The skies they were ashen and sober;
   The leaves they were crisped and sere -
   The leaves they were withering and sere;
It was night in the lonesome October
   Of my most immemorial year;
It was hard by the dim lake of Auber,
  In the misty mid region of Weir -
It was down the dank tarn of Auber,
  In the ghost-haunted woodland of Weir.

from Ulalume

The American poet Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849) has suffered as many posthumous buffets and reversals in his reputation as he did in his life. Even before Baudelaire translated his stories and Mallarmé his poems, he was revered in France, while in Britain and even in America his work came to seem haunted, weird, its merits subsumed in the gothic drama of a life drunk (in every sense) to the lees, and early over. Many readers know his poems by heart but are wary of confessing an enthusiasm for lines so sonorous and unfashionable.

Among the voices urging the merits of Poe's poems and essays is that of C.H. Sisson. In this selection, which makes measured claims for an original and challenging writer, Sisson sides with Baudelaire, Gautier, Mallarmé and Valéry in singling out the unlikely and powerful qualities in Poe's language, qualities inherent in his subject-matter and realised in his verse. 'There is,' Sisson declares, 'a small handful of Poe's poems which are of a clarity and luminosity which make most of the poetry of the nineteenth century look muddy.' His poetry, 'enjoyable but not explicable', attempting 'the rhythmical creation of beauty', is a firm legacy to proponents of la poésie pure as to those for whom paraphrase and moral uplift are not the be-all and end-all of poetry.

Table of Contents

Introduction

Poems
To Helen
The Raven
The Vallye of Unrest
Bridal Ballad
The Sleeper
The Coliseum
Lenore
Catholic Hymn
Israfel
Dreamland
Sonnet: To Zante
The City in the Sea
To One in Paradise
Eulalie
T F---s S. O---d
To F---
Sonnet: Silence
The Conqueror Worm
The Haunted Palace
Scenese from Politian

Poems Written in Youth
Sonnet to Science
Al Aaraaf
Tamerlane
A Dream
Romance
Fairyland
To---
To the River---
To Lake. To---
Song

Later Poems
A Dream within a Dream
The Bells
To Helen
A Valentine
An Enigma
To--- ---
To my Mother
Eldorado
To---
To M.L.S---
For Annie
Ulalume
Annabel Lee

Essays on Poetry
The Poetic Principle
The Rationale of Verse
The Philosphy of Composition