| Higginson and Bigelow, comps. American Sonnets. 1891. | | | To Edgar Allan Poe
“When first I looked” | | By Sarah Helen (Power) Whitman (1803–1878) |
| | | WHEN first I looked into thy glorious eyes, | |
| And saw, with their unearthly beauty pained, | |
| Heaven deepening within heaven, like the skies | |
| Of autumn nights without a shadow stained, | |
| I stood as one whom some strange dream enthralls; | 5 |
| For, far away, in some lost life divine, | |
| Some land which every glorious dream recalls, | |
| A spirit looked on me with eyes like thine. | |
| E’en now, though death has veiled their starry light, | |
| And closed their lids in his relentless night— | 10 |
| As some strange dream, remembered in a dream, | |
| Again I see in sleep their tender beam; | |
| Unfading hopes their cloudless azure fill, | |
| Heaven deepening within heaven, serene and still. | | | | |
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