Edgar Allan Poe Death Quotes

Sleep, those little slices of death — how I loathe them.

The death of a beautiful woman is, unquestionably, the most poetical topic in the world.

The boundaries which divide Life from Death are at best shadowy and vague. Who shall say where the one ends, and where the other begins?

There are chords in the hearts of the most reckless which cannot be touched without emotion.

Even in the grave, all is not lost.

To die laughing must be the most glorious of all glorious deaths!

True, nervous, very, very dreadfully nervous I had been and am, but why will say that I am mad?! The disease had sharpened my senses, not destroyed, not dulled them. Above all was the sense of hearing acute.

Even with the utterly lost, to whom life and death are equally jests, there are matters of which no jest can be made.

Lord help my poor soul.

To me [Edgar Allan Poe's] prose is unreadable—like Jane Austin's [sic]. No there is a difference. I could read his prose on salary, but not Jane's. Jane is entirely impossible. It seems a great pity that they allowed her to die a natural death.

For the moon never beams without bringing me dreams Of the beautiful Annabel Lee; And the stars never rise but I feel the bright eyes Of the beautiful Annabel Lee; And so, all the night-tide, I lie down by the side Of my darling- my darling- my life and my bride, In the sepulchre there by the sea, In her tomb by the sounding sea.

There are chords in the hearts of the most reckless which cannot be touched without emotion, even by the utterly lost, to whom life and death are equally jests, there are matters of which no jest can be made.

There was much of the beautiful, much of the wanton, much of the bizarre, something of the terrible, and not a little of that which might have excited disgust.

Even for those to whom life and death are equal jests. There are some things that are still held in respect.

And so, being young and dipt in folly I fell in love with melancholy, And used to throw my earthly rest And quiet all away in jest— I could not love except where Death Was mingling his with Beauty's breath— Or Hymen, Time, and Destiny Were stalking between her and me.

Quaff, oh quaff this kind nepenthe, and forget this lost Lenore!

In death - no! even in the grave all is not lost. Else there is no immortality for man. Arousing from the most profound slumbers, we break the gossamer web of some dream. Yet in a second afterward, (so frail may that web have been) we remember not that we have dreamed.

And the life of the ebony clock went out with that of the last of the gay. And the flames of the tripods expired. And Darkness and Decay and the Red Death held illimitable dominion over all.

In the deepest slumber-no! In delirium-no! In a swoon-no! In death-no! even in the grave all is not lost.

...for her whom in life thou dids't abhor, in death thou shalt adore

To-day I wear these chains, and am HERE. To-morrow I shall be fetterless!--BUT WHERE?

To conceive the horror of my sensations is, I presume, utterly impossible; yet a curiosity to penetrate the mysteries of these awful regions predominates even over my despair, and will reconcile me to the most hideous aspect of death.

Thy soul shall find itself alone ’Mid dark thoughts of the gray tombstone— Not one, of all the crowd, to pry Into thine hour of secrecy. Be silent in that solitude, Which is not loneliness—for then The spirits of the dead who stood In life before thee are again In death around thee—and their will Shall overshadow thee: be still. [...]

I could have clasped the red walls to my bosom as a garment of eternal peace. "Death," I said, "any death but that of the pit!" Fool! might I have not known that into the pit it was the object of the burning iron to urge me?

And now was acknowledged the presence of the Red Death. He had come like a thief in the night. And one by one dropped the revelers in the blood-bedewed halls of their revel, and died each in the despairing posture of his fall. And the life of the ebony clock went out with that of the last of the gay. And the flames of the tripods expired. And Darkness and Decay and the Red Death held illimitable dominion over all.

LO! Death has reared himself a throne In a strange city lying alone

There are two bodies — the rudimental and the complete; corresponding with the two conditions of the worm and the butterfly. What we call "death," is but the painful metamorphosis. Our present incarnation is progressive, preparatory, temporary. Our future is perfected, ultimate, immortal. The ultimate life is the full design

To be a young woman is to face your own annihilation in innumerable ways or to flee it or the knowledge of it, or all these things at once. “The death of a beautiful woman is, unquestionably, the most poetical topic in the world,” said Edgar Allan Poe, who must not have imagined it from the perspective of women who prefer to live.

Be silent in that solitude    Which is not loneliness - for then The spirits of the dead who stood    In life before thee are again In death around thee - and their will Shall then overshadow thee: be still.

Ah, Death, the spectre which sate at all feasts! How often, Monos, did we lose ourselves in speculations upon its nature! How mysteriously did it act as a check to human bliss - saying unto it "thus far, and no farther!

With such precautions the courtiers might bid defiance to contagion. The external world could take care of itself. In the meantime it was folly to grieve, or to think.

At three in the morning the gaudy paint is off that old whore, the world, and she has no nose and a glass eye. Gaiety becomes hollow and brittle, as in Poe's castle surrounded by the Red Death. Horror is destroyed by boredom. Love is a dream.

The Lake In spring of youth it was my lot To haunt of the wide world a spot The which I could not love the less- So lovely was the loneliness Of a wild lake, with black rock bound, And the tall pines that towered around. But when the Night had thrown her pall Upon that spot, as upon all, And the mystic wind went by Murmuring in melody- Then-ah then I would awake To the terror of the lone lake. Yet that terror was not fright, But a tremulous delight- A feeling not the jewelled mine Could teach or bribe me to define- Nor Love-although the Love were thine. Death was in that poisonous wave, And in its gulf a fitting grave For him who thence could solace bring To his lone imagining- Whose solitary soul could make An Eden of that dim lake.

I saw thee once - only once - years ago: I must not say how many - but not many. It was a July midnight; and from out A full-orbed moon, that, like thine own soul, soaring, Sought a precipitate pathway up through heaven, There fell a silvery-silken veil of light, With quietude, and sultriness, and slumber, Upon the upturn'd faces of a thousand Roses that grew in an enchanted garden, Where no wind dared stir, unless on tiptoe - Fell on the upturn'd faces of these roses That gave out, in return for the love-light, Their odorous souls in an ecstatic death - Fell on the upturn'd faces of these roses That smiled and died in the parterre, enchanted By thee, and by the poetry of thy presence. Clad all in white, upon a violet bank I saw thee half reclining; while the moon Fell upon the upturn'd faces of the roses, And on thine own, upturn'd - alas, in sorrow! Was it not Fate, that, on this July midnight - Was it not Fate, (whose name is also Sorrow,) That bade me pause before that garden-gate, To breathe the incense of those slumbering roses? No footsteps stirred: the hated world all slept, Save only thee and me. (Oh, Heaven! - oh, G**! How my heart beats in coupling those two words!) Save only thee and me. I paused - I looked - And in an instant all things disappeared. (Ah, bear in mind the garden was enchanted!) The pearly lustre of the moon went out: The mossy banks and the meandering paths, The happy flowers and the repining trees, Were seen no more: the very roses' odors Died in the arms of the adoring airs. All - all expired save thee - save less than thou: Save only divine light in thine eyes - Save but the soul in thine uplifted eyes. I saw but them - they were the world to me. I saw but them - saw only them for hours - Saw only them until the moon went down. What wild heart-histories seemed to lie enwritten Upon those crystalline, celestial spheres! How dark a wo! yet how sublime a hope! How silently serene a sea of pride! How daring an ambition! yet how deep - How fathomless a capacity for love! But now, at length, dear Dian sank from sight, Into a western couch of thunder-cloud; And thou, a ghost, amid the entombing trees Didst glide away. Only thine eyes remained. They would not go - they never yet have gone. Lighting my lonely pathway home that night, They have not left me (as my hopes have) since. They follow me - they lead me through the years. They are my ministers - yet I their slave. Their office is to illumine and enkindle - My duty, to be saved by their bright fire, And purified in their electric fire, And sanctified in their elysian fire. They fill my soul with Beauty (which is Hope,) And are far up in Heaven - the stars I kneel to In the sad, silent watches of my night; While even in the meridian glare of day I see them still - two sweetly scintillant Venuses, unextinguished by the sun!

To Helen I saw thee once-once only-years ago; I must not say how many-but not many. It was a july midnight; and from out A full-orbed moon, that, like thine own soul, soaring, Sought a precipitate pathway up through heaven, There fell a silvery-silken veil of light, With quietude, and sultriness, and slumber Upon the upturn'd faces of a thousand Roses that grew in an enchanted garden, Where no wind dared to stir, unless on tiptoe- Fell on the upturn'd faces of these roses That gave out, in return for the love-light Thier odorous souls in an ecstatic death- Fell on the upturn'd faces of these roses That smiled and died in this parterre, enchanted by thee, by the poetry of thy prescence. Clad all in white, upon a violet bank I saw thee half reclining; while the moon Fell on the upturn'd faces of the roses And on thine own, upturn'd-alas, in sorrow! Was it not Fate that, on this july midnight- Was it not Fate (whose name is also sorrow) That bade me pause before that garden-gate, To breathe the incense of those slumbering roses? No footstep stirred; the hated world all slept, Save only thee and me. (Oh Heaven- oh, God! How my heart beats in coupling those two worlds!) Save only thee and me. I paused- I looked- And in an instant all things disappeared. (Ah, bear in mind this garden was enchanted!) The pearly lustre of the moon went out; The mossy banks and the meandering paths, The happy flowers and the repining trees, Were seen no more: the very roses' odors Died in the arms of the adoring airs. All- all expired save thee- save less than thou: Save only the divine light in thine eyes- Save but the soul in thine uplifted eyes. I saw but them- they were the world to me. I saw but them- saw only them for hours- Saw only them until the moon went down. What wild heart-histories seemed to lie enwritten Upon those crystalline, celestial spheres! How dark a woe! yet how sublime a hope! How silently serene a sea of pride! How daring an ambition!yet how deep- How fathomless a capacity for love! But now, at length, dear Dian sank from sight, Into western couch of thunder-cloud; And thou, a ghost, amid the entombing trees Didst glide away. Only thine eyes remained. They would not go- they never yet have gone. Lighting my lonely pathway home that night, They have not left me (as my hopes have) since. They follow me- they lead me through the years. They are my ministers- yet I thier slave Thier office is to illumine and enkindle- My duty, to be saved by thier bright light, And purified in thier electric fire, And sanctified in thier Elysian fire. They fill my soul with Beauty (which is Hope), And are far up in heaven- the stars I kneel to In the sad, silent watches of my night; While even in the meridian glare of day I see them still- two sweetly scintillant Venuses, unextinguished by the sun!

It was in this apartment, also, that there stood against the western wall, a gigantic clock of ebony. It's pendulum swung to and fro with a dull, heavy, monotonous clang; and when the minute-hand made the circuit of the face, and the hour was to be stricken, there came from the brazen lungs of the clock a sound which was clear and loud and deep and exceedingly musical, but of so peculiar a note and emphasis that, at each lapse of an hour, the musicians of the note orchestra were constrained to pause, momentarily, in their performance, to harken to the sound and thus the waltzers perforce ceased their evolutions; and there was a brief disconcert of the whole gay company; and, while the chimes of the clock yet rang, it was observes that the giddiest grew pale, and the more aged and sedate passed their hands over their brows as in confessed revery or meditation

You have conquered, and I yield. Yet henceforward art thou also dead - dead to the world and its hopes. In me didst thou exist - and, in my death, see by this image, which is thine own, how utterly thou hast murdered thyself.

That she loved me I should not have doubted; and I might have been easily aware that, in a bosom such as hers, love would have regained no ordinary passion. But in death only was I fully impressed with the strength of her affection.

Edgar Allan Poe once called the death of a beautiful woman “the most poetical topic in the world” and I’ve often found myself wondering how many woman writers who have killed themselves or let themselves be otherwise obliterated were trying, somehow, to fulfill this most popular of narratives. We’re most valuable when we’re smiling, dead, posing, our words hanging on the page with no real body behind them. I’m

The days have never been when thou couldst love me—but her whom in life thou didst abhor, in death thou shalt adore.

I have great faith in fools--self-confidence my friends will call it.' -- EDGAR ALLAN POE

So violent a rudeness, untenanted by any tangible form.

Other friends have flown before - On the morrow he will leave me, as my Hopes have flown before.

I could not love except where Death Was mingling his with Beauty’s breath

What chance — what one event brought this evil thing to pass, bear with me while I relate. Death approaches; and the shadow which foreruns him has thrown a softening influence over my spirit. I long, in passing through the dim valley, for the sympathy — I had nearly said for the pity — of my fellow men. I would fain have them believe that I have been, in some measure, the slave of circumstances beyond human control.

Darkness and Decay and the Red Death held illimitable dominion over all.

Existem cordas, nos corações dos mais indiferentes, que não podem ser tocadas sem emoção.

boundaries which divide Life and Death are at best shadowy and vague. Who shall say where the one ends and where the other begins?

There are chords in the hearts of the most reckless which cannot be touched without emotion.” -Edgar Allan Poe, “The Masque of the Red Death

Be silent in that solitude Which is not loneliness— for then The spirits of the dead who stood In life before thee are again In death around thee— and their will Shall overshadow thee : be still.

There are chords in the hearts of the most reckless which cannot be touched without emotion. Even with the utterly lost, to whom life and death are equally jests, there are matters of which no jest can be made.

On the morning of his funeral, the Baltimore Sun failed to announce the service, but mourned that his death “will cause poignant regret among all who admire genius, and have sympathy for the frailties too often attending it.

Lady Ligeia," he began again, "is a woman in the literature who returns from the dead, taking over another woman's body to be with her true love." "Oh, yes. Lovely" Isobel blanched. "I guess the other chick didn't mind at all?

Who knoweth the mysteries of the will, with its vigor? For God is but a great will pervading all things by nature of its intentness. Man doth not yield him to the angels, nor unto death utterly, save only through the weakness of his feeble will.

There may be a class of beings, human once, but now invisible to humanity, to whom, from afar, our disorder may seem order—our unpicturesqueness picturesque, in a word, the earth-angels, for whose scrutiny more especially than our own, and for whose death—refined appreciation of the beautiful, may have been set in array by God the wide landscape-gardens of the hemispheres.

It may be that those who care for poetry lost little by his death. Fluent in prose, he never wrote verse for the sake of making a poem. When a refrain of image haunted him, the lyric that resulted was the inspiration, as he himself said, of a passion, not of a purpose.

The “Red Death” had long devastated the country. No pestilence had ever been so fatal, or so hideous. Blood was its Avator and its seal — the redness and the horror of blood. There were sharp pains, and sudden dizziness, and then profuse bleeding at the pores, with dissolution. The scarlet stains upon the body and especially upon the face of the victim, were the pest ban which shut him out from the aid and from the sympathy of his fellow-men. And the whole seizure, progress and termination of the disease, were the incidents of half an hour.

Edgar Allan Poe was an American poet, short story writer, playwright, editor, critic, essayist and one of the leaders of the American Romantic Movement. Best known for his tales of the macabre and mystery, Poe was one of the early American practitioners of the short story and a progenitor of detective fiction and crime fiction. He is also credited with contributing to the emergent science fiction genre.Poe died at the age of 40. The cause of his death is undetermined and has been attributed to alcohol, drugs, cholera, rabies, suicide (although likely to be mistaken with his suicide attempt in the previous year), tuberculosis, heart disease, brain congestion and other agents. Source: Wikipedia

All in vain; because Death, in approaching him had stalked with his black shadow before him, and enveloped the victim. And it was the mournful influence of the unperceived shadow that caused him to feel—although he neither saw nor heard—to feel the presence of my head within the room.

And one by one dropped the revelers in the blood-bedewed halls of their revel, and died each in the despairing posture of his fall. And the life of the ebony clock went out with that of the last of the gay. And the flames of the tripods expired. And Darkness and Decay and the Red Death held illimitable dominion over all.

The life upon her yellow hair, but not within her eyes-- The life still there upon her hair, the death upon her eyes.

pocas situaciones se dan en las que un hombre pueda perder el interés de preservar su existencia, y ese interés irá en aumento cuanto mas débil sea el hilo del cual penda aquella

Death by the visitation of God.

There chords in the hearts of the most reckless which cannot be touched without emotion.

I could not love except where Death Was mingling his with Beauty's Breath—

Edgar Allan Poe once called the death of a beautiful woman "the most poetical topic in the world" and I have often found myself wondering how many women writers who have killed themselves or let themselves be otherwise obliterated were trying, somehow, to fulfil this most popular of narratives. We're most valuable when we're smiling, dead, posing, our words hanging on the page with no real body behind them.

My visions were of shipwreck and famine; of death or captivity among barbarian hordes; of a lifetime dragged out in sorrow and tears, upon some gray and desolate rock, in an ocean unapproachable and unknown.

This next tale is about a mesmerist who puts a man in a suspended hypnotic state at the moment of death. An example of a tale of suspense and horror, it is also, to a certain degree, a hoax as it was published without claiming to be fictional, and many at the time of publication (1845) took it to be a factual account. Poe toyed with this for a while before admitting it was a work of pure fiction in his “Marginalia”.

THE LAKE IN youth's spring it was my lot To haunt of the wide earth a spot The which I could not love the less; So lovely was the loneliness Of a wild lake, with black rock bound, And the tall pines that tower'd around. But when the night had thrown her pall Upon that spot—as upon all, And the wind would pass me by In its stilly melody, My infant spirit would awake To the terror of the lone lake. Yet that terror was not fright— But a tremulous delight, And a feeling undefined, Springing from a darken'd mind. Death was in that poison'd wave And in its gulf a fitting grave For him who thence could solace bring To his dark imagining; Whose wildering thought could even make An Eden of that dim lake.  

Que el mundo de fuera se ocupase de sí mismo. Mientras tanto, era estúpido lamentarse o pensar. Había bufones, había trovadores, había bailarinas, había músicos, había Belleza, había vino. Dentro había todo eso, y también seguridad. Fuera estaba la Muerte Roja.

To My Mother" Because I feel that, in the Heavens above, The angels, whispering to one another, Can find, among their burning terms of love, None so devotional as that of “Mother,” Therefore by that dear name I long have called you— You who are more than mother unto me, And fill my heart of hearts, where Death installed you In setting my Virginia's spirit free. My mother—my own mother, who died early, Was but the mother of myself; but you Are mother to the one I loved so dearly, And thus are dearer than the mother I knew By that infinity with which my wife Was dearer to my soul than its soul-life.

The misconception that bothers me the most is the notion of madness,” Pettit said. “It devalues him as a great artist. He was so hard working, so dedicated, so exacting, but some rather believe he had to be insane to write about insane characters. It’s the opposite. You have to be in complete command of your art to depict that so effectively.

Thy soul shall find itself alone 'Mid dark thoughts of the gray tombstone Not one, of all the crowd, to pry Into thine hour of secrecy. Be silent in that solitude Which is not loneliness—for then The spirits of the dead who stood In life before thee are again In death around thee—and their will Shall overshadow thee: be still. The night—tho' clear—shall frown— And the stars shall not look down From their high thrones in the Heaven, With light like Hope to mortals given— But their red orbs, without beam, To thy weariness shall seem As a burning and a fever Which would cling to thee forever. Now are thoughts thou shalt not banish— Now are visions ne'er to vanish— From thy spirit shall they pass No more—like dew-drops from the grass. The breeze—the breath of God—is still—

It might have been midnight, or perhaps earlier, or later, for I had taken no note of time, when a sob, low, gentle, but very distinct, startled me from my revery. - I felt that it came from the bed of ebony - the bed of death. I listened in an agony of superstitious terror - but there was no repetition of the sound. I strained my vision to detect any motion in the corpse - but there was not the slightest perceptible.

Y reconocieron la presencia de la Muerte Roja. Había venido como un ladrón en la noche. Y uno a uno fueron cayendo los presentes en los salones antes festivos, ahora bañados en sangre, y cada uno hallaba la muerte en la desesperada postura en que caía. Y la vida del reloj de ébano se apagó con la del último cortesano. Y las llamas de los trípodes se extinguieron. Y de todo se adueñó la Tiniebla, la Corrupción y la Muerte Roja.

The abbey was amply provisioned. With such precautions the courtiers might bid defiance to contagion. The external world could take care of itself. In the meantime it was folly to grieve, or to think. The prince had provided all the appliances of pleasure. There were buffoons, there were improvisatori, there were ballet-dancers, there were musicians, there was Beauty, there was wine. All these and security were within. Without was the "Red Death.

To My Mother First published : 1849     A heartful sonnet written to Poe’s mother-in-law and aunt Maria Clemm, “To My Mother” says that the mother of the woman he loved is more important than his own mother. It was first published on July 7, 1849 in Flag of Our Union. It has alternately been published as “Sonnet to My Mother.”     Because I feel that, in the Heavens above, The angels, whispering to one another, Can find, among their burning terms of love, None so devotional as that of “Mother,” Therefore by that dear name I long have called you — You who are more than mother unto me, And fill my heart of hearts, where Death installed you In setting my Virginia’s spirit free. My mother — my own mother, who died early, Was but the mother of myself; but you Are mother to the one I loved so dearly, And thus are dearer than the mother I knew By that infinity with which my wife Was dearer to my soul than its soul-life.

We stand upon the brink of a precipice. We peer into the abyss—we grow sick and dizzy. Our first impulse is to shrink from the danger. Unaccountably we remain. By slow degrees our sickness and dizziness and horror become merged in a cloud of unnamable feeling. By gradations, still more imperceptible, this cloud assumes shape, as did the vapor from the bottle out of which arose the genius in the Arabian Nights. But out of this our cloud upon the precipice’s edge, there grows into palpability, a shape, far more terrible than any genius or any demon of a tale, and yet it is but a thought, although a fearful one, and one which chills the very marrow of our bones with the fierceness of the delight of its horror. It is merely the idea of what would be our sensations during the sweeping precipitancy of a fall from such a height. And this fall—this rushing annihilation—for the very reason that it involves that one most ghastly and loathsome of all the most ghastly and loathsome images of death and suffering which have ever presented themselves to our imagination—for this very cause do we now the most vividly desire it. And because our reason violently deters us from the brink, therefore do we the most impetuously approach it. There is no passion in nature so demoniacally impatient, as that of him who, shuddering upon the edge of a precipice, thus meditates a Plunge. To indulge, for a moment, in any attempt at thought, is to be inevitably lost; for reflection but urges us to forbear, and therefore it is, I say, that we cannot. If there be no friendly arm to check us, or if we fail in a sudden effort to prostrate ourselves backward from the abyss, we plunge, and are destroyed.

By authority of the king such districts were placed under ban, and all persons forbidden, under pain of death, to intrude upon their dismal solitude. Yet neither the mandate or the monarch, nor the huge barriers erected at the end of the streets, nor the prospect of that loathsome death which, with almost absolute certainty, overwhelmed the wretch whom no peril could deter from the adventure, prevented the unfurnished and untenanted dwellings from being stripped, by the hand of nightly rapine, of every article, such as iron, brass, or leadwork, which could in any manner be turned to a profitable account.

How shall the burial rite be read? The solemn song be sung? The requiem for the loveliest dead, That ever died so young?   Her friends are gazing on her, And on her gaudy bier, And weep! — oh! to dishonor Dead beauty with a tear!   They loved her for her wealth — And they hated her for her pride — But she grew in feeble health, And they love her — that she died.   They tell me (while they speak Of her “costly broider’d pall”) That my voice is growing weak — That I should not sing at all —   Or that my tone should be Tun’d to such solemn song So mournfully — so mournfully, That the dead may feel no wrong.   But she is gone above, With young Hope at her side, And I am drunk with love Of the dead, who is my bride. —   Of the dead — dead who lies All perfum’d there, With the death upon her eyes, And the life upon her hair.   Thus on the coffin loud and long I strike — the murmur sent Through the grey chambers to my song, Shall be the accompaniment.   Thou died’st in thy life’s June — But thou did’st not die too fair: Thou did’st not die too soon, Nor with too calm an air.   From more than fiends on earth, Thy life and love are riven, To join the untainted mirth Of more than thrones in heaven —   Therefore, to thee this night I will no requiem raise, But waft thee on thy flight, With a Pæan of old days.  

And thus when by poetyr or wehn by music the most entrancing of the poetic moods we find ourselves melted into tears, we weep then not as the abbate gravina supposes through excess of pleasure but through a certain petulatn impatient sorrow at our inability to grasp no wholly here on earth at once and forever these divein and rapturous joys of which through the poem or through the music we attain to but brief and indeterminate glimpses. The struggle to apprehend the supernal loveliness this struggle on the part of souls fittingly constituted has given to the world all that which it (the world) has ever been enabled at once to understand and to feel as peotic whose distant footsteps echo down the corridors of time The impression left is one of pleasurable sadness. This certain taint of sadness is insperably connected with al the higher manifestations of true beauty . It is nevertheless. Beauty is the sole legitimate province of the poem. Melancholy is thus the most legitimate of all the poetical tones. The next desideratum was a pretext for the continous use of the one word nevermore.in observing the difficutly which i at once found in inventing a suffiecienly plausible reason for its continuous repetition i did not fail to preceive thta this difficutly arose solely form the pre assumption that the world was to be so continuously or monotonously spoke by a human being i did not fail to perceive in shor t that the difficulty lay in the reconciliation of this monotony with the exercise of reason on the part of the creature repeating the word here then immediately arose the idea of a non-reasoning creature capable of speech and very naturally a parrot in the first instance suggested itself but was superseded forthwith by a raven as equally capable of speech and infinitely more in keeping with the intended tone.“I had now gone so far as the conception of a Raven, the bird of ill-omen, monotonously repeating the one word "Nevermore" at the conclusion of each stanza in a poem of melancholy tone, and in length about one hundred lines. Now, never losing sight of the object _supremeness_ or perfection at all points, I asked myself--"Of all melancholy topics what, according to the _universal_ understanding of mankind, is the _most_ melancholy?" Death, was the obvious reply. "And when," I said, "is this most melancholy of topics most poetical?" From what I have already explained at some length, the answer here also is obvious--"When it most closely allies itself to _Beauty_; the death, then, of a beautiful woman is unquestionably the most poetical topic in the world, and equally is it beyond doubt that the lips best suited for such topic are those of a bereaved lover.

You say, 'Can you hint to me what was "that terrible evil" which caused the "irregularities" so profoundly lamented? Yes, I can do more than hint. This 'evil' was the greatest which can befall a man. Six years ago, a wife whom I loved as no man ever loved before, ruptured a blood-vessel in singing. Her life was despaired of. I took leave of her forever, and underwent all the agonies of her death. She recovered partially, and I again hoped. At the end of a year, the vessel broke again. I went through precisely the same scene.... Then again—again— and even once again at varying intervals. Each time I felt all the agonies of her death—and at each accession of the disorder I loved her more dearly and clung to her life with more desperate pertinacity. But I am constitutionally sensitive—nervous in a very unusual degree. I became insane, with long intervals of horrible sanity. During these fits of absolute unconsciousness, I drank—God only knows how often or how much. As a matter of course, my enemies referred the insanity to the drink rather than the drink to the insanity. I had, indeed, nearly abandoned all hope of a permanent cure, when I found one in the death of my wife. This I can and do endure as becomes a man. It was the horrible never-ending oscillation between hope and despair which I could not longer have endured, without total loss of reason.

Depuis que j'ai doue ans, et depuis qu'elle est une terreur, la mort est une marotte. J'en ignorais l'existence jusqu'à ce qu'un camarade de classe, le petit Bonnecarère, m'envoyât au cinéma le Styx, où l'on s'asseyait à l'époque dans des cercueils, voir L'enterré vivant, un film de Roger Corman tiré d'un conte 'Edgar Allan Poe. La découverte de la mort par le truchement de cette vision horrifique d'un homme qui hurle d'impuissance à l'intérieur de son cercueil devint une source capiteuse de cauchemars. Par la suite, je ne cessai de rechercher les attributs de les plus spectaculaires de la mort, suppliant mon père de me céder le crâne qui avait accompagné ses études de médecine, m'hypnotisant de films d'épouvante et commençant à écrire, sous le pseudonyme d'Hector Lenoir, un conte qui racontair les affres d'un fantômr rnchaîné dans les oubliettes du château des Hohenzollern, me grisant de lectures macabres jusqu'aux stories sélectionnées par Hitschcock, errant dans les cimetières et étrennant mon premier appareil avec des photographies de tombes d'enants, me déplaçant jusqu'à Palerme uniquement pour contempler les momies des Capucins, collectionnant les rapaces empaillés comme Anthony Perkins dans Psychose, la mort me semblait horriblement belle, féeriquement atroce, et puis je pris en grippe son bric-à-brac, remisai le crâne de l'étudiant de médecine, fuis les cimetières comme la peste, j'étais passé à un autre stade de l'amour de la mort, comme imprégné par elle au plus profond je n'avais plus besoin de son décorum mais d'une intimité plus grande avec elle, je continuais inlassablement de quérir son sentiment, le plus précieux et le plus haïssable d'entre tous, sa peur et sa convoitise.

But sleep tha pondereth and is not to be and there oh may my weary spirit dwell apart forms heaven's eternity and yet how far from hell. other friends have flown before on the morrow he will leave me as my hopes have flown before the bird said nevermore. leave my loneliness unbroken. how dark a woe yet how sublimes a hope. And the fever called living is conquered at last. I stand amid the roar of a surf tormented shore and i hold within my hand grains of the golden sand how few yet how they creep through my fingers to the deep while i weep while i weep o god can i not grasp them with a tighter clasp o god can i not save one from the pitiless wave is all that we see or seem but a dream within a dream. Hell rising form a thousand thrones shall do it reverence. It was the dead who groaned within lest the dead who is forsaken may not be happy now. even for thy woes i love thee even for thy woes thy beauty and thy woes think of all that is airy and fairy like and all that is hideous and unwieldy. hast thou not dragged Diana from her car. I care not though it perishes with a thought i then did cherish. For on its wing was dark alley and as it fluttered fell an essence powerful to destroy a soul that knew it well. (Talking about death) the intense reply of hers to our intelligence. Then all motion of whatever nature creates most writers poets in especial prefer having it understood that they compose by a species of fine frenzy an ecstatic intuition and would positively shudder at letting the public take a peep behind the scenes at the elaborate and vacillating crudities of thought at the true purposes seized only at the last moment at the innumerable glimpses of idea that arrived not at the maturity of full view at the fully matured fancies discarded in despair as unmanageable at the cautions selection and rejections at the painful erasures and interpolations in a word at the wheels and pinions the tackle for scene shifting the steep ladders and demon traps the cock[s feathers a the red pain and the black patches which in ninety nine cases out of the hundred constitute the properties of the literary _histiro. Wit the Arabians there is a medium between heaven and hell where men suffer no punishment but yet do not attain that tranquil and even happiness which they supposed to be characteristic of heavenly enjoyment. If i could dwell where israfel hath dwelt and he where i he might not sing so wildly well mortal melody, while a bolder note than this might swell form my lyre within the sky. And i am drunk with love of the dead who is my bride. And so being young and dipt in folly , I feel in love with melancholy. I could not love except where death was mingling his with beauty's breath or hymen, Time, and destiny were stalking between her and me. Yet that terror was not friegt but a tremulous delight a feeling not the jeweled mine could teach or bribe me to define nor love although the love were thine. Whose solitary soul could make an Eden of that dim lake. that my young life were a lasting dream my spirit not awakening till the beam of an eternity should bring the morrow. An idle longing night and day to dream my very life away. As others saw i could not bring my passions from a comman spring from the sam source i have not taken my sorrow and all i loved i loved alone La solitude est une belle chose; mais il faut quelqu'un pour vous dire que la solitude estune belle chose impulse upon the ether the source of all motion is thought and the source of all thought. Be of heart and fear nothing your allotted days of stupor have expired and tomorrow i will myself induct you into the full joys and wonders of your novel existence. unknown now known of the speculative future merged in the august and certain present.

Edgar Allan Poe’s “Masque of the Red Death,

The boundaries which divide Life from Death are at best shadowy and vague. Who shall say where the one ends, and where the other begins?” – Edgar Allan Poe

Edgar Allan Poe lived in New York three times: for a few weeks in 1831, after he’d purposefully gotten himself court-martialed from West Point; from 1837 to 1838, arriving during a disastrous, nationwide economic slump; and again from 1844 until his death five years later.

the death, then, of a beautiful woman is, unquestionably, the most poetical topic in the world—and equally is it beyond doubt that the lips best suited for such topic are those of a bereaved lover.

Come quickly, O death! but be sure and don’t let me see you coming, lest the pleasure I shall feel at your appearance should unfortunately bring me back again to life.

I’ve always found it strange that so many of them meet their Maker in unusual circumstances. Matthew Arnold, for example, died while leaping over a hedge . . .’ ‘I suppose he did,’ Sidney replied. ‘And didn’t the Chinese poet Li Po drown while trying to kiss the reflection of the moon in water?’ ‘Pushkin and Lermontov were both killed in duels . . .’ Sidney began to recall his classical education, ‘Aeschylus was felled by a falling tortoise.’ ‘Euripides was mauled by a pack of wild dogs . . .’ ‘Neither of them strictly poets, of course . . .’ Sidney cautioned. ‘Although if the criteria was broadened to writers in general then we could have a field day,’ Leonard Graham continued. ‘Edgar Allan Poe was found in another person’s clothes.’ ‘And Sherwood Anderson swallowed a toothpick. But we are getting distracted, my good friend.

No event is so terribly well adapted to inspire the supremeness of bodily and of mental distress, as is burial before death… . What I have now to tell is of my own actual knowledge—of my own positive and personal experience. —Edgar Allan Poe, “The Premature Burial

To make a current example, the world can find human interest in the death and the love affairs and the pallid addiction to cocaine of Mr. Sherlock Holmes.

And the will therein lieth, which dieth not. Who knoweth the mysteries of the will, with its vigor? For God is but a great will pervading all things by nature of its intentness. Man doth not yield himself to the angels, nor unto death utterly, save only through the weakness of his feeble will.

When Edgar Allan Poe’s love, Annabel Lee, is taken by the chill of death and entombed, the lovelorn Poe cannot stay away. He goes to “lie down by the side, of my darling—my darling—my life and my bride, in her sepulchre there by the sea, in her tomb by the sounding sea.” The exquisite, alabaster corpse of Annabel Lee. No mention of the ravages of decomposition that would have made lying down next to her a rancid embrace for the brokenhearted Poe. It wasn’t just Padma.

One of her best songs ever is 'Annabel Lee,' which she just released a few years ago on her underrated 2011 album In My Dreams. It's a six-minute sex-and-death trip with a lyric from one of her hot dead rock-and-roll boyfriends: Edgar Allan Poe. The key line is: 'The moon never beams without bringing me dreams.' Poe might have written that line in 1849, but he clearly always meant it for Stevie Nicks to sing.

He wanted to be Byron, but guess what?" Pettit said. "Nobody reads Byron anymore. . . But everybody reads Poe. He Outlives Byron. He outpaces Byron. He outdoes Byron. He didn't get to be Byron, but he got to be Edgar Allan Poe. He's going to be the best-read American writer in the world, and you wish he could have known that.

The glow of the fireside poets failed to warm a world coping with the cold realities of a new century. Their light faded as we became less sure of comforting messages and more intrigued by Poe's troubling questions. 'We recognize Poe's modern view of the dark side of humanity,' said Jeffrey A. Savoye of the Edgar Allan Poe Society of Baltimore. 'We don't expect sentimental moralizing. So we've embraced the very thing that made Poe distasteful in his own era.

Edgar Allan Poe, in his essay "The Philosophy of Composition" stated that, "the death of a beautiful woman is, unquestionably, the most poetical topic in the world." And Nica was not just dead, she was murdered. Raped, too. Her story thus offered up the most potent narrative combination known to man.

Tuesday didn’t hear it. When the knocking started, she’d moved on from the math—51 envelopes times $13,000 equaled $663,000, over half a mil free-floating around the city—to more general research, into Edgar Allan Poe, the other Vincent Price, and for a while she’d gotten sucked into the long and storied history of playing cards— Knock. Someone was knocking on her door. She shook her head. Who the hell would be knocking? It was barely five. She stood up, stretched, rolled her neck on her shoulders. Had someone buzzed a FedEx guy in? But she hadn’t—she didn’t think she’d ordered anything online. If she had, and had forgotten, she was going to have to send it back. This was not the time for impulse internet spending. She opened her door and Death was on the other side. “Ohmygod,” she said, and ducked, coffee-juiced, back behind the door. “You like?