The Raven (Penguin) Read online

  Than all of the many

  Stars in the sky,

  For it sparkles with Annie—

  It glows with the light

  Of the love of my Annie—

  With the thought of the light

  Of the eyes of my Annie.

  Eldorado

  Gaily bedight,

  A gallant knight,

  In sunshine and in shadow,

  Had journeyed long,

  Singing a song,

  In search of Eldorado.

  But he grew old—

  This knight so bold—

  And o’er his heart a shadow

  Fell, as he found

  No spot of ground

  That looked like Eldorado.

  And, as his strength

  Failed him at length,

  He met a pilgrim shadow—

  “Shadow,” said he,

  “Where can it be—

  This land of Eldorado?”

  “Over the Mountains

  Of the Moon,

  Down the Valley of the Shadow,

  Ride, boldly ride,”

  The shade replied,—

  “If you seek for Eldorado!”

  Annabel Lee

  It was many and many a year ago,

  In a kingdom by the sea,

  That a maiden lived whom you may know

  By the name of Annabel Lee;—

  And this maiden she lived with no other thought

  Than to love and be loved by me.

  She was a child and I was a child,

  In this kingdom by the sea,

  But we loved with a love that was more than love—

  I and my Annabel Lee—

  With a love that the wingéd seraphs of Heaven

  Coveted her and me.

  And this was the reason that, long ago,

  In this kingdom by the sea,

  A wind blew out of a cloud by night

  Chilling my Annabel Lee;

  So that her high-born kinsmen came

  And bore her away from me,

  To shut her up, in a sepulchre

  In this kingdom by the sea.

  The angels, not half so happy in Heaven,

  Went envying her and me—

  Yes!—that was the reason (as all men know,

  In this kingdom by the sea)

  That the wind came out of the cloud by night,

  Chilling and killing my Annabel Lee.

  But our love it was stronger by far than the love

  Of those who were older than we—

  Of many far wiser than we—

  And neither the angels in Heaven above

  Nor the demons down under the sea

  Can ever dissever my soul from the soul

  Of the beautiful Annabel Lee:—

  For the moon never beams without bringing me dreams

  Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;

  And the stars never rise but I see the bright eyes

  Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;

  And so, all the night-tide, I lie down by the side

  Of my darling, my darling, my life and my bride

  In her sepulchre there by the sea—

  In her tomb by the side of the sea.

  * Mercier, in “L’an deux mille quarte cents quarante,” seriously maintains the doctrines of Metempsychosis, and I. D’Israeli says that “no system is so simple and so little repugnant to the understanding.” Colonel Ethan Allen, the “Green Mountain Boy,” is also said to have been a serious metempsychosist. [Poe’s note]

  * For as Jove, during the winter season, gives twice seven days of warmth, men have called this clement and temperate time the nurse of the beautiful Halcyon—Simonides. [Poe’s note]

  * Watson, Dr. Percival, Spallanzani, and especially the Bishop of Landaff.—See “Chemical Essays,” vol v. [Poe’s note]

  * The “Hortulus Animæ cum Oratiunculis Aliquibus Superadditis” of Grünninger. [Poe’s note]

  * See Archimedes, “De Incidentibus in Fluido.”—lib. 2. [Poe’s note]

  * “It will be hard to discover a better [method of education] than that which the experience of so many ages has already discovered; and this may be summed up as consisting in gymnastics for the body and music for the soul.”—Repub. lib. 2. “For this reason is a musical education most essential; since it causes Rhythm and Harmony to penetrate most intimately into the soul, taking the strangest hold upon it, filling it with beauty and making the man beautiful-minded. . . . He will praise and admire the beautiful; will receive it with joy into his soul, will feed upon it, and assimilate his own condition with it.”—Ibid. lib. 3. Music (μουσικη) had, however, among the Athenians, a far more comprehensive signification than with us. It included not only the harmonies of time and of tune, but the poetic diction, sentiment and creation, each in its widest sense. The study of music was with them, in fact, the general cultivation of the taste—of that which recognizes the beautiful—in contra-distinction from reason, which deals only with the true. [Poe’s note]

  * “History,” from ιστορειν, to contemplate. [Poe’s note]

  † The word “purification” seems here to be used with reference to its root in the Greek, πυρ, fire. [Poe’s note]