Read "Al Aaraaf" by Edgar Allan Poe online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
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O! nothing earthly save the ray / (Thrown back from flowers) of Beauty's eye, / As in those gardens where the day / Springs from the germs of Circassy --
O! nothing earthly save the thrill / Of melody in woodland rill --
Or (music of the passion-hearted)
Joy's voice so peacefully departed / That like the murmur in the shell, / Its echo dwelleth and will dwell --
O! nothing of the dross of ours --
Yet all the beauty -- all the flowers / That list our Love, and deck our bowers --
Adorn yon world afar, afar --
The wandering star.
'Twas a sweet time for Nesace -- for there / Her world lay lolling on the golden air, / Near four bright suns -- a temporary rest --
An oasis in desert of the blest.
Away -- away -- 'mid seas of rays that roll / Empyrean splendor o'er th' unchained soul --
The soul that scarce (the billows are so dense)
Can struggle to its destin'd eminence --
To distant spheres, from time to time, she rode, / And late to ours, the favor'd one of God --
But, now, the ruler of an anchor'd realm, / She throws aside the sceptre -- leaves the helm, / And, amid incense and high spiritual hymns, / Laves in quadruple light her angel limbs.
Now happiest, loveliest in yon lovely Earth, / Whence sprang the "Idea of Beauty" into birth, / (Falling in wreaths thro' many a startled star, / Like woman's hair 'mid pearls, until, afar, / It lit on hills Achaian, and there dwelt), / She look'd into Infinity -- and knelt.
Rich clouds, for canopies, about her curled --
Fit emblems of the model of her world --
Seen but in beauty -- not impeding sight --