EDGAR ALLAN POE

SONNET-TO SCIENCE

Science, true daughter of Old Time thou art!
Who alterest all things with thy peering eyes.
Why preyest thou thus upon the poet's heart,

Vulture, whose wings are dull realities?
How should he love thee, or how deem thee wise,
Who wouldst not leave him in his wandering
To seek for treasure in the jewelled skies,

Albeit he soared with an undaunted wing?
Hast thou not dragged Diana from her car,

And driven the Hamadryad from the wood
To seek a shelter in some happier star?

Hast thou not torn the Naiad from her flood,
The Elfin from the green grass, and from me
The summer dream beneath the tamarind tree?

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ΙΟ

(Oh, how, without

you, Love,

Could angels be blest?)—

Those kisses of true love

That lull'd ye to rest!

Up! shake from your wing

Each hindering thing:

The dew of the night

It would weigh down your flight;

And true-love caresses

O, leave them apart;

They are light on the tresses,

But lead on the heart.

Ligeia! Ligeia!

My beautiful one!

Whose harshest idea

Will to melody run,

O, is it thy will

On the breezes to toss?

Or, capriciously still,

Like the lone Albatross,

Incumbent on night

(As she on the air)

To keep watch with delight

On the harmony there?

Ligeia, wherever

Thy image may be,

No magic shall sever

Thy music from thee!

Thou hast bound many eyes

In a dreamy sleep;

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Lo, Death has reared himself a throne

In a strange city lying alone

Far down within the dim West,

Where the good and the bad and the worst and the best

Have gone to their eternal rest.

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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 sky

The melancholy waters lie.

No rays from the holy heaven come down

On the long night-time of that town;

ΙΟ