The Raven and Other Selected Poems. Эдгар Аллан По

star hath ridden high

      Thro’ 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 ceas’d—and buried then her burning cheek

      Abash’d, amid the lilies there, to seek

      A shelter from the fervor of His eye;

      For the stars trembled at the Deity.

      She stirr’d not—breath’d 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.”

      Ours is a world of words: Quiet we call

      “Silence”—which is the merest word of all.

      All Nature speaks, and ev’n 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 tho’ in worlds which sightless cycles run,

      Link’d to a little system, and one sun—

      Where all my love is folly, and 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 tho’ in worlds which own a single sun

      The sands of time grow dimmer as they run,

      Yet thine is my resplendency, so given

      To bear my secrets thro’ the upper Heaven.

      Leave tenantless thy crystal home, and fly,

      With all thy train, athwart the moony sky—

      Apart—like fire-flies in Sicilian night,

      And wing to other worlds another light!

      Divulge the secrets of thy embassy

      To the proud orbs that twinkle—and so be

      To ev’ry heart a barrier and a ban

      Lest the stars totter in the guilt of man!”

      Up rose the maiden in the yellow night,

      The single-mooned eve!-on earth we plight

      Our faith to one love—and one moon adore—

      The birth-place 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 o’er sheeny mountain and dim plain

      Her way—but left not yet her Therasæan reign.

      Part II

      High on a mountain of enamell’d head—

      Such as the drowsy shepherd on his bed

      Of giant pasturage lying at his ease,

      Raising his heavy eyelid, starts and sees

      With many a mutter’d “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 danc’d with the fair stranger light—