Selections from Poe

Name: Selections from Poe
Author: Poe, Edgar Allan

Poe, Edgar Allan

Fantasy poetry, American; Short stories, American

And oh! of all tortures,
  That torture the worst
Has abated--the terrible
  Torture of thirst
For the naphthaline river                                  35
  Of Passion accurst:
I have drank of a water
  That quenches all thirst:

Of a water that flows,
  With a lullaby sound,                                    40
From a spring but a very few
  Feet under ground,
From a cavern not very far
  Down under ground.

And ah! let it never                                       45
  Be foolishly said
That my room it is gloomy,
  And narrow my bed;
For man never slept
  In a different bed:                                      50
And, _to sleep_, you must slumber
  In just such a bed.

My tantalized spirit
  Here blandly reposes,
Forgetting, or never                                       55
  Regretting, its roses:
Its old agitations
  Of myrtles and roses;

For now, while so quietly
  Lying, it fancies                                        60
A holier odor
  About it, of pansies:
A rosemary odor,
  Commingled with pansies,
With rue and the beautiful                                 65
  Puritan pansies.

And so it lies happily,
  Bathing in many
A dream of the truth
  And the beauty of Annie,                                 70
Drowned in a bath
  Of the tresses of Annie.

She tenderly kissed me,
  She fondly caressed,
And then I fell gently                                     75
  To sleep on her breast,
Deeply to sleep
  From the heaven of her breast.

When the light was extinguished,
  She covered me warm,                                     80
And she prayed to the angels
  To keep me from harm,
To the queen of the angels
  To shield me from harm.

And I lie so composedly                                    85
  Now, in my bed,
(Knowing her love)
  That you fancy me dead;
And I rest so contentedly
  Now, in my bed,                                          90
(With her love at my breast)
  That you fancy me dead,
That you shudder to look at me,
  Thinking me dead.

But my heart it is brighter                                95
  Than all of the many
Stars in the sky,
  For it sparkles with Annie:
It glows with the light
  Of the love of my Annie,                                100
With the thought of the light
  Of the eyes of my Annie.



THE BELLS


I

Hear the sledges with the bells,
Silver bells!
What a world of merriment their melody foretells!
How they tinkle, tinkle, tinkle,
In the icy air of night!                                    5
While the stars, that oversprinkle
All the heavens, seem to twinkle
With a crystalline deligit;
Keeping time, time, time,
In a sort of Runic rhyme,                                  10
To the tintinnabulation that so musically wells
From the bells, bells, bells, bells,
Bells, bells, bells--
From the jingling and the tinkling of the bells.


II

Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.

Selections from Poe

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