FOR THE BIRTHDAY OF EDGAR ALLAN POE

Poet of doom, dementia, and death,

Of beauty singing in a charnel house,

Like the lost soul of a poor moon-mad maid,

With too much loving of some lord of hell;

Doomed and disastrous spirit, to what shore

Of what dark gulf infernal art thou strayed,

Or to what spectral star of topless heaven

Art lifted and enthroned?

The winter dark,

And the drear winter cold that welcomed thee

To a world all winter, gird with ice and storm

Thy January day — yea! the same world

Of winter and the wintry hearts of men;

And still, for all thy shining, the same swarm

That mocked thy song gather about thy fame,

With the small murmur of the undying worm,

And whisper, blind and foul, amid thy dust.