Poe's Cottage at Fordham

Here lived the soul enchanted   By melody of song; Here dwelt the spirit haunted   By a demoniac throng; Here sang the lips elated; Here grief and death were sated; Here loved and here unmated   Was he, so frail, so strong. Here wintry winds and cheerless   The dying firelight blew, While he whose song was peerless   Dreamed the drear midnight through, And from dull embers chilling Crept shadows darkly filling The silent place, and thrilling   His fancy as they grew. Here, with brow bared to heaven,   In starry night he stood, With the lost star of seven   Feeling sad brotherhood. Here in the sobbing showers Of dark autumnal hours He heard suspected powers   Shriek through the stormy wood. From visions of Apollo   And of Astarte’s bliss, He gazed into the hollow   And hopeless vale of Dis; And though earth were surrounded By heaven, it still was mounded With graves. His soul had sounded   The dolorous abyss. Proud, mad, but not defiant,   He touched at heaven and hell. Fate found a rare soul pliant   And rung her changes well. Alternately his lyre, Stranded with strings of fire, Led earth’s most happy choir,   Or flashed with Israfel. No singer of old story   Luting accustomed lays, No harper for new glory,   No mendicant for praise, He struck high chords and splendid, Wherein were fiercely blended Tones that unfinished ended   With his unfinished days. Here through this lowly portal,   Made sacred by his name, Unheralded immortal   The mortal went and came. And fate that then denied him, And envy that decried him, And malice that belied him,   Have cenotaphed his fame.