The Complete Poems of Edgar Allan Poe (The Authoritative Edition - Wisehouse Classics)

Edgar Allan Poe

• Publisher: Wisehouse Classics
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9789176375303
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Letteratura
• Subtopic: Poesia

"What is Poetry?—Poetry! that Proteus-like idea, with as many appellations as the nine-titled Corcyra! Give me, I demanded of a scholar some time ago, give me a definition of poetry? "Tres volontiers,"—and he proceeded to his library, brought me a Dr. Johnson, and overwhelmed me with a definition. Shade of the immortal Shakespeare! I imagined to myself the scowl of your spiritual eye upon the profanity of that scurrilous Ursa Major. Think of poetry, dear B—think of poetry, and then think of—Dr. Samuel Johnson! Think of all that is airy and fairy-like, and then of all that is hideous and unwieldy; think of his huge bulk, the Elephant! and then—and then think of the Tempest—the Midsummer Night's Dream—Prospero—Oberon—and Titania!A poem, in my opinion, is opposed to a work of science by having, for its immediate object, pleasure, not truth; to romance, by having for its object an indefinite instead of a definite pleasure, being a poem only so far as this object is attained; romance presenting perceptible images with definite, poetry with indefinite sensations, to which end music is an essential, since the comprehension of sweet sound is our most indefinite conception. Music, when combined with a pleasurable idea, is poetry; music without the idea is simply music; the idea without the music is prose from its very definitiveness." —Edgar Allan Poe(more on www.wisehouse-publishing.com)

Al Aaraaf (1829)

This poem is based on stories from the Qur’an, and tells of the afterlife in the place called Al Aaraaf. Poe included it as the major poem in his 1829 collection Al Aaraaf, Tamerlane, and Minor Poems.

Part I

O! nothing earthly save the ray

(Thrown back from flowers) of Beauty’s eye,

As in those gardens where the day

Springs from the gems of Circassy—

O! nothing earthly save the thrill

Of melody in woodland rill—

Or (music of the passion-hearted)

Joy’s voice so peacefully departed

That like the murmur in the shell,

Its echo dwelleth and will dwell—

Oh, nothing of the dross of ours—

Yet all the beauty—all the flowers

That list our Love, and deck our bowers—

Adorn yon world afar, afar—

The wandering star.

‘Twas a sweet time for Nesace—for there

Her world lay lolling on the golden air,

Near four bright suns—a temporary rest—

An oasis in desert of the blest.

Away—away—’mid seas of rays that roll

Empyrean splendor o’er th’ unchained soul—

The soul that scarce (the billows are so dense)

Can struggle to its destin’d eminence—

To distant spheres, from time to time, she rode

And late to ours, the favor’d one of God—

But, now, the ruler of an anchor’d realm,

She throws aside the sceptre—leaves the helm,

And, amid incense and high spiritual hymns,

Laves in quadruple light her angel limbs.

Now happiest, loveliest in yon lovely Earth,

Whence sprang the “Idea of Beauty” into birth,

(Falling in wreaths thro’ many a startled star,

Like woman’s hair ‘mid pearls, until, afar,

It lit on hills Achaian, and there dwelt)

She looked into Infinity—and knelt.

Rich clouds, for canopies, about her curled—

Fit emblems of the model of her world—

Seen but in beauty—not impeding sight

Of other beauty glittering thro’ the light—

A wreath that twined each starry form around,

And all the opal’d air in color bound.

All hurriedly she knelt upon a bed

Of flowers: of lilies such as rear’d the head

On the fair Capo Deucato, and sprang

So eagerly around about to hang

Upon the flying footsteps of—deep pride—

Of her who lov’d a mortal—and so died.

The Sephalica, budding with young bees,

Upreared its purple stem around her knees:—

And gemmy flower, of Trebizond misnam’d—

Inmate of highest stars, where erst it sham’d

All other loveliness:— its honied dew

(The fabled nectar that the heathen knew)

Deliriously sweet, was dropp’d from Heaven,

And fell on gardens of the unforgiven

In Trebizond—and on a sunny flower

So like its own above that, to this hour,

It still remaineth, torturing the bee

With madness, and unwonted reverie:

In Heaven, and all its environs, the leaf

And blossom of the fairy plant in grief

Disconsolate linger—grief that hangs her head,

Repenting follies that full long have Red,

Heaving her white breast to the balmy air,

Like guilty beauty, chasten’d and more fair:

Nyctanthes too, as sacred as the light

She fears to perfume, perfuming the night:

And Clytia, pondering between many a sun,

While pettish tears adown her petals run:

And that aspiring flower that sprang on Earth,

And died, ere scarce exalted into birth,

Bursting its odorous heart in spirit to wing

Its way to Heaven, from garden of a king:

And Valisnerian lotus, thither flown”

From struggling with the waters of the Rhone:

And thy most lovely purple perfume, Zante!

Isola d’oro!—Fior di Levante!

And the Nelumbo bud that floats for ever

With In...