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 wrung 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.