Poems by Edgar Allan Poe

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The Valley Of Unrest

Once it smiled a silent dell

Where the people did not dwell;

They had gone unto 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.

Edgar Allan Poe

The Conqueror Worm

Lo! 'tis a gala night

Within the lonesome latter years!

An angel throng, bewinged, bedight

In veils, and drowned in tears,

Sit in a theatre, to see

A play of hopes and fears,

While the orchestra breathes fitfully

The music of the spheres.

Edgar Allan Poe

Impromptu - To Kate Carol

When from your gems of thought I turn

To those pure orbs, your heart to learn,

I scarce know which to prize most high —

The bright i-dea, or the bright dear-eye.

Edgar Allan Poe

To M--

O! I care not that my earthly lot

Hath little of Earth in it,

That years of love have been forgot

In the fever of a minute:

I heed not that the desolate

Are happier, sweet, than I,

But that you meddle with my fate

Who am a passer by.

Edgar Allan Poe

To Marie Louise (Shew)

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

Edgar Allan Poe

An Enigma

"Seldom we find," says Solomon Don Dunce,

"Half an idea in the profoundest sonnet.

Through all the flimsy things we see at once

As easily as through a Naples bonnet-

Trash of all trash!- how can a lady don it?

Yet heavier far than your Petrarchan stuff-

Owl-downy nonsense that the faintest puff

Twirls into trunk-paper the while you con it."

Edgar Allan Poe

Sonnet - To Science

Science! true daughter of Old Time thou art!

Who alterest all things with thy peering eyes.

Why preyest thou thus upon the poet's heart,

Vulture, whose wings are dull realities?

How should he love thee? or how deem thee wise,

Who wouldst not leave him in his wandering

To seek for treasure in the jewelled skies,

Albeit he soared with an undaunted wing?

Edgar Allan Poe

Eureka - A Prose Poem

EUREKA:

AN ESSAY ON THE MATERIAL AND SPIRITUAL UNIVERSE

IT is with humility really unassumed -–it is with a sentiment even of awe -–that I pen the opening sentence of this work: for of all conceivable subjects I approach the reader with the most solemn -–the most comprehensive -–the most difficult -–the most august.

What terms shall I find sufficiently simple in their sublimity — sufficiently sublime in their simplicity -–for the mere enunciation of my theme?

I design to speak of the Physical, Metaphysical and Mathematical — of the Material and Spiritual Universe:–of its Essence, its Origin, its Creation, its Present Condition and its Destiny. I shall be so rash, moreover, as to chAllange the conclusions, and thus, in effect, to question the sagacity, of many of the greatest and most justly reverenced of men.

In the beginning, let me as distinctly as possible announce -–not the theorem which I hope to demonstrate -–for, whatever the mathematicians may assert, there is, in this world at least, no such thing as demonstration -–but the ruling idea which, throughout this volume, I shall be continually endeavoring to suggest.

My general proposition, then, is this: -–In the Original Unity of the First Thing lies the Secondary Cause of All Things, with the Germ of their Inevitable Annihilation.

In illustration of this idea, I propose to take such a survey of the Universe that the mind may be able really to receive and to perceive an individual impression.