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[[n]]
How often we forget all time, when lone
Admiring Nature's universal throne;
Her woods — her wilds — her mountains — the intense
Reply of HERS to OUR intelligence!
1.
[[n]]
In youth have I known one with whom the Earth
[[n]]
In secret communing held — as he with it,
In day light, and in beauty from his birth:
Whose fervid, flick’ring torch of life was lit
5
[[n]]
From the sun and stars, whence he had drawn forth
[[n]]
A passionate light-such for his spirit was fit —
[[n]]
And yet that spirit knew not — in the hour
Of its own fervor — what had o’er it power. [page 29:]
2.
[[n]]
Perhaps it may be that my mind is wrought
10
[[v]]
[[n]]
To a fever by the moon beam that hangs o’er,
[[n]]
But I will half believe that wild light fraught
With more of sov’reignty than ancient lore
Hath ever told — or is it of a thought
[[n]]
The unembodied essence, and no more
15
That with a quick’ning spell doth o’er us pass
As dew of the night-time, o’er the summer grass.
3.
[[n]]
Doth o’er us pass, when, as th’ expanding eye
To the lov’d object — so the tear to the lid
Will start, which lately slept in apathy?
20
[[n]]
And yet it need not be — (that object) hid
From us in life — but common — which doth lie
Each hour before us — but then only bid
With a strange sound, as of a harp-string broken
[[n]]
T’ awake us — ’Tis a symbol and a token
4.
25
Of what in other worlds shall be — and giv’n
In beauty by our God, to those alone
[[n]]
Who otherwise would fall from life and Heav’n
[[n]]
Drawn by their heart's passion, and that tone,
That high tone of the spirit which hath striv’n
30
Tho’ not with Faith — with godliness — whose throne
With desp’rate energy ’t hath beaten down;
Wearing its own deep feeling as a crown.
(1827)
[The following variants appear at the bottom of page 28:]
Title Omitted in 1827.
[The following variants appear at the bottom of page 29:]
10 fever: fever (1827).
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Notes:
None.
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[S:0 - KCP, 1917] - Edgar Allan Poe Society of Baltimore - Works - Stanzas (ed. K. Campbell, 1917)