Edgar Allan Poe: Poems of Edgar Allan Poe

38. DREAM-LAND

   BY a route obscure and lonely,
    Haunted by ill angels only,
    Where an Eidolon, named NIGHT,
    On a black throne reigns upright,
    I have reached these lands but newly
    From an ultimate dim Thule -
From a wild weird clime that lieth, sublime,
          Out of SPACE - out of TIME.

    Bottomless vales and boundless floods,
    And chasms, and caves, and Titian woods,
    With forms that no man can discover
    For the dews that drip all over;
    Mountains toppling evermore
    Into seas without a shore;
    Seas that restlessly aspire,
    Surging, unto skies of fire;
    Lakes that endlessly outspread
    Their lone waters - lone and dead, -
    Their still waters - still and chilly
    With the snows of the lolling lily.

    By the lakes that thus outspread
    Their lone waters, lone and dead, -
    Their sad waters, sad and chilly
    With the snows of the lolling lily, -
    By the mountains - near the river
    Murmuring lowly, murmuring ever, -
    By the grey woods, - by the swamp
    Where the toad and the newt encamp, -
    By the dismal tarns and pools
            Where dwell the Ghouls, -
    By each spot the most unholy -
    In each nook most melancholy, -
    There the traveller meets aghast
    Sheeted Memories of the Past -
    Shrouded forms that start and sigh
    As they pass the wanderer by -
    White-robed forms of friends long given,
    In agony, to the Earth - and Heaven.

    For the heart whose woes are legion
    'Tis a peaceful, soothing region -
    For the spirit that walks in shadow
    'Tis - oh 'tis an Eldorado!
    But the traveller, travelling through it,
    May not - dare not openly view it;
    Never its mysteries are exposed
    To the weak human eye unclosed;
    So wills its King, who hath forbid
    The uplifting of the fringed lid;
    And thus the sad Soul that here passes
    Beholds it but through darkened glasses.

    By a route obscure and lonely,
    Haunted by ill angels only,
    Where an Eidolon, named NIGHT,
    On a black throne reigns upright,
    I have wandered home but newly
    From this ultimate dim Thule.

1844