Page:Edgar Allan Poe - how to know him.djvu/236

 216 EDGAR ALLAN POE �Ah, dream too bright to last! �Ah, starry Hope! that didst arise But to be overcast! �'A voice from out the Future cries, "On! on!" but o'er the Past �(Dim gulf!) my spirit hovering lies Mute, motionless, aghast. �For, alas! alas! with me �The light of Life is o'er! �"No more no more no more " (Such language holds the solemn sea �To the sands upon the shore) Shall bloom the thunder-blasted tree, �Or the stricken eagle soar! �And all my days are trances, �And all my nightly dreams Are where thy grey eye glances, �And where thy footstep gleams In what ethereal dances, �By what eternal streams. �THE HAUNTED PALACE (1839) �[This poem, called by Poe a ballad, was an im- promptu of the hero in The Fall of the House of Usher and, as Lowell says, "loses greatly by being taken out of its rich and appropriate setting." To call it a self- portraiture of Poe is to deal flagrantly with both liter- ature and life. "By The Haunted Palace," said Poe, "I mean to imply a mind haunted by phantoms a dis- ordered brain." Poe's poem was published in April, 1839, and Longfellow's Beleaguered City in the fol- lowing November. The charge of plagiarism which Poe promptly brought is not borne out by a comparison of the form or content of the two poems.] �In the greenest of our valleys �By good angels tenanted, Once a fair and stately palace �Radiant palace reared its head. In the monarch Thought's dominion �It stood there! Never seraph spread a pinion �Over fabric half so fair! ��� �