Page:Edgar Allan Poe - how to know him.djvu/252

232 The first part of the concluding speech of Monos( pages 327-332) is a sort of prose For Annie. Mallarme considered this the best of Poe's poems, but he did not understand it: he thought the speaker was a convalescent.]

Thank Heaven! the crisis—
 * The danger is past,

And the lingering illness
 * Is over at last

And the fever called "Living"
 * Is conquered at last.

Sadly, I know
 * I am shorn of my strength.

And no muscle I move
 * As I lie at full length—

But no matter! —I feel
 * I am better at length.

And I rest so composedly
 * Now, in my bed.

That any beholder
 * Might fancy me dead—

Might start at beholding me,
 * Thinking me dead.

The moaning and groaning.
 * The sighing and sobbing,

Are quieted now,
 * With that horrible throbbing

At heart:—ah that horrible,
 * Horrible throbbing!

The sickness—the nausea—
 * The pitiless pain —

Have ceased with the fever
 * That maddened my brain —

With the fever called "Living"
 * That burned in my brain.

And oh ! of all tortures
 * That torture the worst

Has abated—the terrible
 * Torture of thirst

For the naphthaline river
 * Of Passion accurst:—

I have drank of a water
 * That quenches all thirst:—