Text: Edgar Allan Poe, “Dream-Land” (Text-04), Broadway Journal, vol. I, no. 26, June 28, 1845, 1:407, col. 2


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[page 407, top of column 2:]

DREAM-LAND.

BY a route obscure and lonely,

Haunted by ill angels only,

Where an Eidolon, named NIGHT,

On a black throne reigns upright,

I have reached these lands but newly

From an ultimate dim Thule —

From a wild weird clime, that lieth, sublime,

Out of SPACE — out of TIME.

Bottomless vales and boundless floods,

And chasms, and caves, and Titan woods,

With forms that no man can discover

For the dews that drip all over;

Fountains [[Mountains]] toppling evermore

Into seas without a shore;

Seas that restlessly aspire,

Surging, unto skies of fire;

Lakes that endlessly outspread

Their lone waters, lone and dead, —

Their still waters, still and chilly

With the snows of the lolling lily, [[.]]

By the lakes that thus outspread

Their lone waters, lone and dead, —

Their sad waters, sad and chilly

With the snows of the lolling lily, —

By the mountain — near the river

Murmuring lowly, murmuring ever, —

By the grey woods, — by the swamp

Where the toad and the newt encamp, —

By the dismal tarns and pools

Where dwell the Ghouls, —

By each spot the most unholy —

In each nook most melancholy, —

There the traveler meets aghast

Sheeted Memories of the Past —

Shrouded forms that start and sigh

As they pass the wanderer by —

White-robed forms of friends long given,

In agony, to the worms, and Heaven.

For the heart whose woes are legion

’Tis a peaceful, soothing region —

For the spirit that walks in shadow

’Tis — oh 'tis an Eldorado!

But the traveller [[traveler]], traveling through it,

May not — dare not openly view it;

Never its mysterics [[mysteries]] are exposed

To the weak human eye enclosed [[unclosed]];

So wills the king, who hath forbid

The uplifting of the fringed lid;

And thus the sad Soul that here passes

Beholds it but through darkened glasses.

By a route obscure and lonely,

Haunted by ill angels only,

Where an Eidolon, named NIGHT,

On a black throne reigns upright,

I have wandered home but newly

From this ultimate dim Thule.


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Notes:

The most substantial change in this version is that Poe has dropped the two internal repetitions, with slight variations, of the first six lines of the first stanza. (In so doing, this stanza ceases to serve its role as a kind of chorus, although it is still repeated at the end.) In line 13, “Mountains” is changed to “Fountains,” although this is the only version to use this word, all others reverting to “Mountains.” In line 27, “gray” becomes “grey.” In line 47, “King” becomes “king.” In line 48, “fringéd” is given as “fringed,” probably due to a lack of an accented font. (Poe eventually added back the accent in his own copy of The Raven and Other Poems.) In line 45, a typographical error of “mysterics” for “mysteries” appears in the original printing. (A close examination shows that it is indeed a “c” where the “e” should be. This appears in multiple copies and is not broken type.) In line 46, “unclosed” has been changed to “enclosed” almost certainly as a typographical error. Not reproduced in this text is a strange smudge, resembling a closed square bracket, appearing at the very end of line 48. (This smudge appears in several copies, and is probably a fault of type.)


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[S:1 - BJ, 1845] - Edgar Allan Poe Society of Baltimore - Works - Poems - Dream-Land (Text-04)