“Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered weak and weary, / Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore– / While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping, / As of someone gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door. / ”Tis some visitor,’ I muttered, ‘Tapping at my chamber door– / Only this, and nothing more.’
“Ah, distinctly I remember it was in the bleak December; / And each separate dying ember wrought its ghost upon the floor. / Eagerly, I wished the morrow;–vainly I had sought to borrow / From my books surcease of sorrow–sorrow for the lost Lenore– / For the rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name Lenore– / Nameless here forevermore.
“And the silken, sad, uncertain rustling of each purple curtain / Thrilled me–filled me with fantastic terrors never felt before; / So that now, to still the beating of my heart, I stood repeating, /”Tis some visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door– / Some late night visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door;– / This it is and nothing more.’”
Of all the poetry he wrote this is the one that we tend to remember most. January 29th, 1845, Edgar Allan Poe’s poem, The Raven was published under a pseudonym in the New York Evening Mirror.
“And the Raven, never flitting, still is sitting, still is sitting / On the pallid bust of Pallas just above my chamber door; / And his eyes have all the seeming of a demon’s that is dreaming, / And the lamplight o’er him streaming throws his shadow on the floor; / And my soul from out that shadow that lies floating on the floor / Shall be lifted–nevermore.”
Aphrodite promised the shepherd boy, Paris, who was to be a judge in a beauty contest between the goddesses, that the world’s most beautiful mortal woman, Helen, would leave her husband and become his wife if Aphrodite was chosen the winner. Needless to say, she won–and so did he. Helen and Paris fell in love and she ran away with him to Troy. A great war resulted called the Trojan War. She eventually returned to her husband, Menelaus, but not before a great toll was exacted on the battlefield. Even though this is only a legend, and the search for Troy continues to this very day, the poet William Butler Yeats wrote a simple truth that comes almost as a moral to the story: “What were all the world’s alarms / To mighty Paris when he found / Sleep upon a golden bed / That first dawn in Helen’s arms.”
January 29th, 1939, Irish poet-dramatist William Butler Yeats died in France. “Everything that man esteems / Endures a moment or a day. / Love’s pleasure drives his love away, / The painter’s brush consumes his dreams.”
William Butler Yeats also wrote: “But I, being poor, have only my dreams; / I have spread my dreams under your feet; / Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.”
This is an excerpt from a love letter from Napoleon Bonaparte to Josephine Beauharnois. Within a few days of their wedding he had to take his leave for the Italian campaign. At first she was detached in her feelings about him, but later came to love him very much. Theirs was a marriage destined to end, because he eventually had to divorce her in order to marry someone who could give him an heir. There was no doubt that he loved her very much from the beginning. Here is an excerpt from one of the many letters he inundated her with. It seems she wrote him very few in return. This was dated Paris, December, 1795.
“I wake filled with thoughts of you. Your portrait and the intoxicating evening which we spent yesterday have left my senses in turmoil. Sweet, incomparable Josephine, what a strange effect you have on my heart! Are you angry? Do I see you looking sad? Are you worried? My soul aches with sorrow, and there can be no rest for your lover; but is there still more in store for me when, yielding to the profound feelings which overwhelm me, I draw from your lips, from your heart a love which consumes me with fire? Ah! It was last night that I fully realized how false an image of you your portrait gives! You are leaving at noon; I shall see you in three hours. Until then, mio dolce amor, a thousand kisses; but give me none in return, for they set my blood on fire.”
January 29th, 1853 was the eve of the wedding of Napoleon and Josephine.
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Don Jackson
