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Stanzas by Edgar Allan Poe

Analysis

"Stanzas" is a poem written by Edgar Allan Poe. Originally, this poem went untitled in Tamerlane and Other Poems, but was added later by E. C. Stedman and G. E. Woodberry in 1894. The following is from directly from the original publication in 1827.

This poem speaks about nature, especially the sky, the sun, and it also speaks of God.

"Stanzas" is made up of four individual stanzas (and an introduction stanza written by Byron) each numbered as to break them apart. Nonetheless, they each have eight lines and the rhyme scheme ABABABCC.

Poem

Stanzas
By Edgar Allan Poe

How often we forget all time, when lone
Admiring Nature's universal throne;
Her woods- her wilds- her mountains- the intense
Reply of HERS to OUR intelligence!

[BYRON, The Island.]

I.
In youth have I known one with whom the Earth
In secret communing held- as he with it,
In daylight, and in beauty from his birth:
Whose fervid, flickering torch of life was lit
From the sun and stars, whence he had drawn forth
A passionate light- such for his spirit was fit-
And yet that spirit knew not, in the hour
Of its own fervor what had o'er it power.

II.
Perhaps it may be that my mind is wrought
To a fever by the moonbeam that hangs o'er,
But I will half believe that wild light fraught
With more of sovereignty than ancient lore
Hath ever told- or is it of a thought
The unembodied essence, and no more,
That with a quickening spell doth o'er us pass
As dew of the night-time o'er the summer grass?

III.
Doth o'er us pass, when, as th' expanding eye
To the loved object- so the tear to the lid
Will start, which lately slept in apathy?
And yet it need not be- (that object) hid
From us in life- but common- which doth lie
Each hour before us- but then only, bid
With a strange sound, as of a harp-string broken,
To awake us- 'Tis a symbol and a token

IV.
Of what in other worlds shall be- and given
In beauty by our God, to those alone
Who otherwise would fall from life and Heaven
Drawn by their heart's passion, and that tone,
That high tone of the spirit which hath striven,
Tho' not with Faith- with godliness- whose throne
With desperate energy 't hath beaten down;
Wearing its own deep feeling as a crown.

Published in 1827.

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