Free The Slender Poe Anthology by Edgar Allan Poe

lay close within my covert and observed the actions of the man. And the man trembled in the solitude;—but the night waned and he sat upon the rock.
    â€œThen I grew angry and cursed, with the curse of silence , the river, and the lilies, and the wind, and the forest, and the heaven, and the thunder, and the sighs of the water-lilies. And they became accursed, and were still . And the moon ceased to totter up its pathway to heaven—and the thunder died away—and the lightning did not flash—and the clouds hung motionless—and the waters sunk to their level and remained—and the trees ceased to rock—and the water-lilies sighed no more—and the murmur was heard no longer from among them, nor any shadow of sound throughout the vast illimitable desert. And I looked upon the characters of the rock, and they were changed;—and the characters were SILENCE .
    â€œAnd mine eyes fell upon the countenance of the man, and his countenance was wan with terror. And, hurriedly, he raised his head from his hand, and stood forth upon the rock and listened. But there was no voice throughout the vast illimitable desert, and the characters upon the rock were SILENCE . And the man shuddered, and turned his face away, and fled afar off, in haste, so that I beheld him no more.”
    * * *
    Now there are fine tales in the volumes of the Magi—in the iron-bound, melancholy volumes of the Magi. Therein, I say, are glorious histories of the Heaven, and of the Earth, and of the mighty sea—and of the Genii that over-ruled the sea, and the earth, and the lofty heaven. There was much lore too in the sayings which were said by the Sybils; and holy, holy things were heard of old by the dim leaves that trembled around Dodona—but, as Allah liveth, that fable which the Demon told me as he sat by my side in the shadow of the tomb, I hold to be the most wonderful of all! And as the Demon made an end of his story, he fell back within the cavity of the tomb and laughed. And I could not laugh with the Demon, and he cursed me because I could not laugh. And the lynx which dwelleth forever in the tomb, came out therefrom, and lay down at the feet of the Demon, and looked at him steadily in the face.

    This poem was never printed during Poe’s lifetime.Entered into a young lady’s album possibly in 1829, it was later discovered and published in 1875 with initial controversy concerning its authenticity, now a matter put to rest.
    It’s quintessential Poe; in a voice both defiant and vulnerable, he speaks of his early exile from others and their common sorrows and pleasures. The recognition initiates him into the daunting vocation of poet, bound by a mystery “drawn from every depth.”
    Charles Wright, like Poe, is a Southerner possessed of wizardry both musical and imagistic, which serves a spiritual quest not unfamiliar with doubt. “Poetry is an exile’s art,” he writes in Halflife: A Commonplace Journal , “Anyone who writes it seriously writes from an exile’s point of view.”

ALONE
    From childhood’s hour I have not been
    As others were—I have not seen
    As others saw—I could not bring
    My passions from a common spring—
    From the same source I have not taken
    My sorrow—I could not awaken
    My heart to joy at the same tone—
    And all I lov’d— I lov’d alone—
    Then —in my childhood—in the dawn
    Of a most stormy life—was drawn
    From ev’ry depth of good and ill
    The mystery which binds me still—
    From the torrent, or the fountain—
    From the red cliff of the mountain—
    From the sun that ’round me roll’d
    In its autumn tint of gold—
    From the lightning in the sky
    As it pass’d me flying by—
    From the thunder, and the storm—
    And the cloud that took the form
    (When the rest of Heaven was blue)
    Of a demon in my view—

    These two brief passages come from the