The Sleeper by Edgar Allan Poe

The Sleeper appears to have been inspired by the Samuel Taylor Coleridge poem Christabel. Although it’s not as famous as some of Poe’s other poems, such as The Raven, he considered The Sleeper one of his best compositions. As with many other Edgar Allan Poe poems, The Sleeper focuses on the death of a beautiful woman and the way her passing affects the narrator.

Poe revised the poem multiple times. It was first published in his anthology Poems of Edgar A. Poe (1831) under the title Irene. This version consisted of 74 lines. By the time it was republished in the Philadelphia Saturday Courier (May 22, 1841), Poe had refined it down to 60 lines. The poem was first published as The Sleeper on May 22, 1841 in the Saturday Chronicle.

About Edgar Allan Poe

Although Edgar Allan Poe is best remembered for his short tales of the macabre, he was also an editor, literary critic, and poet. Poe was born in Boston in 1809. His father abandoned him and his mother the following year. When his mother died in 1811, Poe went to live in Richmond, Virginia with John and Frances Allan. He stayed with them until he reached early adulthood, but the couple never legally adopted him.

Much of Poe’s work was inspired by the traumatic events he experienced during his life. His dark tales completely transformed the genre of the horror story and his work continues to be an inspiration for many writers. However, Poe was also an early pioneer of the science fiction genre and is credited with being the inventor of the modern detective story. Poe died under mysterious circumstances in 1849.

The Sleeper

by Edgar Allan Poe

At midnight, in the month of June,
I stand beneath the mystic moon.
An opiate vapor, dewy, dim,
Exhales from out her golden rim,
And softly dripping, drop by drop,
Upon the quiet mountain top,
Steals drowsily and musically
Into the universal valley.
The rosemary nods upon the grave;
The lily lolls upon the wave;
Wrapping the fog about its breast,
The ruin moulders into rest;
Looking like Lethe, see! the lake
A conscious slumber seems to take,
And would not, for the world, awake.
All Beauty sleeps!—and lo! where lies
Irene, with her Destinies!

Oh, lady bright! can it be right—
This window open to the night?
The wanton airs, from the tree-top,
Laughingly through the lattice drop—
The bodiless airs, a wizard rout,
Flit through thy chamber in and out,
And wave the curtain canopy
So fitfully—so fearfully—
Above the closed and fringéd lid
’Neath which thy slumb’ring soul lies hid,
That, o’er the floor and down the wall,
Like ghosts the shadows rise and fall!
Oh, lady dear, hast thou no fear?
Why and what art thou dreaming here?
Sure thou art come o’er far-off seas,
A wonder to these garden trees!
Strange is thy pallor! strange thy dress!
Strange, above all, thy length of tress,
And this all solemn silentness!

The lady sleeps! Oh, may her sleep,
Which is enduring, so be deep!
Heaven have her in its sacred keep!
This chamber changed for one more holy,
This bed for one more melancholy,
I pray to God that she may lie
Forever with unopened eye,
While the pale sheeted ghosts go by!

My love, she sleeps! Oh, may her sleep,
As it is lasting, so be deep!
Soft may the worms about her creep!
Far in the forest, dim and old,
For her may some tall vault unfold—
Some vault that oft hath flung its black
And wingéd pannels fluttering back,
Triumphant, o’er the crested palls
Of her grand family funerals—

Some sepulchre, remote, alone,
Against whose portals she hath thrown,
In childhood, many an idle stone—
Some tomb from out whose sounding door
She ne’er shall force an echo more,
Thrilling to think, poor child of sin!
It was the dead who groaned within.

Edgar Allan Poe (1809 — 1849)