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Because the first forty lines and four of the last five are entirely new, this “Fairy Land” in Poems (1831) is virtually a new poem, with an effect of its own. Lines 41-50 repeat almost verbatim lines 1-10 of “Fairyland” (1829), and lines 51, 52-54, 55-56, 57-59, and 63 use lines 12, 15-17, 27-28, 18-20, and 22, respectively, of the earlier poem, with a few changes. Poe printed the new poem only once.
[[n]]
Here, dearest, where the moonbeam fell
Just now so fairy-like and well.
Now thou art dress’d for paradise!
5
I am star-stricken with thine eyes!
My soul is lolling on thy sighs!
Thy hair is lifted by the moon
Like flowers by the low breath of June!
[[n]]
Sit down, sit down — how came we here?
10
Or is it all but a dream, my dear?
You know that most enormous flower —
[[n]]
That rose — that what d’ye call it — that hung
[[n]]
Up like a dog-star in this bower —
To-day (the wind blew, and) it swung
15
So like a thing alive you know,
[[n]]
I tore it from its pride of place
20
The winds ran off with it delighted,
And, thro’ the opening left, as soon
[[n]]
As she threw off her cloak, yon moon
Has sent a ray down with a tune. [page 162:]
25
With a spiral twist and a swell,
And over the wet grass rippled away
[[n]]
30
Which thro’ some tatter’d curtain pries
[[n]]
Is by (the very source of gloom)
35
The motes, and dust, and flies,
[[n]]
40
The night and the wonders here?
[[n]]
Dim vales! and shadowy floods!
For the tears that drip all over!
45
Huge moons — see! wax and wane
How they put out the starlight
50
With the breath from their pale faces!
Down — still down — and down —
55
Drowsily over halls — [page 163:]
60
O’er the strange woods — o’er the sea —
[1829-1831]
1 Isabel (Isabella) is a most appropriate name for a friend of a discoverer of an unknown land.
9-11 Compare “A Dream Within a Dream” (1849), lines 23-24, “Is all that we see or seem / But a dream within a dream?”
12 The phrase “what d’ye call it” and its several kindred forms are called colloquial by the lexicographers. Obviously Poe here merely means he is not quite sure the “enormous flower” is a rose.
13 “A dog-star” is here used to mean a cynosure, without direct reference to Sirius.
17 “Pride of place” is from Macbeth, II, iv, 12; Poe does not seem to have had in mind here the technical meaning: “at the highest point of a falcon's flight.”
22-23 Compare “Irenë” (1831), line 25: “Thus hums the moon within her ear.”
29 Compare the abortive ending of one version of “The Valley of Unrest,” printed in the American Review in April 1845:
They wave; they weep; and the tears, as they well
From the depth of each pallid lily-bell,
Give a trickle and a tinkle and a knell.
33 In a review in Burton's, September 1839, and in “Marginalia,” number 39, Poe praised a line, “I see the summer rooms, open and dark,” from page 13 of The Bride of Fort Edward, a book published anonymously by Delia Bacon.
39-40 Compare “The Sleeper,” lines 30-31: “Oh, lady dear, hast thou no fear? / Why and what art thou dreaming here?”
(For annotation on lines 41-64, see pp. 138-142.)
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Notes:
None.
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[S:1 - TOM1P, 1969] - Edgar Allan Poe Society of Baltimore - Editions-The Collected Works of Edgar Allan Poe (T. O. Mabbott) (Fairy Land [II])