Darkness falls

night has come

It is time for rest.

I lie down peacfully

thinking of no other:

My eyes close,

Cross into another world,

full of joy and happiness:

This must be real.

Carried away

by the beauty of your face,

hoplessly never endeing.

I reach forward to hold you,

Yet to find that you are not there.

How can this be real?

my mind is playing games,

driving me to dispair,

always thinking you are there.

eyes wide open,

confused and not knowing

to find you are really not there.

by Edgar Allan Poe
(1831)

At midnight, in the month of June,
I stand beneath the mystic moon.
An opiate vapor, dewy, dim,
Exhales from out her golden rim,
And, softly dripping, drop by drop,
Upon the quiet mountain top,
Steals drowsily and musically
Into the universal valley.
The rosemary nods upon the grave;
The lily lolls upon the wave;
Wrapping the fog about its breast,
The ruin molders into rest;
Looking like Lethe, see! the lake
A conscious slumber seems to take,
And would not, for the world, awake.
All Beauty sleeps!- and lo! where lies
Irene, with her Destinies!

O, lady bright! can it be right-
This window open to the night?
The wanton airs, from the tree-top,
Laughingly through the lattice drop-
The bodiless airs, a wizard rout,
Flit through thy chamber in and out,
And wave the curtain canopy
So fitfully- so fearfully-
Above the closed and fringed lid
'Neath which thy slumb'ring soul lies hid,
That, o'er the floor and down the wall,
Like ghosts the shadows rise and fall!
Oh, lady dear, hast thou no fear?
Why and what art thou dreaming here?
Sure thou art come O'er far-off seas,
A wonder to these garden trees!
Strange is thy pallor! strange thy dress,
Strange, above all, thy length of tress,
And this all solemn silentness!

The lady sleeps! Oh, may her sleep,
Which is enduring, so be deep!
Heaven have her in its sacred keep!
This chamber changed for one more holy,
This bed for one more melancholy,
I pray to God that she may lie
For ever with unopened eye,
While the pale sheeted ghosts go by!

My love, she sleeps! Oh, may her sleep
As it is lasting, so be deep!
Soft may the worms about her creep!
Far in the forest, dim and old,
For her may some tall vault unfold-
Some vault that oft has flung its black
And winged panels fluttering back,
Triumphant, o'er the crested palls,
Of her grand family funerals-
Some sepulchre, remote, alone,
Against whose portal she hath thrown,
In childhood, many an idle stone-
Some tomb from out whose sounding door
She ne'er shall force an echo more,
Thrilling to think, poor child of sin!
It was the dead who groaned within.

-- THE END --

Saviour

When the candles gutter
and the bedsheets entangle me
in the convolutions of an
indistinctly menacing emptiness,
and i wander like a lost child
through gaping chasms of
the unfamiliar terrain of loneliness--
When the light flickers
like a moth against the face
of this black world
and my soul is flailed
in the silent faces
of loves lost in time,
and I feel the nails
driving me through;
when there is nothing to forgive,
and the penance seems
too light--

It is in these times of horror
when the town clock
rings only a moment,
and the echos follow me
out of the bedroom
and through the door,
that I wish you were with me;
only you can dispell this horror.

by Edgar Allan Poe
(1845)

         I dwelt alone
         In a world of moan,
     And my soul was a stagnant tide,
Till the fair and gentle Eulalie became my blushing bride-
Till the yellow-haired young Eulalie became my smiling bride.

         Ah, less- less bright
         The stars of the night
     Than the eyes of the radiant girl!
         And never a flake
         that the vapor can make
     With the moon-tints of purple and pearl,
Can vie with the modest Eulalie's most unregarded curl-
Can compare with the bright-eyed Eulalie's most humble and careless
     curl.

         Now Doubt- now Pain
         Come never again,
     For her soul gives me sigh for sigh,
         And all day long
         Shines, bright and strong,
     Astarte within the sky,
While ever to her dear Eulalie upturns her matron eye-
While ever to her young Eulalie upturns her violet eye.

-- THE END --