1834
THE ASSIGNATION
by Edgar Allan Poe
(The Visionary)
Stay for me there! I will not fail
To meet thee in that hollow vale.
[Exequy on the death of his wife, by Henry King, Bishop of
Chichester.]
ILL-FATED and mysterious man! --bewildered in the brilliancy of
thine own and fallen in the flames of thine own youth! Again in
fancy I behold thee! Once more thy form hath risen before me! --not
--oh not as thou art --in the cold valley and shadow --but as thou
shouldst be --squandering away a life of magnificent meditation in
that city of dim visions, thine own Venice --which is a star-beloved
Elysium of the sea, and the wide windows of whose Palladian palaces
look down with a deep and bitter meaning upon the secrets of her
silent waters. Yes! I repeat it-as thou shouldst be. There are
surely other worlds than this --other thoughts than the thoughts of
the multitude --other speculations than the speculations of the
sophist. Who then shall call thy conduct into question? who blame thee
for thy visionary hours, or denounce those occupations as a wasting
away of life, which were but the overflowings of thine everlasting
energies?
It was at Venice, beneath the covered archway there called the Ponte
di Sospiri, that I met for the third or fourth time the person of whom
I speak.
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