Dreams
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,
'Twere 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,
'Twere folly still to hope for higher Heaven.
For I have revelled when the sun was bright
I' the summer sky, in dreams of living light
And loveliness,--have left my very heart
Inclines of my imaginary apart [1]
From mine own home, with beings that have been
Of mine 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 o'er me in the night, and left behind
Its image on my spirit--or the moon
Shone on my slumbers in her lofty noon
Too coldly--or the stars--howe'er 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.
[Footnote 1: In climes of mine imagining apart?--Ed.]
* * * * *
"IN YOUTH I HAVE KNOWN ONE."
_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!_
I. In youth I have known one with whom the Earth
In 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 it power.
II. Perhaps it may be that my mind is wrought
To a ferver [1] by the moonbeam that hangs o'er,
But I will half believe that wild light 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 a quickening spell doth o'er us pass
As dew of the night-time, o'er the summer grass?
III. Doth o'er us pass, when, as th' 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
T' awake us--'Tis a symbol and a token--
IV. Of what in other worlds shall be--and given
In beauty by our God, to those alone
Who otherwise would fall from life and Heaven
Drawn by their heart's passion, and that tone,
That high tone of the spirit which hath striven
Though not with Faith--with godliness--whose throne
With desperate energy 't hath beaten down;
Wearing its own deep feeling as a crown.
[Footnote 1: Query "fervor"?--Ed.]
* * * * *
A PÆAN.
I. How shall the burial rite be read?
The solemn song be sung?
The requiem for the loveliest dead,
That ever died so young?
II. Her friends are gazing on her,
And on her gaudy bier,
And weep!--oh! to dishonor
Dead beauty with a tear!
III. They loved her for her wealth--
And they hated her for her pride--
But she grew in feeble health,
And they _love_ her--that she died.
IV. They tell me (while they speak
Of her "costly broider'd pall")
That my voice is growing weak--
That I should not sing at all--
V. Or that my tone should be
Tun'd to such solemn song
So mournfully--so mournfully,
That the dead may feel no wrong.
VI. But she is gone above,
With young Hope at her side,
And I am drunk with love
Of the dead, who is my bride.--
VII. Of the dead--dead who lies
All perfum'd there,
With the death upon her eyes.
And the life upon her hair.
VIII. Thus on the coffin loud and long
I strike--the murmur sent
Through the gray chambers to my song,
Shall be the accompaniment.
IX. Thou diedst in thy life's June--
But thou didst not die too fair:
Thou didst not die too soon,
Nor with too calm an air.
X. From more than friends on earth,
Thy life and love are riven,
To join the untainted mirth
Of more than thrones in heaven.--
XI. Therefore, to thee this night
I will no requiem raise,
But waft thee on thy flight,
With a Pæan of old days.
* * * * *
NOTES.
30. 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.
"Al Aaraaf" first appeared, with the sonnet "To Silence" prefixed 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 twenty-nine lines, which have been omitted in all subsequent
collections:
Edgar Allan Poe