The Complete Poetry of Edgar Allan Poe

Table of Contents

Title Page

Copyright Page

Introduction

Tamerlane

Song

Dreams

Spirits of the Dead

Evening Star

A Dream. Within a Dream

Stanzas

A Dream

“The Happiest Day, the Happiest Hour”

The Lake: To—

Sonnet—To Science

Al Aaraaf

Romance

To —

To the River—

To—

Fairy-Land

Alone

To Helen

Israfel

The City in the Sea

The Sleeper

Lenore

The Valley of Unrest

The Coliseum

To One in Paradise

Hymn

To F—

To F—s S. O—∂

Bridal Ballad

Sonnet—To Zante

The Haunted Palace

Sonnet—Silence

The Conqueror Worm

Dream-Land

The Raven

Eulalie—A Song

A Valentine

To M. L. S—

Ulalume—A Ballad

An Enigma

To———

To Helen

Eldorado

For Annie

To My Mother

Annabel Lee

The Bells

AFTERWORD

SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY

Also Available

SIGNET CLASSICS

READ THE TOP 20 SIGNET CLASSICS

Edgar Allan Poe (1809-49) received a good education, first in England, then in a private school in Richmond, and later spent a year at the University of Virginia before he ran away to enlist in the army. Between 1827 and 1831, he published three volumes of poetry: Tamerlane (1827), Al Aaraaf (1829), and Poems (1831). From 1831 to 1835, he lived in Baltimore, where he began a lifelong struggle with poverty, disappointments in love, and addiction to alcohol. This last defect made it impossible for him to retain the editorial positions he later secured on magazines in Richmond, Philadelphia, and New York, despite the fact that the tales and book reviews he contributed greatly increased circulation. In May 1836, he married Virginia Clemm, a child of thirteen and the daughter of a paternal aunt. In April 1844, he moved his family to New York, and in January of the following year, his literary fortunes turned when his poem “The Raven” appeared in the New York Evening News. Overnight, he became the most talked-about man of letters in America. Early in 1847 his wife died, and the year 1848 saw the end of two unhappy love affairs.

Jay Parini, a poet and novelist, is Axinn Professor of English at Middlebury College. His books include the poetry collection Anthracite Country; the novel The Last Station; and biographies of John Steinbeck, William Faulkner, and Robert Frost, the last of which won the Chicago Tribune-Heartland Award for the best work of nonfiction of 2000. Among the many books he has edited are The Columbia History of American Poetry and The Oxford Encyclopedia of American Literature.

April Bernard’s books of poems are Blackbird Bye Bye, which won the Walt Whitman Prize from the Academy of American Poets; Psalms; Swan Electric; and the forthcoming Romanticism. She has also published a novel, Pirate Jenny. A former magazine editor for many years, she is now a professor of literature at Bennington College and is also on the faculty of the Bennington MFA writing seminars.

SIGNET CLASSICS

Published by New American Library, a division of
Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street,
New York. New York 10014, USA
Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto,
Ontario M4P 2Y3, Canada (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.)
Penguin Books Ltd., 80 Strand, London WC2R ORL, England
Penguin Ireland, 25 St. Stephen’s Green, Dublin 2,
Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd.)
Penguin Group (Australia). 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124,
Australia (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty. Ltd.)
Penguin Books India Pvt. Ltd., 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park,
New Delhi - 110 017, India
Penguin Group (NZ), 67 Apollo Drive, Rosedale, North Shore 0632,
New Zealand (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd.)
Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty.) Ltd., 24 Sturdee Avenue,
Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa

Penguin Books Ltd., Registered Offices:
80 Strand, London WC2R ORL, England

Published by Signet Classics, an imprint of New American Library.
a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

First Signet Classics Printing, November 1996
First Signet Classics Printing (Bernard Afterword), October 2008

Afterword copyright C April Bernard, 2008
All rights reserved

eISBN : 978-1-101-04249-6

REGISTERED TRADEMARK—MARCA REGISTRADA

The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book via the Internet or via any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated.

http://us.penguingroup.com

INTRODUCTION

I.

When Edgar Allan Poe died in 1849, only forty but ravaged in body and spirit by alcohol, his standing in the world of literature was by no means high. Indeed, it would take a major effort on the part of his admirers to revive his damaged reputation in his own country. To this day, critics argue about his literary merit, although his work has earned a solid place in the hearts of readers throughout the world.

In a sense, Poe has suffered from the vast success of a few poems. I can still remember standing before my eighth grade class, over thirty years ago, reciting the whole of “The Raven.” That poem and “The Bells” were for much of the past century a staple of school curricula. Their mesmerizing rhythms have haunted generations, and may have kept them from noticing many of Poe’s finer, more original works, such as “To Helen” or “The City in the Sea.”

Of course Poe the poet stands in fierce contention with Poe the storyteller. Historians of literature often credit him with the invention of the modem short story, and no collection of great American fiction is complete without “The Fall of the House of Usher,” “The Cask of Amontillado,” and “The Pit and the Pendulum.” In these genuinely frightening tales, Poe’s feverish imagination is vividly on display, and his literary reputation spread rapidly throughout Europe in his own lifetime.

As a critic, Poe also achieved considerable fame. Working for the Southern Literary Messenger, one of several journals that he edited in his brief lifetime, Poe wrote groundbreaking essays on poetry and fiction as well as scathing reviews of contemporary writers. His most important aesthetic statement was contained in “The Poetic Principle,” where he famously argued for the importance of lyric over narrative poetry, illustrating his discussion with quotations from Tennyson, Byron, Shelley, and Longfellow. Most tellingly, he held that long poems could not be good poems, at least not all the way through. “A long poem does not exist,” he wrote, contentiously.