Wednesday, June 27, 2007

Edgar Allan Poe



By a route obscure and lonely,
Haunted by ill angels only,
Where an Eidolon, named NIGHT,
On a black throne reigns upright,
I have reached these lands but newly
From an ultimate dim Thule-
From a wild clime that lieth, sublime,
Out of SPACE- out of TIME.

Bottomless vales and boundless floods,
And chasms, and caves, and Titan woods,
With forms that no man can discover
For the tears that drip all over;
Mountains toppling evermore
Into seas without a shore;
Seas that restlessly aspire,
Surging, unto skies of fire;
Lakes that endlessly outspread
Their lone waters- lone and dead,-
Their still waters- still and chilly
With the snows of the lolling lily.

By the lakes that thus outspread
Their lone waters, lone and dead,-
Their sad waters, sad and chilly
With the snows of the lolling lily,-
By the mountains- near the river
Murmuring lowly, murmuring ever,-
By the grey woods,- by the swamp
Where the toad and the newt encamp-
By the dismal tarns and pools
Where dwell the Ghouls,-
By each spot the most unholy-
In each nook most melancholy-
There the traveller meets aghast
Sheeted Memories of the Past-
Shrouded forms that start and sigh
As they pass the wanderer by-
White-robed forms of friends long given,
In agony, to the Earth- and Heaven.

For the heart whose woes are legion
'Tis a peaceful, soothing region-
For the spirit that walks in shadow
'Tis- oh, 'tis an Eldorado!
But the traveller, travelling through it,
May not- dare not openly view it!
Never its mysteries are exposed
To the weak human eye unclosed;
So wills its King, who hath forbid
The uplifting of the fringed lid;
And thus the sad Soul that here passes
Beholds it but through darkened glasses.

By a route obscure and lonely,
Haunted by ill angels only,
Where an Eidolon, named NIGHT,
On a black throne reigns upright,
I have wandered home but newly
From this ultimate dim Thule.

4 comments:

Kate said...

From Wikipedia.com:

Thule (also Thula, Thyle, Thile, Thila, Tile, Tila, Tilla, Tyle, or Tylen—being Θούλη in Greek) is in classic sources a place, usually an island. Ancient European descriptions and maps locate it either in the far north, often northern Great Britain or Scandinavia, or in the west and north, often Iceland or Greenland. Another suggested location is Saaremaa in the Baltic Sea.[1]

Ultima Thule in medieval geographies may also denote any distant place located beyond the "borders of the known world." Some people use Ultima Thule as the Latin name for Greenland when Thule is used for Iceland.

Regarding pronunciation Joanna Kavenna[2] writes that the name has been pronounced most frequently as Thoolay rather than Thool. "Poets rhymed Thule with newly, truly and unruly, but never, it seemed, with drool."

Kate said...

From Wikipedia.com:

In Theosophy, an eidolon (Greek ειδωλον: image, idol, double, apparition, phantom, ghost) is the astral double of a living being; a phantom-double of the human form; a shade or perispirit; the kamarupa after death, before its disintegration. The phantom can appear under certain conditions to survivors of the deceased.

Kate said...

From Yahoo dictionary:

astral

ADJECTIVE:

1. Of, relating to, emanating from, or resembling the stars.
2. Biology Of, relating to, or shaped like the mitotic aster; star-shaped.
3. Of or relating to a supersensible body believed by theosophists to coexist with and survive the death of the human physical body: an astral body; astral projection.

Kate said...

From Wikipedia.com:

El Dorado (Spanish for 'the gilded one') is a legend that began with the story of a South American tribal chief who covered himself with gold dust and would dive into a lake of pure mountain water.

As the story was told and re-told, El Dorado came to be viewed as a city containing immense wealth, a legend that inspired many explorers from the 1500s on.

El Dorado is applied to a mythical country in which gold and precious stones were found in fabulous abundance. The concept of El Dorado suffered several transformations, and eventually accounts of the previous myth were also combined with those of the legendary city. The resulting El Dorado enticed European explorers for two centuries, never found, always seeming to be just beyond the limits of prior exploration.

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