Israfel

okay, so I'm being a bit of a bowerbird (bowercrane?) at the moment, poaching other people's words and using them to glorify my own, but i've used up about half a year's worth of Original Thought in the last two weeks of uni and I got nothin left. Gimme a week or two; in the meantime, here's some words from Edgar Allen.

My introduction to Mr Poe occurred via an episode of Sabrina the Teenage Witch. It's kinda hard to credit a guy you first saw returning from the dead through the Other Realm in the linen closet, exchanging wisecracks with a black cat and the future host of the American Biggest Loser, so even when a copy of his collected works appeared mysteriously on my bookshelf I ignored it for a bit. I don't know what prompted me to open it in the end, but as soon as I did I found this. It was before I even liked poetry that much, and even now I'm still minorly obsessed with it.


In Heaven a spirit doth dwell
"Whose heart-strings are a lute";
None sing so wildly well
As the angel Israfel,
And the giddy stars (so legends tell),
Ceasing their hymns, attend the spell
Of his voice, all mute.

Tottering above
In her highest noon,
The enamored moon
Blushes with love,
While, to listen, the red levin
(With the rapid Pleiads, even,
Which were seven,)
Pauses in Heaven.

And they say (the starry choir
And the other listening things)
That Israfel's fire
Is owing to that lyre
By which he sits and sings-
The trembling living wire
Of those unusual strings.

But the skies that angel trod,
Where deep thoughts are a duty-
Where Love's a grown-up God-
Where the Houri glances are
Imbued with all the beauty
Which we worship in a star.

Therefore thou art not wrong,
Israfel, who despisest
An unimpassioned song;
To thee the laurels belong,
Best bard, because the wisest!
Merrily live, and long!

The ecstasies above
With thy burning measures suit-
Thy grief, thy joy, thy hate, thy love,
With the fervor of thy lute-
Well may the stars be mute!

Yes, Heaven is thine; but this
Is a world of sweets and sours;
Our flowers are merely- flowers,
And the shadow of thy perfect bliss
Is the sunshine of ours.

If I could dwell
Where Israfel
Hath dwelt, and he where I,
He might not sing so wildly well
A mortal melody,
While a bolder note than this might swell
From my lyre within the sky.


Nice one, E.A.