- Silence
- There are some qualities—some incorporate things,
- That have a double life, which thus is made
- A type of that twin entity which springs
- From matter and light, evinced in solid and shade.
- There is a two-fold Silence—sea and shore—
- Body and soul. One dwells in lonely places,
- Newly with grass o’ergrown; some solemn graces,
- Some human memories and tearful lore,
- Render him terrorless: his name’s “No More.”
- He is the corporate Silence: dread him not!
- No power hath he of evil in himself;
- But should some urgent fate (untimely lot!)
- Bring thee to meet his shadow (nameless elf,
- That haunteth the lone regions where hath trod
- No foot of man,) commend thyself to God!
- To Science
- Science! true daughter of Old Time thou art!
- Who alterest all things with thy peering eyes.
- Why preyest thou thus upon the poet’s heart,
- Vulture, whose wings are dull realities?
- How should he love thee? or how deem thee wise,
- Who wouldst not leave him in his wandering
- To seek for treasure in the jewelled skies,
- Albeit he soared with an undaunted wing?
- Hast thou not dragged Diana from her car?
- And driven the Hamadryad from the wood
- To seek a shelter in some happier star?
- Hast thou not torn the Naiad from her flood,
- The Elfin from the green grass, and from me
- The summer dream beneath the tamarind tree?
- To Zante
- Fair isle, that from the fairest of all flowers,
- Thy gentlest of all gentle names dost take!
- How many memories of what radiant hours
- At sight of thee and thine at once awake!
- How many scenes of what departed bliss!
- How many thoughts of what entombed hopes!
- How many visions of a maiden that is
- No more — no more upon thy verdant slopes!
- No more! alas, that magical sad sound
- Transforming all! Thy charms shall please no more—
- Thy memory no more! Accursed ground
- Henceforth I hold thy flower-enameled shore,
- O hyacinthine isle! O purple Zante!
- “Isola d’oro! Fior di Levante!”
Edgar Allen Poe
Edgar Allen Poe (1809-1849) is one of the best-known American writers, contributing verse, short stories (including some of the first detective stories), literary criticism and a novel to the established canon of American literature. He is universally recognized for his poetry – especially “The Raven” — and for his macabre short stories — such as “The Pit and the Pendulum.” Considered one of the main importers of Romanticism to American literature, Poe produced a body of work that influenced many writers in a diversity of genres – including the horror story, detective story, poetry and literary criticism. His essays on poetry, in particular, which stated the need to avoid writing didactic or allegorical verse, had an impact on the late-19th and early 20th-century Symbolists in France, who in turn influenced modern poets such as T.S. Eliot and Ezra Pound.