wayward wanderer bore to his own native shore on desperate seas long won't to roam thy hyacinth hair thy classic face thy neyad airs have brought me home to the glory that was grease to the grandeur that was roam low in yawn brilliant window niche how statue like i see the stand the a gate lamp within thy hand ah psyche from the regions which are holy land end of poem this recording is in the public domain the valley of the unrest by edgar allen poe read for liver vox dot org by betsey walker sanofa new mexico once it smiled a silent dell where the people did not dwell they had gone onto the wars trusting to the mild-eyed stars nightly from their azure towers to keep watch above the flowers in the midst of which all day the red sunlight lazily lay now each visitor shall confess the sad valley's restlessness nothing there is motionless nothing save the airs that brood over the magic solitude ah by no wind are stirred those trees that palpitate like the chill seas around the misty hebrides ah by no wind those clouds are driven that rustle through the unquiet heaven unceasingly from mourn till even over the violets there that lie in myriad types of the human eye over the lilies that wave and weep above a nameless grave they wave from out their fragrant tops eternal dues come down in drops they weep from off their delicate stems perennial tears descend in gems end of poem this recording is in the public domain israfel by edgar allen poe read for liver vox dot org by mike overby midland washington the title comes with a footnote and the angel israfel whose heartstrings are a loot and who has the sweetest voice of all of god's creatures coran and a footnote in heaven a spirit doth dwell whose heartstrings are a loot none sing so wildly well as the angel israfel and the giddy stars so legends tell ceasing their hymns attend the spell of his voice all mute tottering above in her highest noon the enamored moon blushes with love while to listen the red leaven with the rapid pliades even which were seven pauses in heaven and they say the starry choir and the other listening things that israfeli's fire is owing to that liar by which he sits and sings the trembling living wire of those unusual strings but the skies that angel trod where deep thoughts are a duty where loves a corrupt god where the hoary glances are imbued with all the beauty which we worship in the star therefore thou art not wrong israfeli who despises the unimpassioned song to thee the laurels belong best barred because the wisest merry live and long the ecstasy is above with thy burning measures suit thy grief thy joy thy hate thy love with the fervor of thy loot well may the stars be mute yes heaven is thine but this is a world of sweets and sours our flowers are merely flowers and the shadow of thy perfect bliss is the sunshine of ours if i could dwell where israfel hath dwelt and he were i he might not sing so wildly well a mortal melody while a bolder note than this might swell from my lyre within the sky 1836 end of poem this recording is in the public domain to blank i heed not that my earthly lot by edgar ellen poe read for libervox.org by mike overby midland washington i heed not that my earthly lot hath little of earth in it that years of love have been forgot in the hatred of a minute i mourn not that the desolate are happier sweet than i but that you sorrow for my fate who am a passerby 1829 end of poem this recording is in the public domain to blank the bowers were at in dreams i see by edgar ellen poe read for libervox.org by mike overby midland washington the bowers were at in dreams i see the wantonest singing birds are lips and all thy melody of lip begotten words thine eyes in heaven of heart enshrined then desolately fall oh god on my funereal mind like starlight on a pall thy heart thy heart i wake and sigh and sleep to dream till day of the truth that gold can never buy of the bobbles that it may 1829 end of poem this recording is in the public domain to the river by edgar ellen poe read for libervox.org by larry wilson fair river in thy bright clear flow of crystal wandering water thou art an emblem of the glow of beauty the unhidden heart the playful laziness of art in old albertal's daughter but when within thy waves she looks which glistens then and trembles why then the prettiest of brooks her worshiper resembles for in his heart as in thy stream her image deeply lies his heart which trembles at the beam of her soul's certain eyes 1831 end of poem this recording is in the public domain song by edgar ellen poe read for libervox.org by bruska chuck 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 kindling light whatever it might be was all on earth my aching sight of loveliness could see that blush perhaps was made in 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 end of poem this recording is in the public domain spirits of the dead by edgar ellen poe read for libervox.org by neema thy soul shall find itself alone mid dark thoughts of the gray tombstone not one of all the crowd to pry into thine hour of secrecy be silent in that solitude which is not loneliness for then the spirits of the dead who stood in life before thee are again and death around thee and their will shall overshadow thee be still the night though clear shall frown and the stars shall not look down from their high thrones in the heaven with light like hope to mortals given but the red orbs without beam to thy weariness shall seem as a burning out of fever which would cling to thee forever now our thoughts thou shalt not vanish now our visions narrow to vanish from thy spirit shall they pass no more like dew drops from the grass the breeze the breath of god is still and the mist upon the hill shadowy shadowy yet unbroken is a symbol and the token how it hangs upon the trees a mystery of mysteries end of poem this recording is in the public domain a dream by edgar ellen poe read fridley provox.org by neema in visions of the dark night i've dreamed of joy departed but a waking dream of life and light have left me brokenhearted ah what is not a dream by day to him who 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 being a lonely spirit guiding what though that light through storm and night so trembled from afar what could there be more purely bright and truth stay star end of poem this recording is in the public domain romance by edgar ellen poe read for lebra vox.org by larry wilson romance who loves to nod and sing with drowsy head and folded wing among the green leaves as they shake far down within some shadowy lake to me a painted parakeet hath been a most familiar bird taught me my alphabet to say to list my very earliest word while in the wild wood i did lie a child with a most knowing eye of late eternal condor year so shake the very heaven on high with tumult as they thunder by i have no time for idle cares though gazing on the unquiet sky and wind and hour with calmer wings it's down upon my spirit flings that little time with lyre and rhyme to while away forbidden things my heart would feel to be a crime unless it trembled with the strings 1829 end of poem this recording is in the public domain fairyland by edgar ellen poe read for lebra vox.org by nemo dim veils and shadowy floods and cloudy looking woods whose forms we can't discover for the tears that drip all over huge moons their wax and wane again again again every moment of the night forever changing places and they put out the starlight with a breath from their pale faces about 12 by the moon dial one more filmy than the rest a kind which upon trial they have found to be the best comes down still down and down with its center on the crown of a mountain's eminence while its wide circumference in easy drapery falls over hamlets over halls wherever they may be or the strange woods or the sea over spirits on the wing over every drowsy thing and buries them up quite and a labyrinth of light and then how deep oh deep is the passion of their sleep in the morning they arise and their moony covering is soaring in the skies while the tempest as they toss like almost anything or a yellow albatross they use the moon no more for the same end as before with deliquet a tent which i think extravagant its atomies however into a shower deceiver of which those butterflies of earth who seek the skies and so come down again never contented thing have brought a specimen upon their quivering wings 1831 end of poem this recording is in the public domain the lake by Edgar Allen Poe read for leupervox.org by Nima 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 paw upon the 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 jeweled mine could teach or bribed 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 soul the spring to his lone imagining whose solitary soul could make an eden of that dim lake 1827 end of poem this recording is in the public domain evening star by Edgar Allen Poe read for leupervox.org by Larry Wilson to his noontide of summer and midtime of night and stars in their obrits shown pale through the light of the brighter cold moon made planets her slaves herself in the heavens her beam on the waves i gazed a while on her cold smile too cold too cold for me there passed as a shroud of 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 barest in heaven at night and more i admire thy distant fire than that colder lowly light 1827 end of poem this recording is in the public domain imitation by Edgar Allen Poe read for leupervox.org by Anita Slava Martinez a dark unfathomed tide of interminable pride a mystery and a dream should my early life seem i say that dream was fraught with the 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 passed and my worldly rest hath gone with the sigh as it passed on i care not though it perish with the thought i then did cherish end of poem this recording is in the public domain the happiest day by Edgar Allen Poe read for leuvervox.org by Bruce Kachuk the happiest day the happiest hour my seared and blighted heart hath known the highest hope of pride and power i feel hath flown of power said i yes such i wean but they have vanished long alas the visions of my youth have been but let them pass and pride what have i now with thee another brow may even inherit the venom thou hast poured on me be still my spirit the happiest day the happiest hour mine i shall see have ever seen the brightest glance of pride and power i feel have been but where that hope of pride and power now offered with the pain even then i felt that brightest hour i would not live again for on its wing was dark alloy and as it fluttered fell an essence powerful to destroy a soul that knew it well end of poem this recording is in the public domain hymn translation from the greek by edgar allen poe read for leuvervox.org by Bruce Kachuk hymn to arrest a gaten and harmadius wreathed in myrtle my sword i'll conceal like those champions devoted and brave when they plunged in the tyrant their steel and two athens deliverance gave beloved heroes your deathless souls roam in the joy breathing aisles of the blessed where the mighty of old have their home where achilles and diamide rest in fresh myrtle my blade i'll entwine like harmadius the gallant and good when he made at the tutelor shrine a libation of tyranny's blood ye deliverers of athens from shame ye avengers of liberties wrongs and lasages shall cherish your fame and bombed in their echoing songs and a poem this recording is in the public domain dreams by edgar allen poe read for leuvervox.org by Bruce kachuk oh that my young life were a lasting dream my spirit not awakening till the beam of an eternity should bring the morrow yes though that long dream were of hopeless sorrow to where 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 given to her folly still to hope for higher heaven for i have reveled when the sun was bright in the summer sky in dreams of living light and loveliness have left my very heart in clines of my imaginary apart from my own home with beings that have been of my 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 or me in the night and left behind its image on my spirit or the moonshine on my slumbers in her lofty noon too coldly or the stars however 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 and a poem this recording is in the public domain in youth i have known one by edgar allen poe read for libra vox.org by larry wilson 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 in youth i have known one with whom the earth and 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 at power perhaps it may be that my mind is wrought to a fervor by the moonbeam that hangs o'er but i will have believed that wildlife 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 the quickening spell doth oris pass as do of the night time or the summer grass doth oris pass when as the 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 to wake us it is a symbol and a token of what another world shall be and given in beauty by our god to those alone who otherwise would fall from life in heaven drawn by their hearts passion and that tone that high tone of the spirit which hath striven though not with faith with godliness who's thrown with desperate energy tath beaten down wearing its own deep feeling as a crown in the poem this recording is in the public domain a peon by edgar ellen poe read for lebervox.org by neema how shall the burial right to be read the solemn song be sung the requiem for the loveliest dead that ever died so young her friends are gazing on her and honor gaudi beer and weep oh to dishonor dead beauty with a tear they loved her for her wealth they hated her for her pride but she grew in feeble health and they love her that she died they tell me while they speak of her costly broidered paw that my voice is growing weak that i should not sing at all or that my tone should be tuned to such solemn song so mournfully so mournfully that the dead may feel no wrong but she's gone above with young hope at her side and i am drunk with love of the dead who is my bride of the dead dead who lies all perfumed there with the death upon her eyes and the life upon her hair thus on the coffin loud and long i strike the murmur sent through the gray chambers to my song shall be the accompaniment thou diced in thy life's june but thou didst not die too fair thou didst not die too soon nor with too calm and air from more than friends on earth thy love and life are riven to join the untainted mirth of more than thrones in heaven therefore to thee this night i will no requiem raise but waft with thee on thy flight with a peon of old days and a poem this recording is in the public domain Notes by Edgar Allan Poe, read for laborbox.org by Kathleen On the poems written in youth little comment is needed. This section includes the pieces printed for the first volume of 1827 which was subsequently suppressed. Such poems from the first and second published volumes of 1829 and 1831 as have not already been given in their revised versions and a few others collected from various sources. Note on LRF. LRF first appeared with the sonnet to silence prefix to it in 1829 and is substantially as originally issued in the edition for 1831. However this poem, its author's longest, was introduced by the following 29 lines which have been omitted in all subsequent collections. Mysterious star, thou wert my dream all along summer night. Be now my theme by this clear stream of thee will I write. Mean time, from afar bathe me in light. Thy world has not the dross of ours yet all the beauty, all the flowers that list our love our deck our bowers in dreamy gardens. Where do thy dreamy maidens all the day? While the silver winds of sarcasm on violet couches faint away. Little, oh, little dwells in thee, like unto what on earth we see. Beauty's eye is here the bluest in the falsest and untruest. On the sweetest air doth float the most sad and solemn note. If thee be broken hearts, joy so peacefully departs, that its echo still doth dwell, like the murmur in the shell. Thou, thy truest type of grief, is the gentle falling leaf. Thou, thy framing is so holy, sorrow is not melancholy. Note on Tambor Lane. The earliest version of Tambor Lane was included in the suppressed volume of 1827, but differs very considerably from the poem as now published. The present draft, besides innumerable verbal alterations and improvements upon the original, is more carefully punctuated, and the lines being indented presents a more pleasing appearance to the eye at least. Note to Helen the Valley of Unrest, Israfel, etc., to Helen first appeared in the 1831 volume as did also the Valley of Unrest, as the Valley Nis Israfel, and one or two others of the youthful pieces. Note on Romance. The poem-styled romance constituted the preface of the 1829 volume, but with the addition of the following lines, succeeding years, too wild for song, then rolled like tropic storms along, where, though the garish lights that fly dying along the troubled sky, they bear, through vistas, thunder, riven, the blackness of the general heaven, that very blackness yet doth fling light on the lightning silver wing. For being an idle boy laying zine, who read anachryon and drank wine, I early found anachryon rhymes were almost passionate sometimes, and my strange alchemy of brain, his pleasures always turned to pain, his naivete to wild desire, his wit to love, his wine to fire, and so, being young and dip in folly, I fell in love with melancholy, and used to throw my earthly rest and quiet all away in jest. I could not love except where death was mingling his with beauty's breath, or hymen, time, and destiny, or stocking between her and me, but now my soul hath too much room, gone are the glory and the gloom, the black hath mellowed into gray, and all the fires are fading away, my draft of passion hath been deep, I reveled, and I now would sleep, and after drunkenness of soul succeeds the glories of the bowl, and idle longing night and day to dream my very life away, but dreams of those who dream as I, aspiringly, are damned and die, yet should I swear I mean alone, my notes so very shrilly blown, to break upon time's monotone, while yet my vapid joy and grief are tentless of the yellow leaf, why not an imp the gray-beard hath will shake his shadow in my path, and in the gray-beard will or look connivingly my dreaming book, and a poem, this recording is in the public domain. Doubtful Poems by Edgar Allan Poe RedForLaborVox.org by Kathleen Alon From childhood's hour I have not been as others were, I have not seen as others saw, I could not bring my passions from a common spring, from the same source I have not taken my sorrow, I could not awaken my heart to joy at the same tone, and all I loved, I loved alone. Thou, in my childhood, in the dawn of a most stormy life, was drawn from every depth of good and ill the mystery which binds me still, from the torrent or the fountain, from the red cliff of the mountain, from the sun that round me rolled in its autumn tint of gold, from the lightning in the sky as it passed me flying by, from the thunder in the storm, and the cloud that took the form when the rest of heaven was blue of a demon in my view. March 17, 1829. End of Poem This recording is in the public domain. To Isidore by Edgar Allen Poe RedForLaborVox.org by Kathleen 1. Beneath the vine-clad eaves, whose shadows fall before thy lowly cottage door, under the lilac's tremulous leaves, within thy shadowy clasped hand, the purple flowers it bore, last eve in dreams I saw thee stand, like queenly nymphs from fairyland, enchantress of the flowery wand, most beauteous Isidore, too, and when I bade the dream upon thy spirit flee, thy violet eyes to me upturned, did overflowing seam with the deep, untold the light of love's serenity, thy classic brow, like lilies white and pale as the imperial night. Upon her throne, with stars benight, enthralled my soul to thee, three, ah, ever I behold thy dreamy, passionate eyes, blue as the languid skies hung with the sunset's fringe of gold. Now strangely clear thine image grows, and olden memories are startled from their long repose like shadows on the silent snows, when suddenly the night wind blows where quiet moonlight lies, for, like music heard in dreams, like streams of harps, unknown, of birds forever flowing, audible as the voice of streams that murmur in some leafy dell, I hear thy gentlest tone and silence cometh with her spell, like that which on my tongue doth dwell, when tremulous in dreams I tell, my love to thee alone, five, in every valley heard, floating from tree to tree, less beautiful to me, the music of the radiant bird, then artless accents such as thine, whose echoes never flee, ah, how for thy sweet voice I pine, for uttered in thy tones benign, enchantress, this rude name of mine, doth seem a melody, end of poem, this recording is in the public domain. THE VILLAGE STREET by Edgar Allan Poe, read for LibriVox.org by Anita Sloma Martinez. In these rapid restless shadows once I walked at even tide, when her gentle silent maiden walked in beauty at my side, she alone there walked beside me all in beauty, like a bride. Paladly the moon was shining on the dewy meadows nigh, on the silvery silent rivers, on the mountains far and high, on the ocean's starlit waters were the winds a weary die. Slowly silently we wandered from the open cottage door, underneath the elm's long branches to the pavement bending oar, underneath the mossy willow and the dying sycamore. With the myriad stars in beauty, all the diet of the heavens were seen, radiant hopes were bright around me, like the light of star's serene, like the mellow midnight splendor of the night's irradiate queen. Audibly the elm leaves whispered peaceful pleasant melodies, like the distant murmured music of unquiet, lovely seas, while the winds were hushed and slumber in the fragrant flowers and trees. Wondrous and unwanted beauty still adorning all did seem, while I told my love in fables near the willows by the stream, would the heart have kept unspoken love that was its rarest dream. Instantly away we wandered in the shadowy twilight tide, she the silent scornful maiden walking calmly at my side, with the steps serene and stately, all in beauty, all in pride. Vacantly I walked beside her, on the earth mine eyes recast, swift and keen there came unto me bitter memories of the past, on me like the rain in autumn on the dead leaves, cold and fast. Underneath the elms we parted by the lowly cottage door, one brief word alone was uttered never on our lips before, and away I walked for lordly, brokenhearted evermore. Slowly silently I loitered, homeworked in the night alone, sudden anguish bound by a spirit that my youth had never known, wild and rest like that which cometh when the night's first dream hath flown. Now to me the elm leaves whisper mad discordant melodies, and keen melodies like shadows haughts with the moaning willow trees, and the sycamores with laughter mock me in the nightly breeze. Sad and pale the autumn moonlight through the sighing foliage streams, and each morning midnight shadow, shadow of my sorrow seems, strive o' heart, forget thine idle, and, o soul, forget thy dreams. End of poem. This recording is in the public domain. The Forest Reverie by Edgar Allan Poe Read for LibriVox.org by Nemo Tis said that when the hands of men tamed this primeval wood, and hoary trees with groans of woe, like warriors by an unknown foe, or in their strength subdued, the virgin earth gave instant birth to springs that ne'er did flow, that in the sun did rivulets run, and all around rare flowers did blow. The wild rose pale perfumed the gale, and the queenly lilyer down the dale, whom the sun and the dew, and the winds did woo, with a gourd and the grape luxuriant grew. So when in tears the love of years is wasted like the snow, and the fine fibrils of its life by the rude rung of instant strife are broken out of blow, within the heart do springs upstart, of which it doth now know, and strange sweet dreams, like silent streams that from new fountains overflow, with earlier tide of rivers glide, deep in the heart whose hope has died, quenching the fires its ashes hide. Its ashes, whence will spring and grow sweet flowers ere long, the rare and radiant flowers of song. End poem. This recording is in the public domain. Section 69 of the Complete Poetical Works. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. The Complete Poetical Works by Edgar Allan Poe. Section 69. Notes. Note on Alone. Of the many verses from time to time ascribed to the pen of Edgar Poe, and not included among his known writings, the lines entitled Alone have the chief claim to our notice. Facsimile copies of this piece had been in possession of the present editor some time previous to its publication in Scribner's magazine for September 1875. But as proofs of the authorship claimed for it were not forthcoming, he refrained from publishing it as requested. The desired proofs have not yet been adduced, and there is, at present, nothing but internal evidence to guide us. Alone is stated to have been written by Poe in the album of a Baltimore lady, Mrs. Balderstone, on March 17th, 1829, and the facsimile given in Scribner's is alleged to be of his handwriting. If the calligraphy be Poe's, it is different in all essential respects from all the many specimens known to us, and strongly resembles that of the writer of the heading and dating of the manuscript, both of which the contributor of the poem acknowledges to have been recently added. The lines, however, if not by Poe, are the most successful imitation of his early mannerisms yet made public, and in the opinion of one well qualified to speak, are not unworthy on the whole of the parentage claimed for them. Note on to Isidore, etc. Whilst Edgar Poe was editor of the Broadway Journal, some lines to Isidore appeared therein, and, like several of his known pieces, bore no signature. They were at once ascribed to Poe, and in order to satisfy questioners, an editorial paragraph subsequently appeared, saying they were by A. Ide, Jr. Two previous poems had appeared in the Broadway Journal over the signature of A. M. Ide, and whoever wrote them was also the author of the lines to Isidore. In order doubtless to give a show of variety, Poe was then publishing some of his known works in his journal over Nam's Diplume, and as no other writings whatever can be traced to any person bearing the name of A. M. Ide, it is not impossible that the poems now republished in this collection may be by the author of The Raven. Having been published without his usual elaborate revision, Poe may have wished to hide his hasty work under an assumed name. The three pieces are included in the present collection, so the reader can judge for himself what pretensions they possess to be by the author of The Raven. La musique, says Marmantel, in those contests maraud, which in all our translations we have insisted upon calling moral tales as if in mockery of their spirit. La musique est les seuls des talents qui jouissent de lui-même. He here confounds the pleasure derivable from sweet sounds with the capacity for creating them. No more than any other talent is that for music susceptible of complete enjoyment where there is no second party to appreciate its exercise. And it is only in common with other talents that it produces effects which may be fully enjoyed in solitude. The idea which the raconteur has either failed to entertain clearly or has sacrificed in its expression to his national love of point is doubtless the very tenable one that the higher order of music is the most thoroughly estimated when we are exclusively alone. The proposition in this form will be admitted at once by those who love the liar for its own sake and for its spiritual uses. But there is one pleasure still within the reach of fallen mortality and perhaps only one which owes even more than does music to the accessory sentiment of seclusion. I mean the happiness experienced in the contemplation of natural scenery. In truth the man who would behold a right the glory of God upon earth must in solitude behold that glory. To me at least the presence not of human life only but of life in any other form than that of the green things which grow upon the soil and are voiceless is a stain upon the landscape is at war with the genius of the scene. I love indeed to regard the dark valleys and the gray rocks and the waters that silently smile and the forests that sigh and uneasy slumbers and the proud watchful mountains that look down upon all. I love to regard these as themselves but the colossal members of one vast animate and sentient whole a whole whose form that of the sphere is the most perfect and most inclusive of all whose path is among associate planets whose meek handmaiden is the moon whose immediate sovereign is the sun whose life is eternity whose thought is that of God whose enjoyment is knowledge whose destinies are lost in immensity whose cognizance of ourselves is akin with our own cognizance of the animal Kula which infest the brain a being which we in consequence regard as purely inanimate and material much in the same manner as these animal Kula must thus regard us. Our telescopes and our mathematical investigations assure us on every hand nonwithstanding the can't of the more ignorant of the priesthood that space and therefore that bulk is an important consideration in the eyes of the almighty. The cycles in which the stars move are those best adapted for the evolution without collision of the greatest possible number of bodies. The form of those bodies are accurately such as within a given surface to include the greatest possible amount of matter while the surfaces themselves are so disposed as to accommodate a denser population than could be accommodated on the same surfaces otherwise arranged. Nor is it any argument against bulk being an object with God that space itself is infinite for there may be an infinity of matter to fill it and since we see clearly that the endowment of matter with vitality is a principle indeed as far as our judgments extend the leading principle in the operations of deity it is scarcely logical to imagine it confined to the regions of the minute where we daily trace it and not extending to those of the August. As we find cycle within cycle without end yet all revolving around one far distant center which is the godhead may we not analogically suppose in the same manner life within life the less within the greater and all within the spirit divine in short we are madly airing through self esteem and believing man and either his temporal or future destinies to be of more moment in the universe than that vast clot of the valley which he tells and contempt and to which he denies a soul for no more profound reason than that he does not behold in an operation these fancies and such as these have always given to my meditations among the mountains and the forests by the rivers and the ocean a tinge of what the everyday world would not fail to term the fantastic my wanderings amid such scenes have been many and far searching and often solitary and the interest with which I have swayed through many a dim deep valley or gazed into the reflected heaven of many a bright lake has been an interest greatly deepened by the thought that I have strayed and gazed alone. What flippant Frenchman was it who said an illusion to the well-known work of Zimmerman that la solitude et son belle chose mais il faut quel coin pour vous dire que la solitude et son belle chose. The epigram cannot be gainsaid but the necessity is a thing that does not exist. It was during one of my lonely journeyings amid a far distant region of mountain locked within mountain and sad rivers and melancholy tarns writhing or sleeping within all that I chanced upon a certain rivulet an island. I came upon them suddenly in the leafy June and threw myself upon the turf beneath the branches of an unknown odorous shrub that I might doze as I contemplated the scene. I felt that thus only should I look upon it such was the character of phantasm which it wore. On all sides save to the west where the sun was about sinking arose the verdant walls of the forest. The little river which turned sharply on its course and was thus immediately lost to sight seemed to have no exit from its prison but to be absorbed by the deep green foliage of the trees to the east. While in the opposite quarter so it appeared to me as I lay at length and glanced upward, there poured down noiselessly and continuously into the valley a rich golden and crimson waterfall from the sunset fountains of the sky. About midway in the short vista which my dreamy vision took in, one small circular island profusely verduered reposed upon the bottom of the stream. So blended bank and shadow there that each seemed pendulous in the air. So mirror like was the glassy water that it was scarcely possible to say at what point upon the slope of the emerald turf its crystal dominion began. My position enabled me to include in a single view both the eastern and western extremities of the islet and I observed a singularly marked difference in their aspects. The latter was all one radiant harem of garden beauties. It glowed and blushed beneath the eye of the slant sunlight and fairly laughed with flowers. The grass was short, springy, sweet-scented, and asphodel interspersed. The trees were life, mirthful, erect, blight, slender, and graceful of eastern figure and foliage with bark smooth, glossy, and party-colored. There seemed a deep sense of life and joy about all and although no airs blew from out the heavens, yet everything had motioned through the gentle sweepings to and fro of innumerable butterflies that might have been mistaken for tulips with wings. The other or eastern end of the aisle was whelmed in the blackest shade. A somber yet beautiful and peaceful gloom here pervaded all things. The trees were dark in color and mournful in form and attitude, breathing themselves into sad, solemn, and spectral shapes that conveyed ideas of mortal sorrow and untimely death. The grass wore the deep tint of the cypress, and the heads of its blades hung droopingly, and hither and fiver among it were many small, unsightly hillocks, low and narrow, and not very long, that had the aspect of graves but were not, although over and all about them the rue and the rosemary clamored. The shades of the trees fell heavily upon the water and seemed to bury itself therein, impregnating the depths of the element with darkness. I fancied that each shadow, as the sun descended lower and lower, separated itself sullenly from the trunk that gave it birth and thus became absorbed by the stream, while other shadows issued momentely from the trees, taking the place of their predecessors thus entombed. This idea, having once seized upon my fancy, greatly excited it, and I lost myself forthwith in reverie. If ever island were enchanted, said I to myself, this is it. This is the haunt of the few gentle phase, who remain from the wreck of the race. Are these green tombs theirs? Or do they yield up their sweet lives, as mankind yield up their own? In dying, do they not rather waste away mournfully, rendering unto God little by little their existence, as these trees render up shadow after shadow, exhausting their substance unto dissolution? What the wasting tree is to the water that imbibes its shade, growing thus blacker by what it preys upon, may not the life of the fay beaded the death, which engulfs it. As I thus mused with half-shut eyes, while the sun sank rapidly to rest, and eddy incurrence careered round and round the island, bearing upon their bosom large dazzling white flakes of the bark of the sycamore. Flakes which, in their multi-form positions upon the water, a quick imagination might have converted unto anything it pleased. While I thus mused, it appeared to me that the form of one of those very fays about whom I had been pondering made its way slowly into the darkness, from out the light at the western end of the island. She stood erect in a singularly fragile canoe, and urged it with the mere phantom of an oar. While within the influence of the lingering sunbeams, her attitude seemed indicative of joy, but sorrow deformed it as she passed within the shade. Slowly she glided along, and at length rounded the islet, and re-entered the region of light. The revolution which has just been made by the fay, continued I, musingly, is the cycle of the brief year of her life. She has floated through her winter and through her summer. She is a year nearer unto death. For I did not fail to see that as she came into the shade, her shadow fell from her, and was swallowed up in the dark water, making its blackness more black. And again the boat appeared, and the fay, but about the attitude of the latter, there was more of care and uncertainty, and less of elastic joy. She floated again from out the light and into the gloom, which deepened momently. And again her shadow fell from her into the ebony water, and became absorbed into its blackness. And again and again she made the circuit of the island, while the sun rushed down to his slumbers, and at each issuing into the light there was more sorrow about her person. While it grew feebler and far fainter and more indistinct, and at each passage into the gloom there fell from her a darker shade, which became whelmed in the shadow more black. But at length, when the sun had utterly departed, the fay, now the mere ghost of her former self, went disconsolently with her boat into the region of the ebony flood, and that she issued, thence at all I cannot say, for darkness fell over things, and I beheld her magical figure no more. End of the poem. SEQUENCE 71 OF THE COMPLETE POETRY OF EDGAR ALAM POE THE POWER OF WORDS OINUS read by Lurie Wilson. AGATHOS read by Algie Pug. Pardon, Agathos, the weakness of a spirit new-fledged with immortality. You have spoken nothing, my oinus, for which pardon is to be demanded. Not even here is knowledge a thing of intuition. For wisdom ask of the angels freely that it may be given. But in this existence I dreamed that I should at once be cognizant of all things, and thus at once happy in being cognizant of all. Ah! Not in knowledge is happiness, but in the acquisition of knowledge. In forever knowing we are forever blessed, but to know all with a curse of a fiend. But does not the Most High know all? That, since he is the Most Happy, must be still the one thing unknown even to him. But since we grow hourly in knowledge, must not at last all things be known? Look down into the abysmal distances. Attempt to force the gaze down the multitudinous vistas of the stars, as we sweep slowly through them thus, and thus, and thus, even the spiritual vision, is it not at all points arrested by the continuous golden walls of the universe? The walls of the myriads of the shining bodies that mere number has appeared to blend into unity? I clearly perceive that the infinity of matter is no dream. There are no dreams in Aden, but it is here, whispered, that of this infinity of matter the sole purpose is to afford infinite springs at which the soul may allay the thirst to know, which is for ever unquenchable within it. Once to quench it would be to extinguish the soul's self. Question me, then, may oin us freely and without fear. Come, we will leave to the left the loud harmony of the Pleiades, and sweep outward from the throne into the starry meadows beyond Orion, where, for angies and violets, and heart-sees, are the beds of the triplicate and triple-tinted suns. And now, Agathas, as we proceed, instruct me, speak to me in the earth's familiar tones. I understand not what you hinted to me just now, of the modes or the methods of what during mortality we are accustomed to call creation. Do you mean to say that the Creator is not God? I mean to say that the deity does not create. Explain. In the beginning only He created. The seeming creatures, which are now throughout the universe, so perpetually springing into being, can only be considered as the immediate or indirect, not as the direct or immediate results of the divine creative power. Among men, may Agathas, this idea would be considered heretical in the extreme. Among the angels, may oin us, it is seen to be simply true. I can comprehend you thus far, that certain operations of what we term nature, or the natural laws, will under certain conditions give rise to that which has all the appearance of creation. Shortly before the final overthrow of the earth, there were, I well remember, many very successful experiments in what some philosophers were weak enough to denominate the creation of animal culee. The cases of which you speak were, in fact, instances of the secondary creation, and of the only species of creation which has ever been, since the first word spoke into existence, the first law. Are not the starry worlds that, from the abyss of non-entity, burst hourly forth into the heavens? Are not these stars, Agathas, the immediate handiwork of the king? Let me endeavour, my oin us, to lead you, step by step, to the conception I intend. You are well aware that, as no thought can perish, so no act is without infinite result. We moved our hands, for example, when we were dwellers on the earth, and, in so doing, we gave vibration to the atmosphere which in girdle did. This vibration was indefinitely extended, till it gave impulse to every particle of the earth's air, which, then spored, and forever, was actuated by the one movement of the hand. This fact, the mathematicians of our globe, well knew. They made the special effects, indeed, wrought into fluid by special impulses, the subject of exact calculation, so that it became easy to determine, in what precise period, an impulse, of given extent, would engirdle the orb, and impress, forever, every atom of the atmosphere circumambient. Retrograding, they found no difficulty, from a given effect, under given conditions, in determining the value of the original impulse. Now the mathematicians who saw that the results of any given impulse were absolutely endless, and who saw that a portion of these results were accurately traceable through the agency of algebraic analysis, who saw, too, the facility of the retrogradation, these men saw, at the same time, that this species of analysis itself had within itself a capacity for indefinite progress, that there were no bounds conceivable to its advancement and applicability, except within the intellect of him who advanced or applied it. But at this point our mathematicians paused. And why, Agathas, should they have proceeded? Because there were some considerations of deep interest beyond. It was deducible, from what they knew, that to a being of infinite understanding, one to whom the perfection of the algebraic analysis lay unfolded, there could be no difficulty in tracing every impulse given the air, and the ether through the air, to the remotest consequences at any even infinitely remote epoch of time. It is indeed demonstrable that every such impulse given the air, must, in the end, impress every individual thing that exists within the universe, and the being of infinite understanding, the being whom we have imagined, might trace the remote undulation of the impulse, trace them upward and onward in their influences upon all particles of all matter, upward and onward forever in their modifications of old forms, or, in other words, in their creation of new, until he found them reflected, unimpressive at last, back from the throne of the God Head. And not only could such a being do this, but at any epoch, should a given result be afforded to him, should one of these numberless comets, for example, be presented to his inspection, he could have no difficulty in determining, by the analytic retrogradation, to what original impulse it was due. This power of retrogradation, in its absolute fullness and perfection, this faculty of referring, at all epochs, all effects, to all causes, is of course the prerogative of the deity alone, but in every variety of degree, short of the absolute perfection, is the power itself exercised by the whole host of the angelic intelligences. But you speak merely of impulses upon the air. And speaking of the air, I refer only to the earth, but the general proposition has referenced impulses upon the ether, which, since it pervades, and alone pervades all space, is thus the great medium of creation. Then all motion of whatever nature creates, it must, but a true philosophy has long taught that the source of all motion is thought, and the source of all thought is God. I have spoken to you, Oinos, as to a child of the fair earth, which lately perished, of impulses upon the atmosphere of the earth. You did. And while I thus spoke, did not there cross your mind some thought of the physical power of words? Is not every word an impulse on the air? But why, Agathas, do you weep? And why? And why do your wings droop as we hover above this fair star, which is the greenest and yet most terrible of all we have encountered in our flight? Its brilliant flowers look like a fairy dream, but its fierce volcanoes like the passions of a turbulent heart. They are. They are. This wild star, it is now three centuries since, with clasped hands and with streaming eyes, at the feet of my beloved, I spoke it, with a few passionate sentences into birth. Its brilliant flowers are the dearest of all unfulfilled dreams, and its raging volcanoes are the passions of the most turbulent and unhellowed of hearts. End of poem. This recording is in the public domain.