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Home  »  Familiar Quotations  »  Edgar Allan Poe 1809-1849 John Bartlett

John Bartlett (1820–1905). Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. 1919.

Edgar Allan Poe 1809-1849 John Bartlett

 
1
    All that we see or seem
Is but a dream within a dream.
          A Dream within a Dream.
2
    Sound loves to revel in a summer night.
          Al Aaraaf.
3
      Years of love have been forgot
In the hatred of a minute.
          To ———.
4
    From a proud tower in the town
Death looks gigantically down.
          The City in the Sea.
5
    Vastness! and Age! and Memories of Eld!
Silence! and Desolation! and dim Night!
          The Coliseum.
6
    This—all this—was in the olden
  Time long ago.
          The haunted Palace.
7
    Unthought-like thoughts that are the souls of thought,
          To ———.
8
    This maiden she lived with no other thought
  Than to love and be loved by me.
          Annabel Lee.
9
    Keeping time, time, time
  In a sort of Runic rhyme
To the tintinnabulation that so musically wells
  From the bells, bells, bells.
          The Bells.
10
        Hear the mellow wedding bells
        Golden bells!
What a world of happiness their harmony foretells
    Through the balmy air of night
    How they ring out their delight!
          The Bells.
  
  
  
11
    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.
          To One in Paradise.
12
    Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary
Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore,
While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,
As of some one gently rapping.
          The Raven.
13
    Ah, distinctly I remember it was in the bleak December;
And each separate dying ember wrought its ghost upon the floor.
          The Raven.
14
    And the silken, sad, uncertain rustling of each purple curtain
Thrilled me—filled me with fantastic terrors never felt before.
          The Raven.
15
    Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there, wondering, fearing,
Doubting, dreaming dreams no mortal ever dreamed before.
          The Raven.
16
    Perched upon a bust of Pallas, just above my chamber door,—
  Perched, and sat, and nothing more.
          The Raven.
17
            Whom unmerciful disaster
Followed fast and followed faster.
          The Raven.
18
    Take thy beak from out my heart, and take thy form from off my door!
  Quoth the Raven, “Nevermore.”
          The Raven.
19
    And my soul from out that shadow that lies floating on the floor
  Shall be lifted—Nevermore!
          The Raven.
20
    To the glory that was Greece
And the grandeur that was Rome.
          To Helen.
21
    The skies they were ashen and sober;
  The leaves they were crisped and sere—
  The leaves they were withering and sere;
It was night in the lonesome October
  Of my most immemorial year.
          Ulalume.
22
    Here once, through an alley Titanic,
  Of cypress, I roamed with my soul,—
  Of cypress, with Psyche, my soul.
          Ulalume.
23
    A Quixotic sense of the honorable—of the chivalrous.
          Letter to Mrs. Whitman. Oct. 18, 1848.
24
      The object, Truth, or the satisfaction of the intellect, and the object, Passion, or the excitement of the heart, are, although attainable, to a certain extent, in poetry, far more readily attainable in prose.
          The Philosophy of Composition.
25
      I would define, in brief, the Poetry of words as the Rhythmical Creation of Beauty. Its sole arbiter is Taste.
          The poetic Principle.
26
    Can it be fancied that Deity ever vindictively
Made in his image a mannikin merely to madden it? 1 
          The Rationale of Verse.
 
Note 1.
FitzGerald: Omar Khayyám.
What! out of senseless Nothing to provoke
A conscious Something to resent the yoke. [back]