(E.A.Poe)
|
Jeff performed a reading of this poem by Edgar Allan Poe for the tribute compilation CLOSED ON ACCOUNT OF RABIES, produced by Hal Willner.
|
|
The skies 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;
|
It was hard by the dim lake of Auber,
|
In the misty mid region of Weir,
|
It was down by the dank tarn of Auber,
|
In the ghoul-haunted woodland of Weir.
|
|
Here once, through an alley, Titanic,
|
Of cypress, I roamed with my Soul,
|
Of cypress, with Psyche, my Soul.
|
These were days when my heart was volcanic
|
As the scoriac rivers that roll,
|
As the lavas that restlessly roll
|
Their sulphurous currents down Yaaneck
|
In the ultimate climes of the pole,
|
That groan as they roll down Mount Yaaneck
|
In the realms of the boreal pole.
|
|
Our talk had been serious and sober,
|
But our thoughts they were palsied and sere,
|
Our memories were treacherous and sere,
|
For we knew not the month was October,
|
And we marked not the night of the year
|
(Ah, night of all nights in the year!);
|
We noted not the dim lake of Auber
|
(Though once we had journeyed down here),
|
Remembered not the dank tarn of Auber,
|
Nor the ghoul-haunted woodland of Weir.
|
|
And now, as the night was senescent
|
And star-dials pointed to morn,
|
As the star-dials hinted of morn,
|
At the end of our path a liquescent
|
And nebulous lustre was born,
|
Out of which a miraculous crescent
|
Arose with a duplicate horn
|
|
Astarte's bediamonded crescent
|
Distinct with its duplicate horn.
|
And I said: "She is warmer than Dian;
|
She rolls through an ether of sighs,
|
She reveals in a region of sighs:
|
|
She has seen that the tears are not dry on
|
These cheeks, where the worm never dies,
|
And has come past the stars of the Lion,
|
To point us the path to the skies,
|
To the Lethean peace of the skies;
|
Come up, in despite of the Lion,
|
To shine on us with her bright eyes,
|
Come up through the lair of the Lion,
|
With love in her luminous eyes."
|
|
But Psyche, uplifting her finger,
|
Said: "Sadly this star I mistrust,
|
Her pallor I strangely mistrust;
|
Oh, hasten! oh, let us not linger!
|
Oh, fly! let us fly! for we must."
|
In terror she spoke, letting sink her
|
Wings until they trailed in the dust;
|
In agony sobbed, letting sink her
|
Plumes till they trailed in the dust,
|
Till they sorrowfully trailed in the dust.
|
|
I replied: "This is nothing but dreaming:
|
Let us on by this tremulous light!
|
Let us bathe in this crystalline light!
|
Its sibyllic splendor is beaming
|
With hope and in beauty to-night!
|
|
Ah, we safely may trust to its gleaming,
|
And be sure it will lead us aright;
|
We safely may trust to a gleaming
|
That cannot but guide us aright,
|
Since it flickers up to heaven through the night."
|
|
Thus I pacified Psyche and kissed her,
|
And tempted her out of her gloom,
|
And conquered her scruples and gloom;
|
And we passed to the end of the vista,
|
But were stopped by the door of a tomb,
|
By the door of a legended tomb,
|
And I said:"What is written, sweet sister,
|
On the door of this legended tomb?"
|
She replied: "Ulalume! Ulalume!
|
'Tis the vault of thy lost Ulalume!"
|
|
Then my heart it grew ashen and sober
|
As the leaves that were crisped and sere,
|
As the leaves that were withering and sere,
|
And I cried: "It was surely October
|
On this very night of last year
|
That I journeyed, I journeyed down here,
|
That I brought a dread burden down here,
|
Of this night of all nights in the year,
|
Ah, what demon has tempted me here?
|
Well I know, now, this dim lake of Auber,
|
This misty mid region of Weir,
|
Well I know, now, this dank tarn of Auber,
|
This ghoul-haunted woodland of Weir."
|
|
Said we, then--the two, then--"Ah, can it
|
Have been that the woodlandish ghouls
|
The pitiful, the merciful ghouls
|
To bar up our way and to ban it
|
From the secret that lies in these wolds
|
From the thing that lies hidden in these wolds
|
Had drawn up the spectre of a planet
|
From the limbo of lunary souls
|
This |