Arts & Sciences

Edgar Allan Poe

by Edward Dowden 1843–1913

From Poems (1914)

Arts & Sciences

Seeker for Eldorado, magic land,
Whose gold is beauty fine-spun, amber-clear,
O’er what Moon-mountains, down what Valley of fear
By what love waters fringed with pallid sand,
Did thy foot falter? Say what airs have fanned
Thy fervid brow, blown from no terrene sphere,
What rustling wings, what echoes thrilled thine ear
From mighty tombs whose brazen ports expand?
Seeker, who never quite attained, yet caught,
Moulded and fashioned, as by strictest law
The rainbow’d moon-mist and the flying gleam
To mortal loveliness, for pity and awe,
To us what carven dreams thy hand has brought
Dreams with the serried logic of a dream.

✦ ✦ ✦

Read at the Centenary Celebration, University of Virginia, 19th Jan. 1909.

MLA

Dowden, Edward. “Edgar Allan Poe.” Poetry Codex, poetrycodex.com/poem/dowden/153/.

Chicago

Dowden, Edward. “Edgar Allan Poe.” Poetry Codex. https://poetrycodex.com/poem/dowden/153/.

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