The Raven (Penguin) Read online

Page 32

Huge moons there wax and wane—

  Again—again—again—

  Every moment of the night—

  Forever changing places—

  And they put out the star-light

  With the breath from their pale faces.

  About twelve by the moon-dial

  One more filmy than the rest

  (A kind which, upon trial,

  They have found to be the best)

  Comes down—still down—and down

  With its centre on the crown

  Of a mountain’s eminence,

  While its wide circumference

  In easy drapery falls

  Over hamlets, over halls,

  Wherever they may be—

  O’er the strange woods—o’er the sea—

  Over spirits on the wing—

  Over every drowsy thing—

  And buries them up quite

  In a labyrinth of light—

  And then, how deep!—O, deep!

  Is the passion of their sleep.

  In the morning they arise,

  And their moony covering

  Is soaring in the skies,

  With the tempests as they toss,

  Like—almost any thing—

  Or a yellow Albatross.

  They use that moon no more

  For the same end as before—

  Videlicet a tent—

  Which I think extravagant:

  Its atomies, however,

  Into a shower dissever,

  Of which those butterflies,

  Of Earth, who seek the skies,

  And so come down again

  (Never-contented things!)

  Have brought a specimen

  Upon their quivering wings.

  [Alone]

  From childhood’s hour I have not been

  As others were—I have not seen

  As others saw—I could not bring

  My passions from a common spring—

  From the same source I have not taken

  My sorrow—I could not awaken

  My heart to joy at the same tone—

  And all I lov’d—I lov’d alone—

  Then—in my childhood—in the dawn

  Of a most stormy life—was drawn

  From ev’ry depth of good and ill

  The mystery which binds me still—

  From the torrent, or the fountain—

  From the red cliff of the mountain—

  From the sun that ’round me roll’d

  In its autumn tint of gold—

  From the lightning in the sky

  As it pass’d me flying by—

  From the thunder, and the storm—

  And the cloud that took the form

  (When the rest of Heaven was blue)

  Of a demon in my view—

  Fairy Land [II]

  Sit down beside me, Isabel,

  Here, dearest, where the moonbeam fell

  Just now so fairy-like and well.

  Now thou art dress’d for paradise!

  I am star-stricken with thine eyes!

  My soul is lolling on thy sighs!

  Thy hair is lifted by the moon

  Like flowers by the low breath of June!

  Sit down, sit down—how came we here?

  Or is it all but a dream, my dear?

  You know that most enormous flower—

  That rose—that what d’ ye call it—that hung

  Up like a dog-star in this bower—

  To-day (the wind blew, and) it swung

  So impudently in my face,

  So like a thing alive you know,

  I tore it from its pride of place

  And shook it into pieces—so

  Be all ingratitude requited.

  The winds ran off with it delighted,

  And, thro’ the opening left, as soon

  As she threw off her cloak, yon moon

  Has sent a ray down with a tune.

  And this ray is a fairy ray—

  Did you not say so, Isabel?

  How fantastically it fell

  With a spiral twist and a swell,

  And over the wet grass rippled away

  With a tinkling like a bell!

  In my own country all the way

  We can discover a moon ray

  Which thro’ some tatter’d curtain pries

  Into the darkness of a room,

  Is by (the very source of gloom)

  The motes, and dust, and flies,

  On which it trembles and lies

  Like joy upon sorrow!

  O, when will come the morrow?

  Isabel! do you not fear

  The night and the wonders here?

  Dim vales! and shadowy floods!

  And cloudy-looking woods

  Whose forms we can’t discover

  For the tears that drip all over!

  Huge moons—see! wax and wane

  Again—again—again—

  Every moment of the night—

  Forever changing places!

  How they put out the starlight

  With the breath from their pale faces!

  Lo! one is coming down

  With its centre on the crown

  Of a mountain’s eminence!

  Down—still down—and down—

  Now deep shall be—O deep!

  The passion of our sleep!

  For that wide circumference

  In easy drapery falls

  Drowsily over halls

  Over ruin’d walls—

  Over waterfalls,

  (Silent waterfalls!)

  O’er the strange woods—o’er the sea—

  Alas! over the sea!

  The Valley of Unrest

  Once it smiled a silent dell

  Where the people did not dwell;

  They had gone unto the wars,

  Trusting to the mild-eyed stars,

  Nightly, from their azure towers,

  To keep watch above the flowers,

  In the midst of which all day

  The red sun-light lazily lay.

  Now each visiter shall confess

  The sad valley’s restlessness.

  Nothing there is motionless.

  Nothing save the airs that brood

  Over the magic solitude.

  Ah, by no wind are stirred those trees

  That palpitate like the chill seas

  Around the misty Hebrides!

  Ah, by no wind those clouds are driven

  That rustle through the unquiet Heaven

  Uneasily, from morn till even,

  Over the violets there that lie

  In myriad types of the human eye—

  Over the lilies there that wave

  And weep above a nameless grave!

  They wave:—from out their fragrant tops

  Eternal dews come down in drops.

  They weep:—from off their delicate stems

  Perennial tears descend in gems.

  The City in the Sea

  Lo! Death has reared himself a throne

  In a strange city lying alone

  Far down within the dim West,

  Where the good and the bad and the worst and the best

  Have gone to their eternal rest.

  There shrines and palaces and towers

  (Time-eaten towers that tremble not!)

  Resemble nothing that is ours.

  Around, by lifting winds forgot,

  Resignedly beneath the sky

  The melancholy waters lie.

  No rays from the holy heaven come down

  On the long night-time of that town;

  But light from out the lurid sea

  Streams up the turrets silently—

  Gleams up the pinnacles far and free—

  Up domes—up spires—up kingly halls—

  Up fanes—up Babylon-like walls—

  Up shadowy long-forgotten bowers

  Of sculptured ivy and stone flowers—

 
; Up many and many a marvellous shrine

  Whose wréathed friezes intertwine

  The viol, the violet, and the vine.

  Resignedly beneath the sky

  The melancholy waters lie.

  So blend the turrets and shadows there

  That all seem pendulous in air,

  While from a proud tower in the town

  Death looks gigantically down.

  There open fanes and gaping graves

  Yawn level with the luminous waves;

  But not the riches there that lie

  In each idol’s diamond eye—

  Not the gaily-jewelled dead

  Tempt the waters from their bed;

  For no ripples curl, alas!

  Along that wilderness of glass—

  No swellings tell that winds may be

  Upon some far-off happier sea—

  No heavings hint that winds have been

  On seas less hideously serene.

  But lo, a stir is in the air!

  The wave—there is a movement there!

  As if the towers had thrust aside,

  In slightly sinking, the dull tide—

  As if their tops had feebly given

  A void within the filmy Heaven.

  The waves have now a redder glow—

  The hours are breathing faint and low—

  And when, amid no earthly moans,

  Down, down that town shall settle hence,

  Hell, rising from a thousand thrones,

  Shall do it reverence.

  Sonnet—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!

  Lenore

  Ah, broken is the golden bowl!—the spirit flown forever!

  Let the bell toll!—a saintly soul floats on the Stygian river:—

  And, Guy De Vere, hast thou no tear?—weep now or never more!

  See! on yon drear and rigid bier low lies thy love, Lenore!

  Come! let the burial rite be read—the funeral song be sung!—

  An anthem for the queenliest dead that ever died so young—

  A dirge for her the doubly dead in that she died so young.

  “Wretches! ye loved her for her wealth and ye hated her for her pride;

  And when she fell in feeble health, ye blessed her—that she died:—

  How shall the ritual then be read?—the requiem how be sung

  By you—by yours, the evil eye—by yours, the slanderous tongue

  That did to death the innocence that died and died so young?”

  Peccavimus; yet rave not thus! but let a Sabbath song

  Go up to God so solemnly the dead may feel no wrong!

  The sweet Lenore hath gone before, with Hope, that flew beside

  Leaving thee wild for the dear child that should have been thy bride—

  For her, the fair and debonair, that now so lowly lies,

  The life upon her yellow hair, but not within her eyes—

  The life still there upon her hair, the death upon her eyes.

  “Avaunt!—avaunt! to friends from fiends the indignant ghost is riven—

  From Hell unto a high estate within the utmost Heaven—

  From moan and groan to a golden throne beside the King of Heaven:—

  Let no bell toll, then, lest her soul, amid its hallowed mirth—

  Should catch the note as it doth float up from the damnéd Earth!—

  And I—tonight my heart is light:—no dirge will I upraise,

  But waft the angel on her flight with a Pæan of old days!”

  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;

  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 mountains—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 traveller 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 Earth—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, travelling through it,

  May not—dare not openly view it;

  Never its mysteries are exposed

  To the weak human eye unclosed;

  So wills its 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.

  The Raven

  Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary,

  Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore—

  While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,

  As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door.

  “’Tis some visiter,” I muttered, “tapping at my chamber door—

  Only this and nothing more.”

  Ah, distinctly I remember it was in the bleak December,

  And each separate dying ember wrought its ghost upon the floor

  Eagerly I wished the morrow;—vainly I had sought to borrow

  From my books surcease of sorrow—sorrow for the lost Lenore—

  For the rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name Lenore—

  Nameless here for evermore.

  And the silken, sad, uncertain rustling of each purple curtain

  Thrilled me—filled me with fantastic terrors never felt before;


  So that now, to still the beating of my heart, I stood repeating

  “’Tis some visiter entreating entrance at my chamber door—

  Some late visiter entreating entrance at my chamber door;—

  This it is and nothing more.”

  Presently my soul grew stronger; hesitating then no longer,

  “Sir,” said I, “or Madam, truly your forgiveness I implore;

  But the fact is I was napping, and so gently you came rapping,

  And so faintly you came tapping, tapping at my chamber door,

  That I scarce was sure I heard you”—here I opened wide the door;—

  Darkness there and nothing more.

  Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there wondering, fearing,

  Doubting, dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared to dream before;

  But the silence was unbroken, and the darkness gave no token,

  And the only word there spoken was the whispered word, “Lenore!”

  This I whispered, and an echo murmured back the word, “Lenore!”—

  Merely this, and nothing more.

  Back into the chamber turning, all my soul within me burning,

  Soon I heard again a tapping somewhat louder than before.

  “Surely,” said I, “surely that is something at my window lattice;

  Let me see, then, what thereat is, and this mystery explore—

  Let my heart be still a moment and this mystery explore;—

  ’Tis the wind and nothing more!”

  Open here I flung the shutter, when, with many a flirt and

  flutter,

  In there stepped a stately Raven of the saintly days of yore;

  Not the least obeisance made he; not a minute stopped or stayed he;

  But, with mien of lord or lady, perched above my chamber door—

  Perched upon a bust of Pallas just above my chamber door—

  Perched, and sat, and nothing more.

  Then this ebony bird beguiling my sad fancy into smiling,

  By the grave and stern decorum of the countenance it wore,

  “Though thy crest be shorn and shaven, thou,” I said, “art sure no craven,

  Ghastly grim and ancient raven wandering from the Nightly shore—

  Tell me what thy lordly name is on the Night’s Plutonian shore!”

  Quoth the Raven “Nevermore.”

  Much I marvelled this ungainly fowl to hear discourse so plainly,

  Though its answer little meaning—little relevancy bore;

  For we cannot help agreeing that no living human being

  Ever yet was blessed with seeing bird above his chamber door—

  Bird or beast upon the sculptured bust above his chamber door,

 

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