by Poe · Cluster: Melancholy · Suffering · Pain and Suffering
Abstract
An elegiac love lyric mourning a dead beloved who was the speaker’s whole hope; the light of life is now over, his days mere trances. Themes of grief, lost love, mortality and despair.
Connections
Topoi: Memento Mori Motifs: Love, Sea, Dreams Themes & Concepts: Grief and Loss, Unrequited Frustrated Love, Mortality, Melancholy Forms & Genres: Elegy, Lyric
Testo integrale / Full text
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.
Ah, dream too bright to last!
Ah, starry Hope! that didst arise
But to be overcast!
A voice from out the Future cries,
“On! on!”—but o’er the Past
(Dim gulf!) my spirit hovering lies
Mute, motionless, aghast!
For, alas! alas! with me
The light of Life is o’er!
No more—no more—no more—
(Such language holds the solemn sea
To the sands upon the shore)
Shall bloom the thunder-blasted tree,
Or the stricken eagle soar!
And all my days are trances,
And all my nightly dreams
Are where thy dark eye glances,
And where thy footstep gleams—
In what ethereal dances,
By what eternal streams.
1835.