Fairy-Land

By Edgar Allan Poe

Dim vales—and shadowy floods—

And cloudy-looking woods,

Whose forms we can’t discover

For the tears that drip all over:

Huge moons there wax and wane—

Again—again—again—

Every moment of the night—

Forever changing places—

And they put out the star-light

With the breath from their pale faces.

About twelve by the moon-dial,

One more filmy than the rest

(A kind which, upon trial,

They have found to be the best)

Comes down—still down—and down

With its centre on the crown

Of a mountain’s eminence,

While its wide circumference

In easy drapery falls

Over hamlets, over halls,

Wherever they may be—

O’er the strange woods—o’er the sea—

Over spirits on the wing—

Over every drowsy thing—

And buries them up quite

In a labyrinth of light—

And then, how, deep! —O, deep,

Is the passion of their sleep.

In the morning they arise,

And their moony covering

Is soaring in the skies,

With the tempests as they toss,

Like—almost any thing—

Or a yellow Albatross.

They use that moon no more

For the same end as before,

Videlicet, a tent—

Which I think extravagant:

Its atomies, however,

Into a shower dissever,

Of which those butterflies

Of Earth, who seek the skies,

And so come down again

(Never-contented things!)

Have brought a specimen

Upon their quivering wings.

Source: The Complete Poems and Stories of Edgar Allan Poe (1946)