Text: John H. Ingram “The Unknown Poetry of Edgar Poe,” Belgravia (London, UK), vol. 29, June 1876, whole no. CXVI, pp. 502-513

Young heads are giddy and young hearts are warm,

And make mistakes for manhood to reform.

’Memory's eye

One object — and but one’ —

‘ 'Tis not to thee that I should name —

Thou can'st not, would'st not dare to think

The magic empire of a flame

Which ev’n upon this perilous brink

Hath fixed my soul, though unforgiven

By what it lost for passion — Heaven!

I loved. ....

 

‘I loved her as an angel might

With ray of the all living light

Which blazes upon Edis’ shrine.

It is not surely sin to name,

With such as mine — that mystic flame —

I had no being but in thee!

The world with all its train of bright

And happy beauty [for to me

All was an undefined delight],

The world — its joys — its share of pain,

Which I felt not, its bodied forms

Of varied being, which contain

The bodiless spirits of the storms,

The sunshine and the calm — the ideal

And fleeting vanities of dreams,

Fearfully beautiful! The real

Nothings of mid-day waking life — [page 505:]

Of an enchanted life, which seems,

Now as I look back, the strife

Of some ill demon, with a power

Which left me in an evil hour,

All that I felt, or saw, or thought,

Crowding, confused became

[With thine unearthly beauty fraught]

Thou — and the nothing of a name. ...

The passionate spirit which hath known,

And deeply felt the silent tone

Of its own self-supremacy —

[I speak thus openly to thee,

‘Twere folly now to veil a thought

With which this aching breast is fraught]

The soul which feels its innate right —

The mystic empire and high power

Given by the energetic might

Of Genius at its natal hour;

Which knows [believe me at this time,

When falsehood were a ten-fold crime,

There is a power in the high spirit

To know the fate it will inherit],

The soul, which knows such power, will still

Find Pride the ruler of its will.

Yes! I was proud — and ye who know

The magic of that meaning word,

So oft perverted, will bestow

Your scorn, perhaps, when ye have heard

That the proud spirit had been broken,

The proud heart burst in agony

At one upbraiding word or token

Of her, that heart's idolatry. —

I was ambitious. ...

In her eyes

I read [perhaps too carelessly]

A mingled feeling with my own;

The flush on her bright cheek, to me,

Seemed to become a queenly throne.

Then — in that hour — a thought came o’er

My mind, it had not known before;

To leave her while we both were young —

To follow my high fate among

The strife of nations, and redeem [page 506:]

The idle words, which, as a dream

Now sounded to her heedless ear —

I held no doubt — I knew no fear

Of peril in my wild career;

To gain an empire, and throw down —

As nuptial dowry — a queen's crown.

The only feeling which possest,

With her own image, my fond breast —

Who, that had known the secret thought

Of a young peasant's bosom then,

Had deemed him, in compassion, aught

But one whom phantasy had led

Astray from reason. Among men

Ambition is chained down — nor fed

[As in the desert, where the grand,

The wild, the beautiful conspire

With their own breath to fan its fire]

With thoughts such feeling can command;

Unchecked by sarcasm and scorn

Of those, who hardly will conceive

That any should become “great,” born

In their own sphere — will not believe

That they shall stoop in life to one

Whom daily they are wont to see

Familiarly — whom Fortune's sun

Hath ne’er shone dazzlingly upon,

Lowly — and of their own degree.’

‘who hardly will conceive

That any should become “great,” born

In their own sphere,’

‘I pictured to my fancy's eye

Her silent deep astonishment,

When, a few fleeting years gone by

[For short the time my high hope lent

To its most desperate intent],

She might recall in him whom Fame

Had gilded with a conqueror's name

[With glory — such as might inspire,

Perforce, a passing thought of one

Whom she had deemed in his own fire

Withered and blasted; who had gone

A traitor, violate of the truth

So plighted in his early youth],

Her own Alexis, who should plight

The love he plighted then — again,

And raise his infancy's delight

The bride and queen of Tamerlane.

 

‘One noon of a bright summer's day

I passed from out the matted bower

Where in a deep still slumber lay

My Ada. In that peaceful hour,

A silent gaze was my farewell.

I had no other solace — then

T’awake her, and a falsehood tell

Of a feigned journey, were again

To trust the weakness of my heart

To her soft thrilling voice. To part

Thus, haply, while in sleep she dreamed

Of long delight, nor yet had deemed,

Awake, that I had held a thought

Of parting, were with madness fraught;

I knew not woman's heart, alas!

Though loved, and loving — let it pass. . .

I went from out the matted bower,

And hurried madly on my way:

And felt, with ev’ry flying hour

That bore me from my home, more gay;

There is of earth an agony

Which, ideal, still may be [page 508:]

The worst ill of mortality.

'Tis bliss, in its own reality,

Too real, to his breast who lives

Not within himself, but gives

A portion of his willing soul

To God, and to the great whole —

To him, whose loving spirit will dwell

With Nature, in her wild paths; tell

Of her wondrous ways and telling, bless

Her overpowering loveliness!

A more than agony to him

Whose failing sight will grow dim

With its own living gaze upon

That loveliness around: the sun —

The blue sky — the misty light

Of the pale cloud therein, whose hue

Is grace to its heavenly bed of blue;

Dim! though looking on all bright!

O God! when thoughts that may not pass

Will burst upon him, and, alas!

For the flight on earth to Fancy given

There are no words — unless of Heaven.

When Fortune marked me for her own,

And my proud heart had reached a throne

[It boots me not, good friar, to tell

A tale the world but knows too well,

How by what hidden deeds of might

I clambered to the tottering height],

I still was young; and well I ween

My spirit what it e’er had been.

My eyes were still on pomp and power,

My wildered heart was far away,

In valleys of the wild Taglay,

In mine own Ada's matted bower.

I dwelt not long in Samarcand

Ere, in a peasant's lowly guise,

I sought my long abandoned land :

In sunset did its mountains rise

In dusky grandeur to my eyes. . . .

I reached my home — my home no more —

For all was flown that made it so —

I passed from out its mossy door

In vacant idleness of woe. [page 509:]

There met me on its threshold stone

A mountain hunter I had known

In childhood, but he knew me not.

Something he spoke of the old cot :

It had seen better days, he said ;

There rose a fountain once, and there

Full many a fair flower raised its head:

But she who reared them was long dead,

And in such follies had no part.

What was there left me now? despair —

A kingdom for a broken heart.’

Oh! that my young life were a lasting dream!

My spirit not awakening till the beam

Of an eternity should bring the morrow.

Yes! though that long dream were of hopeless sorrow,

‘Twere better than the cold reality

Of waking life, to him whose heart must be,

And hath been still, upon the lovely earth,

A chaos of deep passion, from his birth.

But should it be — that dream eternally

Continuing — as dreams have been to me

In my young boyhood — should it thus be given,

‘Twere folly still to hope for higher heaven.

For I have revelled, when-the sun was bright

I’ the summer sky, in dreams of living light

And loveliness — have left my very heart

In climes of mine imagining apart

From mine own home, with beings that have been

Of mine own thought — what more could I have seen?

'Twas once — and only once — and the wild hour

From my remembrance shall not pass — some power [page 510:]

Or spell had bound me — 'twas the chilly wind

Came o’er me in the night, and left behind

Its image on my spirit; or the moon

Shone on my slumbers in her lofty noon

Too coldly, or the stars; however it was,

That dream was as that night wind — let it pass.

I have been happy, though in a dream.

I have been happy, and I love the theme:

Dreams! in their vivid colouring of life

As in that fleeting, shadowy, misty strife

Of semblance with reality, which brings

To the delirious eye more lovely things

Of Paradise and Love — and all our own! —

Than young Hope in his sunniest days hath known.

Thy soul shall find itself alone —

Alone of all on earth — unknown

The cause; but none are near to pry

Into thine hour of secresy.

Be silent in that solitude,

Which is not loneliness — for then

The spirits of the dead, who stood

In life before thee, are again

In death around thee, and their will

Shall then o’ershadow thee — be still:

For the night, though clear, shall frown;

And the stars shall not look down

From their thrones in the dark heaven

With light like Hope to mortals given;

But their red orbs, without beam,

To thy withering heart shall seem

As a burning, and a fever

Which would cling to thee for ever.

But ‘twill leave thee, as each star

In the morning light afar

Will fly thee — and vanish:

But its thought thou can'st not banish

The breath of God will be still;

And the mist upon the hill

By that summer breeze unbroken

Shall charm thee — as a token,

And a, symbol which shall be

Secresy in thee. [page 511:]

'Twas noontide of summer,

And mid-time of night;

And stars, in their orbits,

Shone pale, through the light

Of the brighter, pale moon.

‘Mid planets her slaves,

Herself in the heavens,

Her beam on the waves.

I gazed awhile

On her cold smile;

Too cold — too cold for me —

There passed, as a shroud,

A fleecy cloud,

And I turned away to thee,

Proud Evening Star,

In thy glory afar,

And dearer thy beam shall be;

For joy to my heart

Is the proud part

Thou bearest in Heaven at night,

And more I admire Thy distant fire,

Than that colder, lowly light.

A dark unfathomed tide

Of interminable pride —

A mystery and a dream

Should my early life seem;

I say that dream was fraught

With a wild and waking thought

Of beings that have been,

Which my spirit hath not seen,

Had I let them pass me by,

With a dreaming eye!

Let none of earth inherit

That vision on my spirit;

Those thoughts I would control,

As a spell upon his soul :

For that bright hope at last

And that light time have past, [page 512:]

And my worldly rest hath gone

With a sigh as it passed on:

I care not though it perish

With a thought I then did cherish.

How often we forget all time, when lone

Admiring Nature's universal throne;

Her woods — her wilds — her mountains — the intense

Reply of HERs to OUR intelligence!

1.

In youth I have known one with whom the earth

In secret communing held — as he with it,

In daylight, and in beauty, from his birth :

Whose fervid, flickering torch of life was lit

From the sun and stars, whence he had drawn forth

A passionate light such for his spirit was fit;

And yet that spirit knew — not in the hour

Of its own fervour — what had o’er it power.

2.

Perhaps it may be that my mind is wrought

To a fever by the moonbeam that hangs o’er,

But I will half believe that wild light fraught

With more of sov’reignty than ancient lore

Hath ever told — or is it of a thought

The unembodied essence, and no more,

That with a quickening spell doth o’er us pass

As dew of the night-time o’er the summer grass?

3.

Doth o’er us pass, when, as th’ expanding eye

To the loved object — so the tear to the lid

Will start, which lately slept in apathy?

And yet it need not be — (that object) hid

From us in life — but common — which doth lie

Each hour before us — but then only bid

With a strange sound, as of a harp-string broken

T' awake us — 'tis a symbol and a token

4.

Of what in other worlds shall be — and given

In beauty by our God, to those alone

Who otherwise would fall from life and Heaven

Drawn by their heart's passion, and that tone, [page 513:]

That high tone of the spirit which hath striven

Though not with Faith — with godliness — whose throne

With desperate energy ‘t hath beaten down;

Wearing its own deep feeling as a crown.

The happiest day — the happiest hour

My seared and blighted heart hath known,

The highest hope of pride and power,

I feel hath flown.

 

Of power! said I? yes! such I ween;

But they have vanished long, alas!

The visions of my youth have been —

But let them pass.

 

And, pride, what have I now with thee?

Another brow may ev’n inherit

The venom thou hast poured on me —

Be still, my spirit.

 

The happiest day — the happiest hour

Mine eyes shall see — have even seen,

The brightest glance of pride and power

I feel — have been :

 

But were that hope of pride and power

Now offered, with the pain

Evn then I felt — that brightest hour

I would not live again:

 

For on its wing was dark alloy,

And as it fluttered, fell

An essence, powerful to destroy

A soul that knew it well.