Home     The Archive     Poe's Writings     Listen to this Story     Our Video Portal     About This Site  


Fairy-Land
By Edgar Allan Poe

------=====------
          Dim vales — and shadowy floods —
          And cloudy-looking woods,
          Whose forms we can’t discover
          For the tears that drip all over
          Huge moons there wax and wane —
          Again — again — again —
          Every moment of the night —
          Forever changing places —
          And they put out the star-light
          With the breath from their pale faces.
          About twelve by the moon-dial
          One more filmy than the rest
          (A kind which, upon trial,
          They have found to be the best)
          Comes down — still down — and down
          With its centre on the crown
          Of a mountain’s eminence,
          While its wide circumference
          In easy drapery falls
          Over hamlets, over halls,
          Wherever they may be —
          O’er the strange woods — o’er the sea —
          Over spirits on the wing —
          Over every drowsy thing —
          And buries them up quite
          In a labyrinth of light —
          And then, how deep! — O, deep!
          Is the passion of their sleep.
          In the morning they arise,
          And their moony covering
          Is soaring in the skies,
          With the tempests as they toss,
          Like ——   almost any thing —
          Or a yellow Albatross.
          They use that moon no more
          For the same end as before —
          Videlicet a tent —
          Which I think extravagant:
          Its atomies, however,
          Into a shower dissever,
          Of which those butterflies,
          Of Earth, who seek the skies,
          And so come down again
          (Never-contented things!)
          Have brought a specimen
          Upon their quivering wings.
 
------------
 
  Home     The Archive     Poe's Writings     Listen to this Story     Our Video Portal     About This Site