Poetry By Edgar Allan Poe Quotes & Sayings

Ah, dream too bright to last!
Ah, starry Hope! that didst arise
But to be overcast!
A voice from out the Future cries,
"On! on!" - but o'er the Past
(Dim gulf!) my spirit hovering lies
Mute, motionless, aghast. — Edgar Allan Poe

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

As a poet and as a mathematician, he would reason well; as a mere mathematician, he could not have reasoned at all. — Edgar Allan Poe

Boston: Their hotels are bad. Their pumpkin pies are delicious. Their poetry is not so good. — Edgar Allan Poe

The death of a beautiful woman is, unquestionably, the most poetical topic in the world. — Edgar Allan Poe

To elevate the soul, poetry is necessary. — Edgar Allan Poe

A skillful literary artist has constructed a tale. If wise, he has not fashioned his thoughts to accommodate his incidents; but having conceived, with deliberate care, a certain unique or single effect to be wrought out, he then invents as may best aid him in establishing this preconceived effect. If his very initial sentence tend not to the outbringing of this effect, then he has failed in his first step. In the whole composition there should be no words written, of which the tendency, direct or indirect, is not to the one pre-established design. And by such means, with such care and skill, a picture is at length painted which leaves in the mind of him who contemplates it with a kindred art, a sense of the fullest satisfaction. The idea of the tale has been presented unblemished because undisturbed: and this is an end unattainable by the novel. Undue brevity is just as exceptionable here as in the poem; but undue length is yet more to be avoided. — Edgar Allan Poe

All that we see and seem is but a dream within a dream. — Edgar Allan Poe

A Dream Within A Dream

Take this kiss upon the brow!
And, in parting from you now,
Thus much let me avow-
You are not wrong, who deem
That my days have been a dream;
Yet if hope has flown away
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.

I stand amid the roar
Of a surf-tormented shore,
And I hold within my hand
Grains of the golden sand-
How few! yet how they creep
Through my fingers to the deep,
While I weep- while I weep!
O God! can I not grasp
Them with a tighter clasp?
O God! can I not save
One from the pitiless wave?
Is all that we see or seem
But a dream within a dream? — Edgar Allan Poe

The Bostonians are very well in their way. Their hotels are bad. Their pumpkin pies are delicious. Their poetry is not so good. Their Common is no common thing - and the duck pond might answer - if its answer could be heard for the frogs. — Edgar Allan Poe

I have been happy, though in a dream.
I have been happy-and I love the theme:
Dreams! in their vivid colouring of life
As in that fleeting, shadowy, misty strife — Edgar Allan Poe

These trifles are collected and republished chiefly with a view to their redemption from the many improvements to which they have been subjected while going at random the "rounds of the press." I am naturally anxious that what I have written should circulate as I wrote it, if it circulate at all. In defence of my own taste, nevertheless, it is incumbent upon me to say that I think nothing in this volume of much value to the public, or very creditable to myself. Events not to be controlled have prevented me from making, at any time, any serious effort in what, under happier circumstances, would have been the field of my choice. With me poetry has been not a purpose, but a passion; and the passions should be held in reverence: they must not - they cannot at will be excited, with an eye to the paltry compensations, or the more paltry commendations, of mankind. 1845. E. A. P. — Edgar Allan Poe

The object, Truth, or the satisfaction of the intellect, and the object, Passion, or the excitement of the heart, are, although attainable, to a certain extent, in poetry, far more readily attainable in prose. — Edgar Allan Poe

And the Raven, never flitting, still is sitting, still is sitting
On the pallid bust of Pallas just above my chamber door;
And his eyes have all the seeming of a demon's that is dreaming,
And the lamp-light o'er him streaming throws his shadow on the floor:
And my soul from out that shadow that lies floating on the floor
Shall be lifted - nevermore! — Edgar Allan Poe

And thus when by Poetry, or when by Music, the most entrancing of the poetic moods, we find ourselves melted into tears, we weep then, not... through excess of pleasure, but through a certain petulant, impatient sorrow at our inability to grasp now, wholly, here on earth, at once and forever, those divine and raptorous joys of which through the poem, or through the music, we attain to but brief and indeterminate glimpses. — Edgar Allan Poe

Ah, distinctly I remember it was in the bleak December
And each separate dying ember wrought its ghost upon the floor.
Eagerly I wished the morrow; - vainly I had sought to borrow
From my books surcease of sorrow - sorrow for the lost Lenore. — Edgar Allan Poe

Dreams! in their vivid coloring of life,
As in that fleeting, shadowy, misty strife
Of semblance with reality, which brings
To the delirious eye, more lovely things
Of Paradise and Love- and all our own!
Than young Hope in his sunniest hour hath known. — Edgar Allan Poe

And here, in thought, to thee-
In thought that can alone,
Ascend thy empire and so be
A partner of thy throne,
By winged Fantasy,
My embassy is given,
Till secrecy shall knowledge be
In the environs of Heaven. — Edgar Allan Poe

Prophet!" said I, "thing of evil! - prophet still, if bird or devil!
By that Heaven that bends above us- by that God we both adore-
Tell this soul with sorrow laden if, within the distant Aidenn,
It shall clasp a sainted maiden whom the angels name Lenore-
Clasp a rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name Lenore."
Quoth the Raven, "Nevermore. — Edgar Allan Poe

And thus thy memory is to me
Like some enchanted far-off isle
In some tumultuous sea
Some ocean throbbing far and free
With storms - but where meanwhile
Serenest skies continually
Just o'er that one bright island smile. — Edgar Allan Poe

Every poem should remind the reader that they are going to die. — Edgar Allan Poe

The Lake

In spring of youth it was my lot
To haunt of the wide world a spot
The which I could not love the less-
So lovely was the loneliness
Of a wild lake, with black rock bound,
And the tall pines that towered around.

But when the Night had thrown her pall
Upon that spot, as upon all,
And the mystic wind went by
Murmuring in melody-
Then-ah then I would awake
To the terror of the lone lake.

Yet that terror was not fright,
But a tremulous delight-
A feeling not the jewelled mine
Could teach or bribe me to define-
Nor Love-although the Love were thine.

Death was in that poisonous wave,
And in its gulf a fitting grave
For him who thence could solace bring
To his lone imagining-
Whose solitary soul could make
An Eden of that dim lake. — Edgar Allan Poe

The esteemed Reverend Rufus Griswold is everything I aspire to be, though I fear I shall never soar so quite as high as he
-from his resignation letter to Graham's Magazine — Edgar Allan Poe

Music, when combined with a pleasurable idea, is poetry; music, without the idea, is simply music; the idea, without the music, is prose, from its very definitiveness. — Edgar Allan Poe

The word "Verse" is used here as the term most convenient for expressing, and without pedantry, all that is involved in the consideration of rhythm, rhyme, meter, and versification ... the subject is exceedingly simple; one tenth of it, possibly may be called ethical; nine tenths, however, appertains to the mathematics. — Edgar Allan Poe

It is clear that a poem may be improperly brief. Undue brevity degenerates into mere epigrammatism. A very short poem, while now and then producing a brilliant or vivid, never produces a profound or enduring, effect. There must be the steady pressing down of the stamp upon the wax. — Edgar Allan Poe

After reading Edgar Allan Poe. Something the critics have not noticed: a new literary world pointing to the literature of the 20th Century. Scientific miracles, fables on the pattern A+ B, a clear-sighted, sickly literature. No more poetry but analytic fantasy. Something monomaniacal. Things playing a more important part than people; love giving away to deductions and other forms of ideas, style, subject and interest. The basis of the novel transferred from the heart to the head, from the passion to the idea, from the drama to the denouement. — Jules De Goncourt

You call it hope - that fire of fire!
It is but agony of desire. — Edgar Allan Poe

Shadows of Shadows passing... It is now 1831... and as always, I am absorbed with a delicate thought. It is how poetry has indefinite sensations to which end, music is an essential, since the comprehension of sweet sound is our most indefinite conception. Music, when combined with a pleasurable idea, is poetry. Music without the idea is simply music. Without music or an intriguing idea, color becomes pallour, man becomes carcass, home becomes catacomb, and the dead are but for a moment motionless. — Edgar Allan Poe

All religion, my friend, is simply evolved out of fraud, fear, greed, imagination, and poetry. — Edgar Allan Poe

I Dwelt alone
In a world of moan,
And my soul was a stagnant tide,
Till the fair and gentle Eulalie became my blushing bride-
Till the yellow-haired young Eulalie became my smiling bride
Ah, less-less bright
The stars of night
Than the eyes of the radiant girl!
And never a flake
That the vapor can make
With the moon-tints of purple and pearl,
Can vie with the modest Eulalie's most unregarded curl-
Can vie compare with the bright-eyed Eulalie's most humble and careless curl

Now Doubt-now Pain
Come never again,
For her soul gives me sigh for sigh,
And all day long
Shine, bright and strong,
Astarte within the sky,
While ever to her dear Eulalie upturns her matron eye-
While ever to her young Eulalie upturns her violet eye. — Edgar Allan Poe

For the moon never beams without bringing me dreams
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;
And the stars never rise but i feel the bright eyes
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee. — Edgar Allan Poe

I have not always been as now:
The fever'd diadem on my brow
I claim'd and won unsurprisingly-
Hath not the same fierce heirdom given
Rome to the Caeser-this is me?
The heritage of a kindly mind,
And a proud spirit which hath striven
Triumphantly with human kind. — Edgar Allan Poe

I would define, in brief, the poetry of words as the rhythmical creation of beauty. — Edgar Allan Poe

A mystery, and a dream, should my early life seem. — Edgar Allan Poe

Melancholy is ... the most legitimate of all the poetical tones. — Edgar Allan Poe

Arms are around me, hands in my hair, lips moving across my cheek, over my neck, and I'm thinking about poetry, about Edgar Allan Poe and words that move like waves, people who move like waves together, and all the non-words we can make with our bodies. — Julie Cross

I have no words - alas! - to tell
The loveliness of loving well! — Edgar Allan Poe

Had Prozac been available last century, Baudelaire's "spleen," Edgar Allan Poe's moods, the poetry of Sylvia Plath, the lamentations of so many other poets, everything with a soul would have been silenced*....
If large pharmaceutical companies were able to eliminate the seasons, they would probably do so--for profit, of course.

*This does not mean that Sylvia Plath should not have been medicated at all. The point is that pathologies should be medicated when there is risk of suicide, not mood swings. — Nassim Nicholas Taleb

With me poetry has been not a purpose, but a passion; and the passions should be held in reverence: they must not - they cannot at will be excited, with an eye to the paltry compensations, or the more paltry commendations, of mankind. — Edgar Allan Poe