Summary: This is the Poe you have been looking for.<br> ⁓The Voice before the Void<br> “Dream-Land”<br> Edgar Allan Poe<br> By a route obscure and lonely,<br> Haunted by ill angels only,<br> Where an Eidolon, named Night,<br> On a black throne reigns upright,<br> I have reached these lands but newly<br> From an ultimate dim Thule—<br> From a wild weird clime that lieth, sublime,<br> Out of Space—out of Time.<br> Bottomless vales and boundless floods,<br> And chasms, and caves, and Titan woods,<br> With forms that no man can discover<br> For the dews that drip all over;<br> Mountains toppling evermore<br> Into seas without a shore;<br> Seas that restlessly aspire,<br> Surging, unto skies of fire;<br> Lakes that endlessly outspread<br> Their lone waters—lone and dead,—<br> Their still waters—still and chilly<br> With the snows of the lolling lily.<br> By the lakes that thus outspread<br> Their lone waters, lone and dead,—<br> Their sad waters, sad and chilly<br> With the snows of the lolling lily,—<br> By the mountains—near the river<br> Murmuring lowly, murmuring ever,—<br> By the grey woods,—by the swamp<br> Where the toad and the newt encamp,—<br> By the dismal tarns and pools<br> Where dwell the Ghouls,—<br> By each spot the most unholy—<br> In each nook most melancholy,—<br> There the traveller meets aghast<br> Sheeted Memories of the Past—<br> Shrouded forms that start and sigh<br> As they pass the wanderer by—<br> White-robed forms of friends long given,<br> In agony, to the Earth—and Heaven.<br> For the heart whose woes are legion<br> ‘Tis a peaceful, soothing region—<br> For the spirit that walks in shadow<br> ‘Tis—oh ’tis an Eldorado!<br> But the traveller, travelling through it,<br> May not—dare not openly view it;<br> Never its mysteries are exposed<br> To the weak human eye unclosed;<br> So wills its King, who hath forbid<br> The uplifting of the fringed lid;<br> And thus the sad Soul that here passes<br> Beholds it but through darkened glasses.<br> By a route obscure and lonely,<br> Haunted by ill angels only,<br> Where an Eidolon, named Night,<br> On a black throne reigns upright,<br> I have wandered home but newly<br> From this ultimate dim Thule.<br>
