A hard, dull bitterness of cold, race Of life-blood in the sharpened face, The coming of the snow-storm told. 15 The wind blew east; we heard the roar Of Ocean on his wintry shore, And felt the strong pulse throbbing there Beat with low rhythm our inland air. Meanwhile we did our nightly chores, 20 Brought in the wood from out of doors, Littered the stalls, and from the mows Raked down the herd's-grass for the COWS: Heard the horse whinnying for his corn; And, sharply clashing horn on horn, 25 Impatient down the stanchion rows The cattle shake their walnut bows; While, peering from his early perch Upon the scaffold's pole of birch, The cock his crested helmet bent 30 And down his querulous challenge sent. Unwarmed by any sunset light The gray day darkened into night, A night made hoary with the swarm And whirl-dance of the blinding storm, 35 As zigzag, wavering to and fro, Crossed and recrossed the winged snow: And ere the early bedtime came The white drift piled the window-frame, And through the glass the clothesline posts 40 Looked in like tall and sheeted ghosts. So all night long the storm roared on: The morning broke without a sun; In tiny spherule traced with lines Of Nature's geometric signs, 45 In starry flake, and pellicle, All day the hoary meteor fell; And, when the second morning shone, We looked upon a world unknown, On nothing we could call our own. 50 Around the glistening wonder bent The blue walls of the firmament, No cloud above, no earth below, A universe of sky and snow! The old familiar sights of ours 75 To guard our necks and ears from 85 All day the gusty north-wind bore The loosening drift its breath before; Low circling round its southern zone, 95 The sun through dazzling snow-mist shone. No church-bell lent its Christian tone 4 E Beyond the circle of our hearth EDGAR ALLAN POE. DGAR ALLAN POE (1809-1849) was born in Boston, both his parents being actors in a travelling company. Through the munificence of a wealthy Richmond merchant, who adopted him, he obtained a good education, and studied in the University of Virginia. But, owing to his reckless life, he was disinherited by his foster-father and thus thrown upon his own resources. He tried to earn his living by journalistic work in Baltimore, New York, and Philadelphia; but, however successful he was with his pen, intemperance and self-indulgence made his life a continuous struggle with poverty. He died in extreme misery in a Baltimore Hospital, at the early age of forty. Poe was a poet, a critic, and a writer of fiction, and combined rich poetic imagination with a marvellous power of analysis. THE Of his critical essays the most interesting to the modern reader are those concerned with poetical technique, like The Philosophy of Composition (1846) or The Poetic Principle (1850). His short prose tales, such as The Fall of the House of Usher (1838), William Wilson (1839), A Descent into the Maelström (1841), The Gold Bug (1843), and The Murders in the Rue Morgue, are full of horror and mystery, but highly imaginative and ingeniously constructed. His poetry is small in bulk and narrow in range, but includes such masterpieces of rare musical beauty as the lyrics Israfel (1831), The City in the Sea (1831), The Haunted Palace, The Raven (1845), For Annie, Ulalume, Annabel Lee (1849), and The Bells (1849), most of which are pervaded by a gloomy sentiment of melancholy and a haunting spell of mysticism. RAVEN. [From "The Evening Mirror', January 29, 1845] Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary, Only this and nothing more.' Ah, distinctly I remember it was in the bleak December, 8 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 For the rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name Lenore Nameless here for evermore. 12 |