Edgar Allan Poe

Yes, Heaven is thine; but this Is a world of sweets and sours; Our flowers are merely—flowers.

Helen, thy beauty is to me Like those Nicean barks of yore, That gently, o'er a perfumed sea, The weary, wayworn wanderer bore To his own native shore.On desperate seas long wont to roam, Thy hyacinth hair, thy classic face,

Music, when combined with a pleasurable idea, is poetry; music without the idea is simply music; the idea without the music is prose from its very definitiveness.

It is with literature as with law or empire — an established name is an estate in tenure, or a throne in possession.

Hast thou not torn the Naiad from her flood, The Elfin from the green grass, and from me The summer dream beneath the tamarind tree?

And the cloud that took the form (When the rest of Heaven was blue) Of a demon in my view.

From childhood's hour I have not been As others were — I have not seen As others saw — I could not bring My passions from a common spring — From the same source I have not taken My sorrow — I could not awaken

Years of love have been forgot In the hatred of a minute.

Sound loves to revel in a summer night.

The happiest day — the happiest hour My sear'd and blighted heart hath known, The highest hope of pride and power, I feel hath flown.

O, human love! thou spirit given, On Earth, of all we hope in Heaven!

A dark unfathom'd tide Of interminable pride — A mystery, and a dream, Should my early life seem.