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Tamerlane

by Edgar Allan Poe

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!

The 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 C'sar 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 winged 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)

Upon me with the touch of Hell,

While the red flashing of the light

From clouds that hung, like banners, o'er,

Appeared to my half-closing eye

The pageantry of monarchy;

And the deep trumpet-thunder's roar

Came hurriedly upon me, telling

Of human battle, where my voice,

My own voice, silly child! was swelling

(O! how my spirit would rejoice,

And leap within me at the cry)

The battle-cry of Victory!

The rain came down upon my head

Unsheltered and the heavy wind

Rendered me mad and deaf and blind.

It was but man, I thought, who shed

Laurels upon me: and the rush

The torrent of the chilly air

Gurgled within my ear the crush

Of empires with the captive's prayer

The hum of suitors and the tone

Of flattery 'round a sovereign's throne.

My passions, from that hapless hour,

Usurped a tyranny which men

Have deemed since I have reached to power,

My innate nature be it so:

But, father, there lived one who, then,

Then in my boyhood when their fire

Burned with a still intenser glow

(For passion must, with youth, expire)

E'en then who knew this iron heart

In woman's weakness had a part.

I have no words alas! to tell

The loveliness of loving well!

Nor would I now attempt to trace

The more than beauty of a face

Whose lineaments, upon my mind,

Are shadows on th' unstable wind:

Thus I remember having dwelt

Some page of early lore upon,

With loitering eye, till I have felt

The letters with their meaning melt

To fantasies with none.

O, she was worthy of all love!

Love as in infancy was mine

'Twas such as angel minds above

Might envy; her young heart the shrine

On which my every hope and thought

Were incense then a goodly gift,

For they were childish and upright

Pure as her young example taught:

Why did I leave it, and, adrift,

Trust to the fire within, for light?

We grew in age and love together

Roaming the forest, and the wild;

My breast her shield in wintry weather

And, when the friendly sunshine smiled.

And she would mark the opening skies,

I saw no Heaven but in her eyes.

Young Love's first lesson is the heart:

For 'mid that sunshine, and those smiles,

When, from our little cares apart,

And laughing at her girlish wiles,

I'd throw me on her throbbing breast,

And pour my spirit out in tears

There was no need to speak the rest

No need to quiet any fears

Of her who asked no reason why,

But turned on me her quiet eye!

Yet more than worthy of the love

My spirit struggled with, and strove

When, on the mountain peak, alone,

Ambition lent it a new tone

I had no being but in thee:

The world, and all it did contain

In the earth the air the sea

Its joy its little lot of pain

That was new pleasure the ideal,

Dim, vanities of dreams by night

And dimmer nothings which were real

(Shadows and a more shadowy light!)

Parted upon their misty wings,

And, so, confusedly, became

Thine image and a name a name!

Two separate yet most intimate things.

I was ambitious have you known

The passion, father? You have not:

A cottager, I marked a throne

Of half the world as all my own,

And murmured at such lowly lot

But, just like any other dream,

Upon the vapor of the dew

My own had past, did not the beam

Of beauty which did while it thro'

The minute the hour the day oppress

My mind with double loveliness.

We walked together on the crown

Of a high mountain which looked down

Afar from its proud natural towers

Of rock and forest, on the hills

The dwindled hills! begirt with bowers

And shouting with a thousand rills.

I spoke to her of power and pride,

But mystically in such guise

That she might deem it nought beside

The moment's converse; in her eyes

I read, perhaps too carelessly

A mingled feeling with my own

The flush on her bright cheek, to me

Seemed to become a queenly throne

Too well that I should let it be

Light in the wilderness alone.

I wrapped myself in grandeur then,

And donned a visionary crown

Yet it was not that Fantasy

Had thrown her mantle over me

But that, among the rabble men,

Lion ambition is chained down

And crouches to a keeper's hand

Not so in deserts where the grand

The wild the terrible conspire

With their own breath to fan his fire.

Look 'round thee now on Samarcand!

Is she not queen of Earth? her pride

Above all cities? in her hand

Their destinies? in all beside

Of glory which the world hath known

Stands she not nobly and alone?

Falling her veriest stepping-stone

Shall form the pedestal of a throne

And who her sovereign? Timour he

Whom the astonished people saw

Striding o'er empires haughtily

A diademed outlaw!

O, human love! thou spirit given,

On Earth, of all we hope in Heaven!

Which fall'st into the soul like rain

Upon the Siroc-withered plain,

And, failing in thy power to bless,

But leav'st the heart a wilderness!

Idea! which bindest life around

With music of so strange a sound

And beauty of so wild a birth

Farewell! for I have won the Earth.

When Hope, the eagle that towered, could see

No cliff beyond him in the sky,

His pinions were bent droopingly

And homeward turned his softened eye.

'Twas sunset: When the sun will part

There comes a sullenness of heart

To him who still would look upon

The glory of the summer sun.

That soul will hate the ev'ning mist

So often lovely, and will list

To the sound of the coming darkness (known

To those whose spirits hearken) as one

Who, in a dream of night, would fly,

But cannot, from a danger nigh.

What tho' the moon tho' the white moon

Shed all the splendor of her noon,

Her smile is chilly and her beam,

In that time of dreariness, will seem

(So like you gather in your breath)

A portrait taken after death.

And boyhood is a summer sun

Whose waning is the dreariest one

For all we live to know is known,

And all we seek to keep hath flown

Let life, then, as the day-flower, fall

With the noon-day beauty which is all.

I reached my home my home no more

For all had flown who made it so.

I passed from out its mossy door,

And, tho' my tread was soft and low,

A voice came from the threshold stone

Of one whom I had earlier known

O, I defy thee, Hell, to show

On beds of fire that burn below,

An humbler heart a deeper woe.

Father, I firmly do believe

I know for Death who comes for me

From regions of the blest afar,

Where there is nothing to deceive,

Hath left his iron gate ajar.

And rays of truth you cannot see

Are flashing thro' Eternity

I do believe that Eblis hath

A snare in every human path

Else how, when in the holy grove

I wandered of the idol, Love,

Who daily scents his snowy wings

With incense of burnt-offerings

From the most unpolluted things,

Whose pleasant bowers are yet so riven

Above with trellised rays from Heaven

No mote may shun no tiniest fly

The light'ning of his eagle eye

How was it that Ambition crept,

Unseen, amid the revels there,

Till growing bold, he laughed and leapt

In the tangles of Love's very hair!