In visions of the dark night
Edgar Allan Poe
Take this kiss upon the brow!
How shall the burial rite be read?
For her this rhyme is penned, whose luminous eyes,
O! nothing earthly save the ray
"Seldom we find," says Solomon Don Dunce,
It was many and many a year ago,
The ring is on my hand,
By a route obscure and lonely,
Oh! that my young life were a lasting dream!
Gaily bedight,
I dwelt alone
'Twas noontide of summer,
Dim vales--and shadowy floods--
Thank Heaven! the crisis--
At morn--at noon--at twilight dim--
Wreathed in myrtle, my sword I'll conceal,
A dark unfathomed tide
How often we forget all time, when lone
In Heaven a spirit doth dwell
Ah, broken is the golden bowl! the spirit flown forever!
Romance, who loves to nod and sing,
There are some qualities--some incorporate things,
I saw thee on thy bridal day--
SCIENCE! true daughter of Old Time thou art!
Thy soul shall find itself alone
Kind solace in a dying hour!
Hear the sledges with the bells--
Lo! Death has reared himself a throne
Type of the antique Rome! Rich reliquary
Lo! 'tis a gala night
The happiest day--the happiest hour
In the greenest of our valleys
In spring of youth it was my lot
Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary,
At midnight, in the month of June,
Once it smiled a silent dell
Beloved! amid the earnest woes
Thou wouldst be loved?--then let thy heart
I saw thee once--once only--years ago:
Helen, thy beauty is to me
Of all who hail thy presence as the morning--
Not long ago, the writer of these lines,
Because I feel that, in the Heavens above,
Thou wast that all to me, love,
Fair river! in thy bright, clear flow
Fair isle, that from the fairest of all flowers,
The bowers whereat, in dreams, I see
I heed not that my earthly lot
The skies they were ashen and sober;