Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, TO EDGAR ALLAN POE, by HOWARD ELSMERE FULLER


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

TO EDGAR ALLAN POE, by                    
First Line: Thou art a thing of death
Last Line: Pay thee homage at thy shrine.
Subject(s): Grief; Poe, Edgar Allan (1809-1849); Poetry & Poets; Sorrow; Sadness


Thou art a thing of Death—
Born of the love of Life,
Born of the love of Life-in-Death. ...

Denizen of a world which hath no name,
Which hath no being out of Mind—
Far-flung, with the mad ecstasy of youth,
To the Attic hills where Pan first sang
To a dew-drenched world
The amorous strains of Creation.
Above, in the star-tossed main,
Thou must have sat,
In the cool grey dawn of things
And watched with knowing Messianic eye
The swirling mists of chaos
Stiffen into a world profane.

With a haunting, dreamy sadness
Is bared thy cryptic soul;
With a rhythmic rune of madness,
Thy melancholy soul.

Sea things with seaweed hair
And faces blanched with pale-eyed Death
Sleep on the motley sands—
The crested wave of the sobbing sea
Hath lapped their blood like wine.
Draped in whispering robes of satin,
There dream in weird, fantastic chambers,
Maidens with waxen faces, fragile fingers,
Drained of life by hectic living
In mansions, grim and sunless.

World-old newness exotic
To this sordid clime
Sprang to thy lips erotic
And flowed like ruby wine.

Sweet gamboler in the dewy gardens
Of jeweled Paradise,
Where ruddy roses ebb and flow
In the cheeks of sylph-like children.
Elves, in their amours sweet with thee
Fresh with the matin dews of time,
Whisper to thee things unknown
To the sodden soul of man.

Demons, ghastly, foul and gory
Infest the Stygian gloom,
Spectres, grim and grey and hoary
Come shrieking from the tomb—

Come shrieking from mouldering mausolea,
Whence vague shadows of the uneasy dead,
Eluding Cerberus, the red-eyed watcher,
Fare forth on the sable wings of night
Peopling the sentient blackness
With ghoulish wraiths of terror.

Tears unceasing, bitter sorrow
Hath seared thy lonely years—
The leprous touch of sorrow,
The agony of tears.

The love of woman was to thee
Divinest torture of the soul.
Radiant life was but to thee
The sad betokening of death.

Soft as the sighs of Eros
Is the music of thy pain,
Sweet as the breath of Zephyr,
Fresh as the cooling rain.

Pilgrims journey far to mourn thee
As they would a thing divine,
And they that sought to scorn thee
Pay thee homage at thy shrine.





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