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Edgar Allan Poe - In Youth I have Known One
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How often we forget all time, when lone
Admiring Nature`s universal throne;
Her woods - her winds - her mountains - the intense
Reply of Hers to Our intelligence!

I.

In youth I have known one with whom the Earth
  In secret communing held - as he with it,
In daylight, and in beauty, from his birth:
  Whose fervid, flickering torch of life was lit
From the sun and stars, whence he had drawn forth
  A passionate light - such for his spirit was fit -
And yet that spirit knew - not in the hour
Of its own fervour - what had o`er it power.

                     II.

Perhaps it may be that my mind is wrought
  To a fever by the moonbeam that hangs o`er,
But I will half believe that wild light fraught
  With more of sovereignty than ancient lore
Hath ever told - or is it of a thought
  The unembodied essence, and no more
That with a quickening spell doth o`er us pass
As dew of the night time, o`er the summer grass?

                     III.

Doth o`er us pass, when as th` expanding eye
  To the loved object - so the tear to the lid
Will start, which lately slept in apathy?
  And yet it need not be - (that object) hid
From us in life - but common - which doth lie
  Each hour before us - but then only bid
With a strange sound, as of a harpstring broken
T` awake us - `Tis a symbol and a token -

                      IV.

Of what in other worlds shall be - and given
  In beauty by our God, to those alone
Who otherwise would fall from life and Heaven
  Drawn by their heart`s passion, and that tone,
That high tone of the spirit which hath striven
  Though not with Faith - with godliness - whose throne
With desperate energy `t hath beaten down;
Wearing its own deep feeling as a crown.
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