_
She seem'd not thus upon that autumn eve
I left her gorgeous halls--nor mourn'd to leave.
She seem'd not thus upon that autumn eve
I left her gorgeous halls--nor mourn'd to leave.
Edgar Allen Poe
The
passionate excitement of Love and the buoyancy of spirit
attendant upon intoxication are its less holy pleasures--
the price of which, to those souls who make choice of "Al
Aaraaf" as their residence after life, is final death and
annihilation.
What guilty spirit, in what shrubbery dim,
Heard not the stirring summons of that hymn?
But two: they fell: for Heaven no grace imparts
To those who hear not for their beating hearts.
A maiden-angel and her seraph-lover--
O! 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 moss-y-mantled well--
A gazer on the lights that shine above--
A dreamer in the moonbeam by his love:
What wonder? For each star is eye-like there,
And looks so sweetly down on Beauty's hair--
And they, and ev'ry mossy spring were holy
To his love-haunted heart and melancholy.
The night had found (to him a night of wo)
Upon a mountain crag, young Angelo--
Beetling it bends athwart the solemn sky,
And scowls on starry worlds that down beneath it lie.
Here sate he with his love--his dark eye bent
With eagle gaze along the firmament:
Now turn'd it upon her--but ever then
It trembled to the orb of EARTH again.
"Iante, dearest, see! how dim that ray!
How lovely 'tis to look so far away!
* There be tears of perfect moan
Wept for thee in Helicon. --_Milton.
_
She seem'd not thus upon that autumn eve
I left her gorgeous halls--nor mourn'd to leave.
That eve--that eve--I should remember well--
The sun-ray dropp'd, in Lemnos, with a spell
On th'Arabesque carving of a gilded hall
Wherein I sate, and on the draperied wall--
And on my eye-lids--O the heavy light!
How drowsily it weigh'd them into night!
On flowers, before, and mist, and love they ran
With Persian Saadi in his Gulistan:
But O that light! --I slumber'd--Death, the while,
Stole o'er my senses in that lovely isle
So softly that no single silken hair
Awoke that slept--or knew that it was there.
The last spot of Earth's orb I trod upon
*Was a proud temple call'd the Parthenon--
More beauty clung around her column'd wall
**Than ev'n thy glowing bosom beats withal,
And when old Time my wing did disenthral
Thence sprang I--as the eagle from his tower,
And years I left 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 unto my view--
Tenantless cities of the desert too!
Ianthe, beauty crowded on me then,
And half I wish'd to be again of men. "
"My Angelo! and why of them to be?
A brighter dwelling-place is here for thee--
* It was entire in 1687--the most elevated spot in Athens.
** Shadowing more beauty in their airy brows
Than have the white breasts of the Queen of Love. --_Marlowe. _
And greener fields than in yon world above,
And women's loveliness--and passionate love. "
"But, list, Ianthe! when the air so soft
*Fail'd, as my pennon'd spirit leapt aloft,
Perhaps my brain grew dizzy--but the world
I left so late was into chaos hurl'd--
Sprang from her station, on the winds apart,
And roll'd, a flame, the fiery Heaven athwart.
passionate excitement of Love and the buoyancy of spirit
attendant upon intoxication are its less holy pleasures--
the price of which, to those souls who make choice of "Al
Aaraaf" as their residence after life, is final death and
annihilation.
What guilty spirit, in what shrubbery dim,
Heard not the stirring summons of that hymn?
But two: they fell: for Heaven no grace imparts
To those who hear not for their beating hearts.
A maiden-angel and her seraph-lover--
O! 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 moss-y-mantled well--
A gazer on the lights that shine above--
A dreamer in the moonbeam by his love:
What wonder? For each star is eye-like there,
And looks so sweetly down on Beauty's hair--
And they, and ev'ry mossy spring were holy
To his love-haunted heart and melancholy.
The night had found (to him a night of wo)
Upon a mountain crag, young Angelo--
Beetling it bends athwart the solemn sky,
And scowls on starry worlds that down beneath it lie.
Here sate he with his love--his dark eye bent
With eagle gaze along the firmament:
Now turn'd it upon her--but ever then
It trembled to the orb of EARTH again.
"Iante, dearest, see! how dim that ray!
How lovely 'tis to look so far away!
* There be tears of perfect moan
Wept for thee in Helicon. --_Milton.
_
She seem'd not thus upon that autumn eve
I left her gorgeous halls--nor mourn'd to leave.
That eve--that eve--I should remember well--
The sun-ray dropp'd, in Lemnos, with a spell
On th'Arabesque carving of a gilded hall
Wherein I sate, and on the draperied wall--
And on my eye-lids--O the heavy light!
How drowsily it weigh'd them into night!
On flowers, before, and mist, and love they ran
With Persian Saadi in his Gulistan:
But O that light! --I slumber'd--Death, the while,
Stole o'er my senses in that lovely isle
So softly that no single silken hair
Awoke that slept--or knew that it was there.
The last spot of Earth's orb I trod upon
*Was a proud temple call'd the Parthenon--
More beauty clung around her column'd wall
**Than ev'n thy glowing bosom beats withal,
And when old Time my wing did disenthral
Thence sprang I--as the eagle from his tower,
And years I left 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 unto my view--
Tenantless cities of the desert too!
Ianthe, beauty crowded on me then,
And half I wish'd to be again of men. "
"My Angelo! and why of them to be?
A brighter dwelling-place is here for thee--
* It was entire in 1687--the most elevated spot in Athens.
** Shadowing more beauty in their airy brows
Than have the white breasts of the Queen of Love. --_Marlowe. _
And greener fields than in yon world above,
And women's loveliness--and passionate love. "
"But, list, Ianthe! when the air so soft
*Fail'd, as my pennon'd spirit leapt aloft,
Perhaps my brain grew dizzy--but the world
I left so late was into chaos hurl'd--
Sprang from her station, on the winds apart,
And roll'd, a flame, the fiery Heaven athwart.
