The Slender Poe Anthology (7 page)

I almost left this one out of the collection; it would've been a mistake. I love his haiku couplet:

For no ripples curl, alas!
Along the wilderness of glass—

That there may be a prophetic element is yet to be known, as glaciers melt into the sea and the waters rise, but who among us hasn't been fascinated by disaster?

This is the considerably improved final version of the one first published as
The Doomed City
, in his
Poems
of 1831.

THE CITY IN THE SEA

Lo! Death has reared himself a throne

In a strange city lying alone

Far down within the dim West,

Where the good and the bad and the worst and the best

Have gone to their eternal rest.

There shrines and palaces and towers

(Time-eaten towers that tremble not!)

Resemble nothing that is ours.

Around, by lifting winds forgot,

Resignedly beneath the sky

The melancholy waters lie.

No rays from the holy heaven come down

On the long night-time of that town;

But light from out the lurid sea

Streams up the turrets silently—

Gleams up the pinnacles far and free—

Up domes—up spires—up kingly halls—

Up fanes—up Babylon-like walls—

Up shadowy long-forgotten bowers

Of scultured ivy and stone flowers—

Up many and many a marvellous shrine

Whose wreathéd friezes intertwine

The viol, the violet, and the vine.

Resignedly beneath the sky

The melancholy waters lie.

So blend the turrets and shadows there

That all seem pendulous in air,

While from a proud tower in the town

Death looks gigantically down.

There open fanes and gaping graves

Yawn level with the luminous waves;

But not the riches there that lie

In each idol's diamond eye—

Not the gaily-jewelled dead

Tempt the waters from their bed;

For no ripples curl, alas!

Along that wilderness of glass—

No swellings tell that winds may be

Upon some far-off happier sea—

No heavings hint that winds have been

On seas less hideously serene.

But lo, a stir is in the air!

The wave—there is a movement there!

As if the towers had thrown aside,

In slightly sinking, the dull tide—

As if their tops had feebly given

A void within the filmy Heaven.

The waves have now a redder glow—

The hours are breathing faint and low—

And when, amid no earthly moans,

Down, down that town shall settle hence,

Hell, rising from a thousand thrones,

Shall do it reverence.

The first of the trio of dialogues in this collection, it was last of the three to be written, published initially in the
Democratic Review
in June of 1845, only a few months after the
The Raven
had come out and given Poe his most intense cynosure of fame.

We are introduced to Poe's Aidenn. Here disincarnate voices speak with one another in an afterlife among ‘the multitudinous vistas of the stars,” yet even in this spiritual state of being, vision is “at all points arrested by the continuous golden walls of the universe.”

What comes into question is the force of language; in Aidenn words are “impulses upon the ether,” which have amazing powers of creativity. To my mind, they seem to blend the “Let there be light,” of
Genesis
with the butterfly effect of chaos theory. However, even for the angelic, this may be cause for weeping.

THE POWER OF WORDS

OINOS.
Pardon, Agathos, the weakness of a spirit new-fledged with
immortality!

AGATHOS.
You have spoken nothing, my Oinos, for which pardon is to be
demanded. Not even here is knowledge a thing of intuition. For wisdom, ask
of the angels freely, that it may be given!

OINOS.
But in this existence, I dreamed that I should be at once
cognizant of all things, and thus at once be happy in being cognizant of
all.

AGATHOS.
Ah, not in knowledge is happiness, but in the acquisition of
knowledge! In for ever knowing, we are for ever blessed; but to know all
were the curse of a fiend.

OINOS.
But does not The Most High know all?

AGATHOS.
That
(since he is The Most Happy) must be still the one thing
unknown even to Him.

OINOS.
But, since we grow hourly in knowledge, must not at last all
things be known?

AGATHOS.
Look down into the abysmal distances!—attempt to force the
gaze down the multitudinous vistas of the stars, as we sweep slowly
through them thus—and thus—and thus! Even the spiritual vision, is
it not at all points arrested by the continuous golden walls of the
universe?—the walls of the myriads of the shining bodies that mere
number has appeared to blend into unity?

OINOS.
I clearly perceive that the infinity of matter is no dream.

AGATHOS.
There are
no
dreams in Aidenn—but it is here whispered that,
of this infinity of matter, the
sole
purpose is to afford infinite
springs, at which the soul may allay the thirst
to know
, which is for
ever unquenchable within it—since to quench it, would be to extinguish
the soul's self. Question me then, my Oinos, freely and without fear.
Come! we will leave to the left the loud harmony of the Pleiades, and
swoop outward from the throne into the starry meadows beyond Orion,
where, for pansies and violets, and heart's-ease, are the beds of the
triplicate and triple—tinted suns.

OINOS.
And now, Agathos, as we proceed, instruct me! speak to me in
the earth's familiar tones. I understand not what you hinted to me, just
now, of the modes or of the method of what, during mortality, we were
accustomed to call Creation. Do you mean to say that the Creator is not
God?

AGATHOS.
I mean to say that the Deity does not create.

OINOS.
Explain.

AGATHOS.
In the beginning
only
, he created. The seeming creatures which
are now, throughout the universe, so perpetually springing into being,
can only be considered as the mediate or indirect, not as the direct or
immediate results of the Divine creative power.

OINOS.
Among men, my Agathos, this idea would be considered heretical in
the extreme.

AGATHOS.
Among angels, my Oinos, it is seen to be simply true.

OINOS.
I can comprehend you thus far—that certain operations of what we
term Nature, or the natural laws, will, under certain conditions, give
rise to that which has all the
appearance
of creation. Shortly before
the final overthrow of the earth, there were, I well remember, many very
successful experiments in what some philosophers were weak enough to
denominate the creation of animalculae.

AGATHOS.
The cases of which you speak were, in fact, instances of the
secondary creation—and of the
only
species of creation which has ever
been, since the first word spoke into existence the first law.

OINOS.
Are not the starry worlds that, from the abyss of nonentity,
burst hourly forth into the heavens—are not these stars, Agathos, the
immediate handiwork of the King?

AGATHOS.
Let me endeavor, my Oinos, to lead you, step by step, to the
conception I intend. You are well aware that, as no thought can perish,
so no act is without infinite result. We moved our hands, for example,
when we were dwellers on the earth, and, in so doing, gave vibration
to the atmosphere which engirdled it. This vibration was indefinitely
extended, till it gave impulse to every particle of the earth's air,
which thenceforward,
and for ever
, was actuated by the one movement of
the hand. This fact the mathematicians of our globe well knew. They made
the special effects, indeed, wrought in the fluid by special impulses,
the subject of exact calculation—so that it became easy to determine in
what precise period an impulse of given extent would engirdle the orb,
and impress (for ever) every atom of the atmosphere circumambient.
Retrograding, they found no difficulty, from a given effect, under given
conditions, in determining the value of the original impulse. Now
the mathematicians who saw that the results of any given impulse were
absolutely endless—and who saw that a portion of these results were
accurately traceable through the agency of algebraic analysis—who saw,
too, the facility of the retrogradation—these men saw, at the same
time, that this species of analysis itself, had within itself a capacity
for indefinite progress—that there were no bounds conceivable to its
advancement and applicability, except within the intellect of him who
advanced or applied it. But at this point our mathematicians paused.

OINOS.
And why, Agathos, should they have proceeded?

AGATHOS.
Because there were some considerations of deep interest beyond.
It was deducible from what they knew, that to a being of infinite
understanding—one to whom the
perfection
of the algebraic analysis lay
unfolded—there could be no difficulty in tracing every impulse given
the air—and the ether through the air—to the remotest consequences at
any even infinitely remote epoch of time. It is indeed demonstrable
that every such impulse
given the air
, must,
in the end
, impress every
individual thing that exists
within the universe;
—and the being of
infinite understanding—the being whom we have imagined—might trace the
remote undulations of the impulse—trace them upward and onward in their
influences upon all particles of an matter—upward and onward for
ever in their modifications of old forms—or, in other words,
in their creation of new
—until he found them reflected—unimpressive
at last
—back from the throne of the Godhead. And not only could such
a thing do this, but at any epoch, should a given result be afforded
him—should one of these numberless comets, for example, be presented
to his inspection—he could have no difficulty in determining, by the
analytic retrogradation, to what original impulse it was due. This power
of retrogradation in its absolute fulness and perfection—this faculty
of referring at
all
epochs,
all
effects to
all
causes—is of course the
prerogative of the Deity alone—but in every variety of degree, short of
the absolute perfection, is the power itself exercised by the whole host
of the Angelic Intelligences.

OINOS.
But you speak merely of impulses upon the air.

AGATHOS.
In speaking of the air, I referred only to the earth; but the
general proposition has reference to impulses upon the ether—which,
since it pervades, and alone pervades all space, is thus the great
medium of
creation.

OINOS.
Then all motion, of whatever nature, creates?

AGATHOS.
It must: but a true philosophy has long taught that the source
of all motion is thought—and the source of all thought is—

OINOS.
God.

AGATHOS.
I have spoken to you, Oinos, as to a child of the fair Earth
which lately perished—of impulses upon the atmosphere of the Earth.

OINOS.
You did.

AGATHOS.
And while I thus spoke, did there not cross your mind some
thought of the
physical power of words?
Is not every word an impulse on
the air?

OINOS.
But why, Agathos, do you weep—and why, oh why do your wings
droop as we hover above this fair star—which is the greenest and yet
most terrible of all we have encountered in our flight? Its brilliant
flowers look like a fairy dream—but its fierce volcanoes like the
passions of a turbulent heart.

AGATHOS.
They
are!
—they
are!
This wild star—it is now three centuries
since, with clasped hands, and with streaming eyes, at the feet of my
beloved—I spoke it—with a few passionate sentences—into birth. Its
brilliant flowers
are
the dearest of all unfulfilled dreams, and its
raging volcanoes
are
the passions of the most turbulent and unhallowed
of hearts.