Poetry

Faity-Land - E.A. Poe

Faity-Land

Dim vales - and shadowy floods -

And cloudy-looking woods,

Whose forms we can't discover

For the tears that drip all over!

Huge moons there wax and wane -

Again - again - again -

Every moment of the night -

Forever changing places -

And they put out the star-light

With the breath from their pale faces.

About twelve by the moon-dial,

One more filmy than the rest

(A kind which, upon trial,

They have found to be the best)

Comes down - still down - and down,

With its centre on the crown

Of a mountain's eminence,

While its wide circumference

In easy drapery falls

Over hamlets, over halls,

Wherever they may be -

O'er the strange woods - o'er the sea -

Over spirits on the wing -

Over every drowsy thing -

And buries them up quite

In a labyrinth of light -

And then, how deep! - O, deep!

Is the passion of their sleep.

In the morning they arise,

And their moony covering

Is soaring in the skies,

With the tempests as they toss,

Like - almost anything -

Or a yellow Albatross.

They use that moon no more

For the same end as before -

Videlicet, a tent -

Which I think extravagant:

Its atomies, however,

Into a shower dissever,

Of which those butterflies

Of Earth, who seek the skies,

And so come down again,

(Never-contented things!)

Have brought a specimen

Upon their quivering wings.

-Edgar Allan Poe (1829)-