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6. Lightning.

As the angel Israfel,

And the giddy stars (so legends tell)
Ceasing their hymns, attend the spell
Of his voice, all mute.

Tottering above

In her highest noon,

The enamored moon
Blushes with love,

While, to listen, the red levin

(With the rapid Pleiads, even,
Which were seven)?
Pauses in Heaven.

And they say (the starry choir
And the other listening things)
That Israfeli's fire

Is owing to that lyre

By which he sits and sings-
The trembling living wire
Of those unusual strings.

But the skies that angel trod,

Where deep thoughts are a duty-
Where Love's a grown-up God-
Where the Houris glances are
Imbued with all the beauty
Which we worship in a star.

Therefore, thou art not wrong,
Israfeli, who despisest
An unimpassioned song;
To thee the laurels belong,

Best bard, because the wisest!
Merrily live, and long!

The ecstasies above

With thy burning measures suit-
Thy grief, thy joy, thy hate, thy love,

With the fervor of thy lute-
Well may the stars be mute!

Yes, Heaven is thine; but this

Is a world of sweets and sours;
Our flowers are merely-flowers,
And the shadow of thy perfect bliss
Is the sunshine of ours.

7. Classic myth saw this constellation as seven sisters, one lost or hidden.

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8. A nymph of the Mohammedan paradise.

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9. Poe traced the inspiration of this lyric to "the first purely ideal love of my soul," Mrs. Jane Stith Stanard, a young Richmond neighbor, who died in 1824. Poe approved Lowell's statement that he wrote the first draft a year earlier, at fourteen. It was rigorously revised; the personal element is almost wholly sublimated in the idealization of the tradition of pure beauty in art. 1. No wholly convincing identification has been made. Perhaps Poe used this word merely because it is musical and suggestive. All guesses have suggested Mediterranean and classical associations, referring to cultural pilgrimages of Catullus, Bacchus, or Ulysses, thus conforming to the sense of the following three lines. The conjectures, with supporting references, are summarized in Campbell (Poems, p. 201); the Catullus theory is added by J. J. Jones in "Poe's 'Nicéan Barks'" (American Literature, II, 1931, 433-438).

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2. In "Ligeia" (below), Poe associates "the Homeric epithet, 'hyacinthine" " with "raven-black *** and naturallycurling tresses"; in another story, "The Assignation," a girl's hair resembles the "clustered curls" of "the young hyacinth"; and in classic myth, the flower preserved the memory of Apollo's love for the dead young Hyacinthus. Cf. the following phrase, "thy classic face." 3. The naiads of classical myth were nymphs associated with fresh water (lakes, rivers, fountains). Cf. "desperate seas," above.

4. Compare these perfect lines with those of the first version (Poems, 1831): "To the beauty of fair Greece, / And the grandeur of old Rome."

5. Byron's early influence has been perceived in these three lines (Campbell, Poems, p. 203); but it has not been recalled that Byron once emulated Leander, the legendary Greek lover, who nightly swam the Hellespont, guided to

The City in the Sea

Lo! Death has reared himself a throne

In a strange city lying alone

Far down within the dim West,

Where the good and the bad and the worst and the best

Have gone to their eternal rest.

There shrines and palaces and towers

(Time-eaten towers that tremble not!)
Resemble nothing that is ours.

Around, by lifting winds forgot,
Resignedly beneath the sky
The melancholy waters lie.

No rays from the holy heaven come down
On the long night-time of that town;
But light from out the lurid sea
Streams up the turrets silently—
Gleams up the pinnacles far and free-
Up domes-up spires-up kingly halls-
Up fanes-up Babylon-like' walls-
Up shadowy long-forgotten bowers
Of sculptured ivy and stone flowers-
Up many and many a marvellous shrine
Whose wreathèd friezes intertwine
The viol, the violet, and the vine.
Resignedly beneath the sky
The melancholy waters lie.

So blend the turrets and shadows there
That all seem pendulous in air,
While from a proud tower in the town
Death looks gigantically down.
There open fanes and gaping graves
Yawn level with the luminous waves;
But not the riches there that lie
In each idol's diamond eye-
Not the gaily-jewelled dead
Tempt the waters from their bed;

Hero's arms by her lamp, aloft on a
tower. Byron wrote passionately of these
lovers in The Bride of Abydos, II,
stanza 1. Lamps and vessels were some-
times made of agate in antiquity, and
the stone was a talismanic symbol of
immortality.

6. The meanings of this poem are emphasized by its earlier titles: "The Doomed City" (1831); "The City of Sin"

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(1836). Parallels with Byron and Shelley are noted by Campbell (Poems, p. 208), but observe the prevalence, in Poe's poems and tales, of the theme of the dominion of evil,

7. Babylon, in Biblical literature, is the symbol of the wicked city doomed. See, for example, Revelation xvi: 18-19; and Isaiah xiv.

For no ripples curl, alas!

Along that wilderness of glass-
No swellings tell that winds may be
Upon some far-off happier sea-

No heavings hint that winds have been
On seas less hideously serene.

But lo, a stir is in the air!

The wave-there is a movement there!

As if the towers had thrust aside,
In slightly sinking, the dull tide-
As if their tops had feebly given
A void within the filmy Heaven.
The waves have now a redder glow-

The hours are breathing faint and low—
And when, amid no earthly moans,
Down, down that town shall settle hence,
Hell, rising from a thousand thrones,
Shall do it reverence.

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The Coliseum3

Type of the antique Rome! Rich reliquary
Of lofty contemplation left to Time
By buried centuries of pomp and power!
At length-at length-after so many days
Of weary pilgrimage and burning thirst

(Thirst for the springs of lore that in thee lie),
I kneel, an altered and an humble man,
Amid thy shadows, and so drink within
My very soul thy grandeur, gloom, and glory!

Vastness! and Age! and Memories of Eld!
Silence! and Desolation! and dim Night!
I feel ye now-I feel ye in your strength-
O spells more sure than e'er Judæan king9
Taught in the gardens of Gethsemane!

O charms more potent than the rapt Chaldee1
Ever drew down from out the quiet stars!

8. This appeared, with many minor al-
terations, in five magazines before being
collected in the volume of 1845. While
Byron's feeling for antiquity is recalled
in several lines, the poem bears the genu-
ine stamp of Poe, and represents his
best blank verse.

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9. Jesus Christ. Gethsemane (1. 14) was the scene of his agony and arrest. Cf. Matthew xxvi: 36.

1. The fabled astrologers of antiquity.

Here, where a hero fell, a column falls!
Here, where a mimic eagle2 glared in gold,
A midnight vigil holds the swarthy bat!

Here, where the dames of Rome their gilded hair
Waved to the wind, now wave the reed and thistle!
Here, where on golden throne the monarch lolled,
Glides, spectre-like, unto his marble home,
Lit by the wan light of the hornèd moon,
The swift and silent lizard of the stones!

But stay! these walls-these ivy-clad arcades—

These mouldering plinths-these sad and blackened shafts-
These vague entablatures-this crumbling frieze-
These shattered cornices-this wreck-this ruin—
These stones-alas! these gray stones-are they all—
All of the famed, and the colossal left

By the corrosive Hours to Fate and me?

"not all!

"Not all"-the Echoes answer me
Prophetic sounds and loud arise forever
From us, and from all Ruin, unto the wise,
As melody from Memnon3 to the Sun.

We rule the hearts of mightiest men-we rule
With a despotic sway all giant minds.
We are not impotent-we pallid stones.
Not all our power is gone-not all our fame-
Not all the magic of our high renown—
Not all the wonder that encircles us-
Not all the mysteries that in us lie-
Not all the memories that hang upon
And cling around about us as a garment,
Clothing us in a robe of more than glory."

To One in Paradise1

Thou wast all that to me, love,

For which my soul did pine

A green isle in the sea, love,

A fountain and a shrine,

All wreathed with fairy fruits and flowers,
And all the flowers were mine.

2. The image of an eagle in bronze was
carried on a standard by the Roman
legions.

3. Slain son of the Dawn, or Aurora; his statue on the Nile was said to re

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spond with harp music at the first light of every dawn. Cf. Ovid, Metamorphoses, Book XIII, following 1. 622; Pausanias, I, 42, Section 2.

4. Poe's fondness for this dirge, which

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