Read "Tamerlane" by Edgar Allan Poe online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
Kind solace in a dying hour!
Such, father, is not (now) my theme --
I will not madly deem that power / Of Earth may shrive me of the sin / Unearthly pride hath revelled in --
I have no time to dote or dream:
You call it hope -- that fire of fire!
It is but agony of desire:
If I can hope -- O God! I can --
Its fount is holier -- more divine --
I would not call thee fool, old man, / But such is not a gift of thine.
Know thou the secret of a spirit / Bowed from its wild pride into shame.
O yearning heart! I did inherit / Thy withering portion with the fame, / The searing glory which hath shone / Amid the Jewels of my throne, / Halo of Hell! and with a pain / Not Hell shall make me fear again --
O craving heart, for the lost flowers / And sunshine of my summer hours!
Th' undying voice of that dead time, / With its interminable chime, / Rings, in the spirit of a spell, / Upon thy emptiness -- a knell.
I have not always been as now:
The fevered diadem on my brow / I claimed and won usurpingly --
Hath not the same fierce heirdom given / Rome to the Caesar -- this to me?
The heritage of a kingly mind, / And a proud spirit which hath striven / Triumphantly with human kind.
On mountain soil I first drew life:
The mists of the Taglay have shed / Nightly their dews upon my head, / And, I believe, the wingèd strife / And tumult of the headlong air / Have nestled in my very hair.
So late from Heaven -- that dew -- it fell / ('Mid dreams of an unholy night)