'To Helen' by Edgar Allan Poe

Poetry

To Helen

Edgar Allan Poe (1831)

Helen, thy beauty is to me Like those Nicean barks of yore, That gently, o’er a perfum’d sea, The weary way-worn wanderer bore To his own native shore. On desperate seas long wont to roam, Thy hyacinth hair, thy classic face, Thy Naiad airs have brought me home To the beauty of fair Greece, And the grandeur of old Rome. Lo! in that little window-niche How statue-like I see thee stand! The folded scroll within thy hand — A Psyche from the regions which Are Holy land!


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