In Heaven a spirit doth dwell
"Whose heart-strings are a lute";
None sing so wildly well
As the angel Israfel,
And the giddy stars (so legends tell),
Ceasing their hymns, attend the spell
Of his voice, all mute.
Tottering above
In her highest noon,
The enamored moon
Blushes with love,
While, to listen, the red levin
(With the rapid Pleiads, even,
Which were seven,)
Pauses in Heaven.
And they say (the starry choir
And the other listening things)
That Israfeli's fire
Is owing to that lyre
By which he sits and sings -
The trembling living wire
Of those unusual strings.
But the skies that angel trod,
Where deep thoughts are a duty -
Where Love's a grown-up God -
Where the Houri glances are
Imbued with all the beauty
Which we worship in a star.
Therefore thou art not wrong,
Israfeli, who despisest
An unimpassioned song;
To thee the laurels belong,
Best bard, because the wisest!
Merrily live, and long!
The ecstasies above
With thy burning measures suit -
Thy grief, thy joy, thy hate, thy love,
With the fervor of thy lute -
Well may the stars be mute!
Yes, Heaven is thine; but this
Is a world of sweets and sours;
Our flowers are merely - flowers,
And the shadow of thy perfect bliss
Is the sunshine of ours.
If I could dwell
Where Israfel
Hath dwelt, and he where I,
He might not sing so wildly well
A mortal melody,
While a bolder note than this might swell
From my lyre within the sky.
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More Poems by Edgar Allan Poe
• A Dream
• A Dream Within A Dream
• A Valentine
• Alone
• An Enigma
• Annabel Lee
• Bridal Ballad
• Dreamland
• Poe Dreams
• Eldorado
• Elizabeth Poe
• Eulalie
• Evening Star
• Fairy-Land
• Hymn
• Imitation
• Israfel
• Lenore
• Romance
• Serenade
• Song
• Spirits Of The Dead
• The Bells
• The City In The Sea Poe
• The Coliseum
• The Conqueror Worm
• The Happiest Day, The Happiest Hour
• The Haunted Palace
• The Raven
• The Sleeper
• The Valley Of Unrest
• To Helen
• To My Mother
• To One In Paradise
Also read poems by
• Alfred, Lord Tennyson
• Edgar Allan Poe
• Elizabeth Barrett Browning
• Emily Dickinson
• George Gordon, Lord Byron
• Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
• Hilaire Belloc
• John Donne
• John Keats
• Lewis Carroll
• Robert Browning
• Robert Burns
• Robert Herrick
• Robert Louis Stevenson
• Rudyard Kipling
• Samuel Taylor Coleridge
• Sarah Teasdale
• Thomas Hardy
• Walt Whitman
• William Blake
• William Butler Yeats
• William Wordsworth
Israfel - Poem Lyrics - Edgar Allan Poe - Israfel
