Edgar Allan Poe: Trending quotes (page 4)

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“"Prophet!" said I, "thing of evil! — prophet still, if bird or devil!"”

Edgar Allan Poe The Raven

Stanza 15.
The Raven (1844)

Bird , Evil

“Vastness! and Age! and Memories of Eld!
Silence! and Desolation! and dim Night!
I feel ye now — I feel ye in your strength.”

Edgar Allan Poe

" The Coliseum http://infomotions.com/etexts/literature/american/1800-1899/poe-coliseum-674.txt", st. 2 (1833).

Age , Feeling , Silence , Memory

“Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there, wondering, fearing,
Doubting, dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared to dream before.”

Edgar Allan Poe The Raven

Stanza 5.
The Raven (1844)

Fear , Dreams

“Lo! Death has reared himself a throne
In a strange city lying alone
Far down within the dim West,
Where the good and the bad and the worst and the best
Have gone to their eternal rest.”

Edgar Allan Poe The City in the Sea

St. 1.
The City in the Sea (1831)

Death , Lying

“Gaily bedight,
A gallant knight,
In sunshine and in shadow,
Had journeyed long,
Singing a song,
In search of Eldorado.”

Edgar Allan Poe Eldorado

"Eldorado", st. 1 (1849).

Search , Singing

“The death then of a beautiful woman is unquestionably the most poetical topic in the world, and equally is it beyond doubt that the lips best suited for such topic are those of a bereaved lover.”

Edgar Allan Poe book The Philosophy of Composition

"The Philosophy of Composition" (published 1846).

Death , World , Beauty , Lovers

“I need scarcely observe that a poem deserves its title only inasmuch as it excites, by elevating the soul. The value of the poem is in the ratio of this elevating excitement. But all excitements are, through a psychal necessity, transient.”

Edgar Allan Poe

The Poetic Principle (1850)
Context: I hold that a long poem does not exist. I maintain that the phrase, "a long poem," is simply a flat contradiction in terms.
I need scarcely observe that a poem deserves its title only inasmuch as it excites, by elevating the soul. The value of the poem is in the ratio of this elevating excitement. But all excitements are, through a psychal necessity, transient. That degree of excitement which would entitle a poem to be so called at all, cannot be sustained throughout a composition of any great length.

Soul

“I have sometimes amused myself by endeavouring to fancy what would be the fate of an individual gifted, or rather accursed, with an intellect very far superior to that of his race. Of course he would be conscious of his superiority; nor could he (if otherwise constituted as man is) help manifesting his consciousness. Thus he would make himself enemies at all points. And since his opinions and speculations would widely differ from those of all mankind — that he would be considered a madman is evident. How horribly painful such a condition! Hell could invent no greater torture than that of being charged with abnormal weakness on account of being abnormally strong.In like manner, nothing can be clearer than that a very generous spirit — truly feeling what all merely profess — must inevitably find itself misconceived in every direction — its motives misinterpreted. Just as extremeness of intelligence would be thought fatuity, so excess of chivalry could not fail of being looked upon as meanness in the last degree — and so on with other virtues. This subject is a painful one indeed. That individuals have so soared above the plane of their race is scarcely to be questioned; but, in looking back through history for traces of their existence, we should pass over all the biographies of the "good and the great," while we search carefully the slight records of wretches who died in prison, in Bedlam, or upon the gallows.”

Edgar Allan Poe

Marginalia http://www.easylit.com/poe/comtext/prose/margin.shtml (November 1844)

Pain , Fate , Feeling , History

“The skies they were ashen and sober;
The leaves they were crisped and sere —
The leaves they were withering and sere;
It was night in the lonesome October
Of my most immemorial year.”

Edgar Allan Poe Ulalume

St. 1.
Ulalume (1847)

Night

“Ah, distinctly I remember it was in the bleak December;
And each separate dying ember wrought its ghost upon the floor.”

Edgar Allan Poe The Raven

Stanza 2.
The Raven (1844)

“Keeping time, time, time,
In a sort of Runic rhyme,
To the tintinnabulation that so musically wells
From the bells, bells, bells, bells,
Bells, bells, bells.”

Edgar Allan Poe book The Bells

"The Bells", st. 1 (1849).

Music , Time

“I would define, in brief, the Poetry of words as the Rhythmical Creation of Beauty. Its sole arbiter is taste. With the intellect or with the conscience, it has only collateral relations. Unless incidentally, it has no concern whatever either with duty or with truth.”

Edgar Allan Poe

The Poetic Principle (1850)

Truth , Beauty

“During the whole of a dull, dark, and soundless day in the autumn of the year, when the clouds hung oppressively low in the heavens, I had been passing alone, on horseback, through a singularly dreary tract of country, and at length found myself, as the shades of the evening drew on, within view of the melancholy House of Usher.”

Edgar Allan Poe book The Fall of the House of Usher

"The Fall of the House of Usher" (1839).

Autumn , Housing , Country

“This—all this—was in the olden
Time long ago.”

Edgar Allan Poe The Haunted Palace

"The Haunted Palace" (1839), st. 2.

Time

“And the silken sad uncertain rustling of each purple curtain
Thrilled me — filled me with fantastic terrors never felt before.”

Edgar Allan Poe The Raven

Stanza 3.
The Raven (1844)

Sadness

“Convinced myself, I seek not to convince.”

Edgar Allan Poe book Berenice

"Berenice" (1835).

“Few persons can be made to believe that it is not quite an easy thing to invent a method of secret writing which shall baffle investigation. Yet it may be roundly asserted that human ingenuity cannot concoct a cipher which human ingenuity cannot resolve.”

Edgar Allan Poe

" A Few Words on Secret Writing http://www.lfchosting.com/eapoe/works/essays/fwsw0741.htm" in Graham's Magazine (July 1841).

Secret , Personality

“There is something in the unselfish and self-sacrificing love of a brute, which goes directly to the heart of him who has had frequent occasion to test the paltry friendship and gossamer fidelity of mere Man.”

Edgar Allan Poe book The Black Cat

The Black Cat (1843)

Love , Friendship , Heart

“Thank Heaven! the crisis —
The danger is past,
And the lingering illness
Is over at last —
And the fever called "Living"
Is conquered at last.”

Edgar Allan Poe For Annie

"For Annie", st. 1 (1849).

Past