The Raven and Other Selected Poems

Автор

Эдгар Аллан По

Год написания книги

2019

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(’Mid dreams of an unholy night)

Upon me with the touch of Hell,

While the red flashing of the light

From clouds that hung, like banners, o’er,

Appeared to my half-closing eye

The pageantry of monarchy;

And the deep trumpet-thunder’s roar

Came hurriedly upon me, telling

Of human battle, where my voice,

My own voice, silly child!—was swelling

(O! how my spirit would rejoice,

And leap within me at the cry)

The battle-cry of Victory!

The rain came down upon my head

Unsheltered—and the heavy wind

Rendered me mad and deaf and blind.

It was but man, I thought, who shed

Laurels upon me: and the rush—

The torrent of the chilly air

Gurgled within my ear the crush

Of empires—with the captive’s prayer—

The hum of suitors—and the tone

Of flattery ’round a sovereign’s throne.

My passions, from that hapless hour,

Usurped a tyranny which men

Have deemed since I have reached to power,

My innate nature—be it so:

But, father, there lived one who, then,

Then—in my boyhood—when their fire

Burned with a still intenser glow

(For passion must, with youth, expire)

E’en then who knew this iron heart

In woman’s weakness had a part.

I have no words—alas!—to tell

The loveliness of loving well!

Nor would I now attempt to trace

The more than beauty of a face

Whose lineaments, upon my mind,

Are—shadows on th’ unstable wind:

Thus I remember having dwelt

Some page of early lore upon,

With loitering eye, till I have felt

The letters—with their meaning—melt

To fantasies—with none.

O, she was worthy of all love!

Love as in infancy was mine—

’Twas such as angel minds above

Might envy; her young heart the shrine

On which my every hope and thought

Were incense—then a goodly gift,