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Text: Edgar Allan Poe (ed. T. O. Mabbott), “Evening Star,” The Collected Works of Edgar Allan Poe — Vol. I: Poems (1969), pp. 73-74 (This material is protected by copyright)

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[page 73, continued:]

EVENING STAR

The chief interest of this poem lies in its foreshadowing of “Ulalume.” The Evening Star thought of as warm is, of course, the planet Venus, the Lady of Love, the crescent Astarte of the later poem.

Campbell (Poems, pp. 160-161) suggests what may be accepted as sure, that Poe had in mind the opening lines of one of Thomas Moore's Irish Melodies, “While Gazing on the Moon's Light”:

While gazing on the moon's light,

A moment from her smile I turn’d,

To look at orbs, that, more bright,

In lone and distant glory burn’d.

But too far

Each proud star, [page 74:]

For me to feel its warming flame;

Much more dear

That mild sphere,

Which near our planet smiling came.

Poe, who commented on the coldness of the moon in “Tamerlane,” “Dreams,” “Al Aaraaf,” and “Ulalume,” wrote “Evening Star” as a reply to Moore's verses. Similar replies by Poe to poems of other authors are “Sonnet — Silence” and “Eulalie.”

TEXT

Tamerlane and Other Poems (1827), pp. 28-29, is the text here followed. There are no variants, for Poe printed the poem only once, and no manuscripts are known.

EVENING STAR

’Twas noontide of summer,

And mid-time of night;

And stars, in their orbits,

Shone pale, thro’ the light

Of the brighter, cold moon,

’Mid planets her slaves,

Herself in the Heavens,

Her beam on the waves.

I gaz’d awhile

On her cold smile;

Too cold — too cold for me —