| |
| A Collection of Short Poems by Edgar Allan Poe | |
Below you'll find a variety of shorter poems
by Edgar Allan Poe. This assortment includes,
"A Dream," "An Enigma," "Eulalie," "Hymn,"
"Imitation," "Romance," "Silence," "Song,"
"Sonnet--To Science," "To ----," "To F----,"
"To Frances S. Osgood," "To Marie Louise Shew,"
"To My Mother," To The River ----," and "To Zante."
To see all available titles by
other authors, drop by our index of free
books alphabetized by author or arranged
alphabetically by title.
Potential uses for the free books, stories and prose we offer
* Rediscovering an old favorite book, poem or story.
* Bibliophiles expanding their collection of
public domain eBooks at no cost.
* Teachers trying to locate a free online copy
of a classic poem or short story for use in the classroom.
NOTE: We try to present these classic poetic
works as they originally appeared in print.
As such, they sometimes contain adult themes,
offensive language, typographical errors, and
often utilize unconventional, older, obsolete
or intentionally incorrect spelling and/or
punctuation conventions.
| |
| | "A Dream" by Edgar Allan Poe |
A DREAM
by Edgar Allan Poe
In visions of the dark night
I have dreamed of joy departed;
But a waking dream of life and light
Hath left me broken-hearted.
Ah! what is not a dream by day
To him whose eyes are cast
On things around him, with a ray
Turned back upon the past?
That holy dream, that holy dream,
While all the world were chiding,
Hath cheered me as a lovely beam,
A lonely spirit guiding.
What though that light, thro' storm and night,
So trembled from afar--
What could there be more purely bright
In Truth's day-star?
| |
| | "An Enigma" by Edgar Allan Poe |
AN ENIGMA
by Edgar Allan Poe
"Seldom we find," says Solomon Don Dunce,
"Half an idea in the profoundest sonnet.
Through all the flimsy things we see at once
As easily as through a Naples bonnet--
Trash of all trash!--how can a lady don it?
Yet heavier far than your Petrarchan stuff--
Owl-downy nonsense that the faintest puff
Twirls into trunk-paper the while you con it."
And, veritably, Sol is right enough.
The general tuckermanities are arrant
Bubbles--ephemeral and so transparent--
But this is, now--you may depend upon it--
Stable, opaque, immortal--all by dint
Of the dear names that lie concealed within 't.
| |
| | "Eulalie" by Edgar Allan Poe |
EULALIE
by Edgar Allan Poe
I dwelt alone
In a world of moan,
And my soul was a stagnant tide,
Till the fair and gentle Eulalie became my blushing bride--
Till the yellow-haired young Eulalie became my smiling bride.
Ah, less--less bright
The stars of night
Than the eyes of the radiant girl!
And never a flake
That the vapor can make
With the moon-tints of purple and pearl,
Can vie with the modest Eulalie's most unregarded curl--
Can compare with the bright-eyed Eulalie's most humble and careless curl.
Now Doubt--now Pain
Come never again,
For her soul gives me sigh for sigh,
And all day long
Shines, bright and strong,
Astarte within the sky,
While ever to her dear Eulalie upturns her matron eye--
While ever to her young Eulalie upturns her violet eye.
| |
| | "Imitation" by Edgar Allan Poe |
IMITATION
by Edgar Allan Poe
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,
And my wordly rest hath gone
With a sigh as it passed on:
I care not though it perish
With a thought I then did cherish.
| |
| | "Hymn" by Edgar Allan Poe |
HYMN
by Edgar Allan Poe
At morn--at noon--at twilight dim--
Maria! thou hast heard my hymn!
In joy and woe--in good and ill--
Mother of God, be with me still!
When the Hours flew brightly by,
And not a cloud obscured the sky,
My soul, lest it should truant be,
Thy grace did guide to thine and thee;
Now, when storms of Fate o'ercast
Darkly my Present and my Past,
Let my future radiant shine
With sweet hopes of thee and thine!
| |
| | "Romance" by Edgar Allan Poe |
ROMANCE
by Edgar Allan Poe
Romance, who loves to nod and sing,
With drowsy head and folded wing,
Among the green leaves as they shake
Far down within some shadowy lake,
To me a painted paroquet
Hath been--a most familiar bird--
Taught me my alphabet to say,
To lisp my very earliest word
While in the wild wood I did lie,
A child--with a most knowing eye.
Of late, eternal Condor years
So shake the very Heaven on high
With tumult as they thunder by,
I have no time for idle cares
Though gazing on the unquiet sky.
And when an hour with calmer wings
Its down upon my spirit flings--
That little time with lyre and rhyme
To while away--forbidden things!
My heart would feel to be a crime
Unless it trembled with the strings.
| |
| | "Silence" by Edgar Allan Poe |
SILENCE
by Edgar Allan Poe
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 twofold 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!
| |
| | "Song" by Edgar Allan Poe |
SONG
by Edgar Allan Poe
I saw thee on thy bridal day--
When a burning blush came o'er thee,
Though happiness around thee lay,
The world all love before thee:
And in thine eye a kindling light
(Whatever it might be)
Was all on Earth my aching sight
Of Loveliness could see.
That blush, perhaps, was maiden shame--
As such it well may pass--
Though its glow hath raised a fiercer flame
In the breast of him, alas!
Who saw thee on that bridal day,
When that deep blush would come o'er thee,
Though happiness around thee lay,
The world all love before thee.
| |
| | "Sonnet -- To Science" by Edgar Allan Poe | 0
SONNET -- TO SCIENCE
by Edgar Allan Poe
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 ----" by Edgar Allan Poe | 1
TO ----
by Edgar Allan Poe
I heed not that my earthly lot
Hath little of Earth in it--
That years of love have been forgot
In the hatred of a minute:--
I mourn not that the desolate
Are happier, sweet, than I,
But that you sorrow for my fate
Who am a passer-by.
| |
| | "To ----" by Edgar Allan Poe | 2
TO ----
by Edgar Allan Poe
The bowers whereat, in dreams, I see
The wantonest singing birds,
Are lips--and all thy melody
Of lip-begotten words--
Thine eyes, in Heaven of heart enshrined
Then desolately fall,
O God! on my funereal mind
Like starlight on a pall--
Thy heart--thy heart!--I wake and sigh,
And sleep to dream till day
Of the truth that gold can never buy--
Of the baubles that it may.
| |
| | "To F----" by Edgar Allan Poe | 3
TO F----
by Edgar Allan Poe
Beloved! amid the earnest woes
That crowd around my earthly path--
(Drear path, alas! where grows
Not even one lonely rose)--
My soul at least a solace hath
In dreams of thee, and therein knows
An Eden of bland repose.
And thus thy memory is to me
Like some enchanted far-off isle
In some tumultuous sea--
Some ocean throbbing far and free
With storm--but where meanwhile
Serenest skies continually
Just o'er that one bright inland smile.
| |
| | "To F-----S S. O----D" by Edgar Allan Poe | 4
TO F-----S S. O----D *
by Edgar Allan Poe
Thou wouldst be loved--then let thy heart
From its present pathway part not!
Being everything which now thou art,
Be nothing which thou art not.
So with the world thy gentle ways,
Thy grace, thy more than beauty,
Shall be an endless theme of praise
And love--a simple duty.
* FRANCES S. OSGOOD
| |
| | "To M. L. S---" by Edgar Allan Poe | 5
TO M. L. S---" *
by Edgar Allan Poe
Of all who hail thy presence as the morning--
Of all to whom thine absence is the night--
The blotting utterly from out high heaven
The sacred sun--of all who, weeping, bless thee
Hourly for hope--for life--ah! above all,
For the resurrection of deep-buried faith
In Truth--in Virtue--in Humanity--
Of all who, on Despair's unhallowed bed
Lying down to die, have suddenly arisen
At thy soft-murmured words, "Let there be light!"
At thy soft-murmured words that were fulfilled
In the seraphic glancing of thine eyes--
Of all who owe thee most--whose gratitude
Nearest resembles worship--oh, remember
The truest--the most fervently devoted,
And think that those weak lines are written by him--
By him who, as he pens them, thrills to think
His spirit is communing with an angel's.
* Mrs. Marie Louise Shew
| |
| | "To My Mother" by Edgar Allan Poe | 6
TO MY MOTHER
by Edgar Allan Poe
Because I feel that, in the Heavens above,
The angels, whispering to one another,
Can find, among their burning terms of love,
None so devotional as that of "Mother,"
Therefore by that dear name I long have called you,
You who are more than mother unto me,
And fill my heart of hearts, where Death installed you,
In setting my Virginia's spirit free.
My mother--my own mother, who died early,
Was but the mother of myself; but you
Are mother to the one I loved so dearly,
And thus are dearer than the mother I knew
By that infinity with which my wife
Was dearer to my soul than its soul-life.
| |
| | "To The River ----" by Edgar Allan Poe | 7
TO THE RIVER ----
by Edgar Allan Poe
Fair river! in thy bright, clear flow
Of crystal, wandering water,
Thou art an emblem of the glow
Of beauty--the unhidden heart--
The playful maziness of art
In old Alberto's daughter;
But when within thy wave she looks--
Which glistens then, and trembles--
Why, then, the prettiest of brooks
Her worshipper resembles;
For in his heart, as in thy stream,
Her image deeply lies--
His heart which trembles at the beam
Of her soul-searching eyes.
| |
| | "To Zante" by Edgar Allan Poe | 8
TO ZANTE
by Edgar Allan Poe
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
Henceforward I hold thy flower-enamelled shore,
O hyacinthine isle! O purple Zante!
"Isola d'oro! Fior di Levante!"
| |
| |
If you find the above classic poems useful,
please link to this page from your webpage,
blog or website.
Alternatively, consider recommending us to
your friends and colleagues. Thank you in
advance! | |
Website Copyright © 2005-2012 INTERNET ACCURACY PROJECT.
BY ACCESSING THIS SITE YOU ARE STATING THAT YOU AGREE TO
BE BOUND BY OUR TERMS AND CONDITIONS
regardless of whether you reside in the United States of
America or not. Our Privacy Policy.
This page was last updated January 1, 2012.
| |
| |
