The Works of Edgar Allan Poe — Volume 5 by Edgar Allan Poe (best historical fiction books of all time .txt) 📖

(The red fire of their heart) With speed that may not tire And with pain that shall not part— * There is found, in the Rhone, a beautiful lily of the Valisnerian kind. Its stem will stretch to the length of three or four feet—thus preserving its head above water in the swellings of the river. ** The Hyacinth. *** It is a fiction of the Indians, that Cupid was first seen floating in one of these down the river Ganges—and that he still loves the cradle of his childhood. **** And golden vials full of odors which are the prayers of the saints. —Rev. St. John. Who livest—that we know— In Eternity—we feel— But the shadow of whose brow What spirit shall reveal? Tho’ the beings whom thy Nesace, Thy messenger hath known Have dream’d for thy Infinity *A model of their own— Thy will is done, Oh, God! The star hath ridden high Thro’ many a tempest, but she rode Beneath thy burning eye; And here, in thought, to thee— In thought that can alone Ascend thy empire and so be A partner of thy throne— * The Humanitarians held that God was to be understood as having a really human form.—Vide Clarke’s Sermons, vol. 1, page 26, fol. edit. The drift of Milton’s argument, leads him to employ language which would appear, at first sight, to verge upon their doctrine; but it will be seen immediately, that he guards himself against the charge of having adopted one of the most ignorant errors of the dark ages of the church.—Dr. Sumner’s Notes on Milton’s Christian Doctrine. This opinion, in spite of many testimonies to the contrary, could never have been very general. Andeus, a Syrian of Mesopotamia, was condemned for the opinion, as heretical. He lived in the beginning of the fourth century. His disciples were called Anthropmorphites.—Vide Du Pin. Among Milton’s poems are these lines:— Dicite sacrorum præsides nemorum Deæ, &c. Quis ille primus cujus ex imagine Natura solers finxit humanum genus? Eternus, incorruptus, æquævus polo, Unusque et universus exemplar Dei.—And afterwards, Non cui profundum Cæcitas lumen dedit Dircæus augur vidit hunc alto sinu, &c. *By winged Fantasy, My embassy is given, Till secrecy shall knowledge be In the environs of Heaven.” She ceas’d—and buried then her burning cheek Abash’d, amid the lilies there, to seek A shelter from the fervour of His eye; For the stars trembled at the Deity. She stirr’d not—breath’d not—for a voice was there How solemnly pervading the calm air! A sound of silence on the startled ear Which dreamy poets name “the music of the sphere.” Ours is a world of words: Quiet we call “Silence”—which is the merest word of all. All Nature speaks, and ev’n ideal things Flap shadowy sounds from visionary wings— But ah! not so when, thus, in realms on high The eternal voice of God is passing by, And the red winds are withering in the sky! ** “What tho’ in worlds which sightless cycles run, Link’d to a little system, and one sun— Where all my love is folly and the crowd Still think my terrors but the thunder cloud, The storm, the earthquake, and the ocean-wrath— (Ah! will they cross me in my angrier path?) What tho’ in worlds which own a single sun The sands of Time grow dimmer as they run, * Seltsamen Tochter Jovis Seinem Schosskinde Der Phantasie.—Göethe. ** Sightless—too small to be seen—Legge. Yet thine is my resplendency, so given To bear my secrets thro’ the upper Heaven. Leave tenantless thy crystal home, and fly, With all thy train, athwart the moony sky— *Apart—like fire-flies in Sicilian night, And wing to other worlds another light! Divulge the secrets of thy embassy To the proud orbs that twinkle—and so be To ev’ry heart a barrier and a ban Lest the stars totter in the guilt of man!” Up rose the maiden in the yellow night, The single-mooned eve!—on Earth we plight Our faith to one love—and one moon adore— The birth-place of young Beauty had no more. As sprang that yellow star from downy hours Up rose the maiden from her shrine of flowers, And bent o’er sheeny mountain and dim plain **Her way—but left not yet her Therasæan reign. * I have often noticed a peculiar movement of the fire-flies; —they will collect in a body and fly off, from a common centre, into innumerable radii. ** Therasæa, or Therasea, the island mentioned by Seneca, which, in a moment, arose from the sea to the eyes of astonished mariners. Part II. HIGH on a mountain of enamell’d head— Such as the drowsy shepherd on his bed Of giant pasturage lying at his ease, Raising his heavy eyelid, starts and sees With many a mutter’d “hope to be forgiven” What time the moon is quadrated in Heaven— Of rosy head, that towering far away Into the sunlit ether, caught the ray Of sunken suns at eve—at noon of night, While the moon danc’d with the fair stranger light— Uprear’d upon such height arose a pile Of gorgeous columns on th’ unburthen’d air, Flashing from Parian marble that twin smile Far down upon the wave that sparkled there, And nursled the young mountain in its lair. *Of molten stars their pavement, such as fall Thro’ the ebon air, besilvering the pall Of their own dissolution, while they die— Adorning then the dwellings of the sky. A dome, by linked light from Heaven let down, Sat gently on