The Modern PoetFor your words and others.
Release 15
Always tinkering.

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This round: quieter reading, book-style chapters, and one HH throughout.

THE MODERN POET

To One in Paradise

By Edgar Allan Poe

Thou wast that all to me, love, For which my soul did pine-- A green isle in the sea, love, A fountain and a shrine, All wreathed with fairy fruits and flowers, And all the flowers were mine. 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! For, alas! alas! with me The light of Life is o'er! "No more--no more--no more"-- (Such language holds the solemn sea To the sands upon the shore) Shall bloom the thunder-blasted tree, Or the stricken eagle soar! And all my days are trances, And all my nightly dreams Are where thy dark eye glances, And where thy footstep gleams-- In what ethereal dances, By what eternal streams! Alas! for that accursed time They bore thee o'er the billow, From love to titled age and crime, And an unholy pillow! From me, and from our misty clime, Where weeps the silver willow!

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Poetry data from PoetryDB, curated by The Combed Thunderclap · metadata CC BY 4.0 · Public-domain poem text (USA)

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Box one belongs to works shared here—pictures, poems, or both—with a new selection each hour. The other three change one at a time every fifteen minutes. One is a Halloween poem through October. Skip any card, or pause while you read.

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