Freedom

Thank Heaven! the crisis,The danger, is past,And the lingering illnessIs over at last—And the fever called “Living”Is conquered at last. Sadly, I knowI am shorn of my strength,And no muscle I moveAs I lie at full length—But no matter!—I feelI am better at length. And I rest so composedly,Now, in my bed,That any beholderMight fancy…

It was many and many a year ago,In a kingdom by the sea,That a maiden there lived whom you may knowBy the name of Annabel Lee;And this maiden she lived with no other thoughtThan to love and be loved by me. I was a child and she was a child,In this kingdom by the sea,But…

From childhood’s hour I have not beenAs others were—I have not seenAs others saw—I could not bringMy passions from a common spring—From the same source I have not takenMy sorrow—I could not awakenMy heart to joy at the same tone—And all I lov’d—I lov’d alone—Then—in my childhood—in the dawnOf a most stormy life—was drawnFrom ev’ry…

Helen, thy beauty is to meLike those Nicéan barks of yore,That gently, o’er a perfumed sea,The weary, way-worn wanderer boreTo his own native shore. On desperate seas long wont to roam,Thy hyacinth hair, thy classic face,Thy Naiad airs have brought me homeTo the glory that was Greece,And the grandeur that was Rome. Lo! in yon…

In visions of the dark nightI have dreamed of joy departed—But a waking dream of life and lightHath left me broken-hearted. Ah! what is not a dream by dayTo him whose eyes are castOn things around him with a rayTurned back upon the past? That holy dream—that holy dream,While all the world were chiding,Hath cheered…

Lo! Death has reared himself a throneIn a strange city lying aloneFar down within the dim West,Where the good and the bad and the worst and the bestHave 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 skyThe melancholy waters…