Edgar Allan Poe Quotes

Eldorado

Gaily bedight,
A gallant knight,
In sunshine and in shadow,
Had journeyed long,
Singing a song,
In search of Eldorado.

But he grew old — This knight so bold — And o’er his heart a shadow — Fell as he found
No spot of ground
That looked like Eldorado.

And, as his strength
Failed him at length,
He met a pilgrim shadow — ‘Shadow,’ said he,
‘Where can it be — This land of Eldorado?’

‘Over the Mountains
Of the Moon,
Down the Valley of the Shadow,
Ride, boldly ride,’
The shade replied, — ‘If you seek for Eldorado!

O God! Can I not save One from the pitiless wave?
Is all that we see or seem
But a dream within a dream?

Read this and thought of you:
Through joy and through sorrow, I wrote.
Through hunger and through thirst, I wrote.
Through good report and through ill report, I wrote.
Through sunshine and through moonshine, I wrote.
What I wrote it is unnecessary to say.
~ Edgar Allen Poe

If a poem hasn't ripped apart your soul; you haven't experienced poetry.

In a night, or in a day,
In a vision, or in none,
Is it therefore the less gone?
All that we see or seem
Is but a dream within a dream

Be nothing which thou art not

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, rapping at my chamber door.
“’Tis some visitor,” I muttered, “tapping at my chamber door — Only this and nothing more.

Ah, distinctly I remember it was in the bleak December;
And each separate dying ember wrought its ghost upon the floor.

And haven't I told you that what you mistake for madness is but over-acuteness of the senses.

Sensations are the great things, after all. Should you ever be drowned or hung, be sure and make a note of your sensations; they will be worth to you ten guineas a sheet.

Were I called on to define, very briefly, the term "Art," I should call it "the reproduction of what the Senses perceive in Nature through the veil of the soul." The mere imitation, however accurate, of what is in Nature, entitles no man to the sacred name of "Artist".

All suffering originates from craving, from attachment, from desire.

Fill with mingled cream and amber,
I will drain that glass again.
Such hilarious visions clamber
Through the chamber of my brain — Quaintest thoughts — queerest fancies
Come to life and fade away;
What care I how time advances?
I am drinking ale today.

And the Raven, never flitting, still is sitting, still is sitting
On the pallid bust of Pallas just above my chamber door.

Sleep. Those little slices of death. How I loathe them.