[by Edgar Allan Poe]
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At midnight, in the month of June,
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I stand beneath the mystic moon.
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An opiate vapor, dewy, dim,
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Exhales from out her golden rim,
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And, softly dripping, drop by drop,
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Upon the quiet mountain top,
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Steals drowsily and musically
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Into the universal valley.
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The rosemary nods upon the grave;
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The lily lolls upon the wave;
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Wrapping the fog about its breast,
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The ruin molders into rest;
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Looking like Lethe, see! the lake
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A conscious slumber seems to take,
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And would not, for the world, awake.
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All Beauty sleeps!- and lo! where lies
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Irene, with her Destinies!
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O, lady bright! can it be right-
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This window open to the night?
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The wanton airs, from the tree-top,
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Laughingly through the lattice drop-
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The bodiless airs, a wizard rout,
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Flit through thy chamber in and out,
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And wave the curtain canopy
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So fitfully- so fearfully-
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Above the closed and fringed lid
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'Neath which thy slumb'ring soul lies hid,
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That, o'er the floor and down the wall,
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Like ghosts the shadows rise and fall!
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Oh, lady dear, hast thou no fear?
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Why and what art thou dreaming here?
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Sure thou art come O'er far-off seas,
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A wonder to these garden trees!
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Strange is thy pallor! strange thy dress,
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Strange, above all, thy length of tress,
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And this all solemn silentness!
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The lady sleeps! Oh, may her sleep,
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Which is enduring, so be deep!
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Heaven have her in its sacred keep!
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This chamber changed for one more holy,
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This bed for one more melancholy,
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I pray to God that she may lie
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For ever with unopened eye,
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While the pale sheeted ghosts go by!
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My love, she sleeps! Oh, may her sleep
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As it is lasting, so be deep!
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Soft may the worms about her creep!
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Far in the forest, dim and old,
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For her may some tall vault unfold-
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Some vault that oft has flung its black
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And winged panels fluttering back,
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Triumphant, o'er the crested palls,
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Of her grand family funerals-
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Some sepulchre, remote, alone,
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Against whose portal she hath thrown,
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In childhood, many an idle stone-
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Some tomb from out whose sounding door
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She ne'er shall force an echo more,
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Thrilling to think, poor child of sin!
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It was the dead who groaned within.
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-----------------
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The Sleeper
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Sopor Aeternus |