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Al Aaraaf By Edgar Allan Poe
PAGE: 1
AL AARAAF*
PART I.
O ! NOTHING earthly save the ray
(Thrown back from flowers) of Beauty's eye,
As in those gardens where the day
Springs from the gems of Circassy -
O ! nothing earthly save the thrill
Of melody in woodland rill -
Or (music of the passion-hearted)
Joy's voice so peacefully departed
That like the murmur in the shell,
Its echo dwelleth and will dwell -
Oh, nothing of the dross of ours -
Yet all the beauty - all the flowers
That list our Love, and deck our bowers -
Adorn yon world afar, afar -
The wandering star.
'Twas a sweet time for Nesace - for there
Her world lay lolling on the golden air,
Near four bright suns - a temporary rest -
An oasis in desert of the blest.
* A star was discovered by Tycho Brahe which appeared suddenly in the
heavens - attained, in a few days, a brilliancy surpassing that of Jupiter
- then as suddenly disappeared, and has never been seen since.
Away - away - 'mid seas of rays that roll
Empyrean splendor o'er th' unchained soul -
The soul that scarce (the billows are so dense)
Can struggle to its destin'd eminence -
To distant spheres, from time to time, she rode,
And late to ours, the favour'd one of God -
But, now, the ruler of an anchor'd realm,
She throws aside the sceptre - leaves the helm,
And, amid incense and high spiritual hymns,
Laves in quadruple light her angel limbs.
Now happiest, loveliest in yon lovely Earth,
Whence sprang the "Idea of Beauty" into birth,
(Falling in wreaths thro' many a startled star,
Like woman's hair 'mid pearls, until, afar,
It lit on hills Achaian, and there dwelt)
She look'd into Infinity - and knelt.
Rich clouds, for canopies, about her curled -
Fit emblems of the model of her world -
Seen but in beauty - not impeding sight
Of other beauty glittering thro' the light -
A wreath that twined each starry form around,
And all the opal'd air in color bound.
All hurriedly she knelt upon a bed
Of flowers : of lilies such as rear'd the head
*On the fair Capo Deucato, and sprang
So eagerly around about to hang
Upon the flying footsteps of -- deep pride -
†Of her who lov'd a mortal - and so died.
The Sephalica, budding with young bees,
Uprear'd its purple stem around her knees :
* On Santa Maura - olim Deucadia. † Sappho.
*And gemmy flower, of Trebizond misnam'd -
Inmate of highest stars, where erst it sham'd
All other loveliness : its honied dew
(The fabled nectar that the heathen knew)
Deliriously sweet, was dropp'd from Heaven,
And fell on gardens of the unforgiven
In Trebizond - and on a sunny flower
So like its own above that, to this hour,
It still remaineth, torturing the bee
With madness, and unwonted reverie :
In Heaven, and all its environs, the leaf
And blossom of the fairy plant, in grief
Disconsolate linger - grief that hangs her head,
Repenting follies that full long have fled,
Heaving her white breast to the balmy air,
Like guilty beauty, chasten'd, and more fair :
Nyctanthes too, as sacred as the light
She fears to perfume, perfuming the night :
†And Clytia pondering between many a sun,
While pettish tears adown her petals run :
‡And that aspiring flower that sprang on Earth -
And died, ere scarce exalted into birth,
Bursting its odorous heart in spirit to wing
Its way to Heaven, from garden of a king :
* This flower is much noticed by Lewenhoeck and Tournefort. The bee,
feeding upon its blossom, becomes intoxicated.
† Clytia - The Chrysanthemum Peruvianum, or, to employ a better-known
term, the turnsol - which continually turns towards the sun, covers
itself, like Peru, the country from which it comes, with dewy clouds which
cool and refresh its flowers during the most violent heat of the day. -
_B. de St. Pierre_.
‡ There is cultivated in the king's garden at Paris, a species of
serpentine aloes without prickles, whose large and beautiful flower
exhales a strong odour of the vanilla, during the time of its expansion,
which is very short. It does not blow till towards the month of July - you
then perceive it gradually open its petals - expand them - fade and die. -
_St. Pierre_.
*And Valisnerian lotus thither flown
From struggling with the waters of the Rhone :
†And thy most lovely purple perfume, Zante !
Isola d'oro ! - Fior di Levante !
‡And the Nelumbo bud that floats for ever
With Indian Cupid down the holy river -
Fair flowers, and fairy ! to whose care is given
§ To bear the Goddess' song, in odors, up to Heaven :
"Spirit ! that dwellest where,
In the deep sky,
The terrible and fair,
In beauty vie !
Beyond the line of blue -
The boundary of the star
Which turneth at the view
Of thy barrier and thy bar -
Of the barrier overgone
By the comets who were cast
From their pride, and from their throne
To be drudges till the last -
To be carriers of fire
(The red fire of their heart)
With speed that may not tire
And with pain that shall not part -
* There is found, in the Rhone, a beautiful lily of the Valisnerian
kind. Its stem will stretch to the length of three or four feet - thus
preserving its head above water in the swellings of the river.
† The Hyacinth.
‡ It is a fiction of the Indians, that Cupid was first seen floating
in one of these down the river Ganges - and that he still loves the cradle
of his childhood.
§ And golden vials full of odors which are the prayers of the saints.
- _Rev. St. John_.
Who livest - _that_ we know -
In Eternity - we feel -
But the shadow of whose brow
What spirit shall reveal ?
Tho' the beings whom thy Nesace,
Thy messenger hath known
Have dream'd for thy Infinity
*A model of their own -
Thy will is done, Oh, God !
The star hath ridden high
Thro' many a tempest, but she rode
Beneath thy burning eye ;
And here, in thought, to thee -
In thought that can alone
Ascend thy empire and so be
A partner of thy throne -
* The Humanitarians held that God was to be understood as having a
really human form. - _Vide Clarke's Sermons_, vol. 1, page 26, fol. edit.
The drift of Milton's argument, leads him to employ language which
would appear, at first sight, to verge upon their doctrine ; but it will
be seen immediately, that he guards himself against the charge of having
adopted one of the most ignorant errors of the dark ages of the church. -
_Dr. Sumner's Notes on Milton's Christian Doctrine_.
This opinion, in spite of many testimonies to the contrary, could
never have been very general. Andeus, a Syrian of Mesopotamia, was
condemned for the opinion, as heretical. He lived in the beginning of the
fourth century. His disciples were called Anthropmorphites. - _Vide Du
Pin_.
Among Milton's poems are these lines: -
Dicite sacrorum præsides nemorum Deæ, &c.
Quis ille primus cujus ex imagine
Natura solers finxit humanum genus ?
Eternus, incorruptus, æquævus polo,
Unusque et universus exemplar Dei. - And afterwards,
Non cui profundum Cæcitas lumen dedit
Dircæus augur vidit hunc alto sinu, &c.
*By winged Fantasy,
My embassy is given,
Till secrecy shall knowledge be
In the environs of Heaven."
She ceas'd - and buried then her burning cheek
Abash'd, amid the lilies there, to seek
A shelter from the fervour of His eye ;
For the stars trembled at the Deity.
She stirr'd not - breath'd not - for a voice was there
How solemnly pervading the calm air !
A sound of silence on the startled ear
Which dreamy poets name "the music of the sphere."
Ours is a world of words : Quiet we call
"Silence" - which is the merest word of all.
All Nature speaks, and ev'n ideal things
Flap shadowy sounds from visionary wings -
But ah ! not so when, thus, in realms on high
The eternal voice of God is passing by,
And the red winds are withering in the sky !
†"What tho' in worlds which sightless cycles run,
Link'd to a little system, and one sun -
Where all my love is folly and the crowd
Still think my terrors but the thunder cloud,
The storm, the earthquake, and the ocean-wrath -
(Ah ! will they cross me in my angrier path ?)
What tho' in worlds which own a single sun
The sands of Time grow dimmer as they run,
* Seltsamen Tochter Jovis
Seinem Schosskinde
Der Phantasie. - _Göethe_.
† Sightless - too small to be seen - _Legge_.
Yet thine is my resplendency, so given
To bear my secrets thro' the upper Heaven.
Leave tenantless thy crystal home, and fly,
With all thy train, athwart the moony sky -
*Apart - like fire-flies in Sicilian night,
And wing to other worlds another light !
Divulge the secrets of thy embassy
To the proud orbs that twinkle - and so be
To ev'ry heart a barrier and a ban
Lest the stars totter in the guilt of man !"
Up rose the maiden in the yellow night,
The single-mooned eve ! - on Earth we plight
Our faith to one love - and one moon adore -
The birth-place of young Beauty had no more.
As sprang that yellow star from downy hours
Up rose the maiden from her shrine of flowers,
And bent o'er sheeny mountain and dim plain
†Her way - but left not yet her Therasæan reign.
* I have often noticed a peculiar movement of the fire-flies ; - they
will collect in a body and fly off, from a common centre, into innumerable
radii.
† Therasæa, or Therasea, the island mentioned by Seneca, which, in a
moment, arose from the sea to the eyes of astonished mariners.
Part II.
HIGH on a mountain of enamell'd head -
Such as the drowsy shepherd on his bed
Of giant pasturage lying at his ease,
Raising his heavy eyelid, starts and sees
With many a mutter'd "hope to be forgiven"
What time the moon is quadrated in Heaven -
Of rosy head, that towering far away
Into the sunlit ether, caught the ray
Of sunken suns at eve - at noon of night,
While the moon danc'd with the fair stranger light -
Uprear'd upon such height arose a pile
Of gorgeous columns on th' unburthen'd air,
Flashing from Parian marble that twin smile
Far down upon the wave that sparkled there,
And nursled the young mountain in its lair.
*Of molten stars their pavement, such as fall
Thro' the ebon air, besilvering the pall
Of their own dissolution, while they die -
Adorning then the dwellings of the sky.
A dome, by linked light from Heaven let down,
Sat gently on these columns as a crown -
A window of one circular diamond, there,
Look'd out above into the purple air,
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