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agnusde2017's avatar

Here's a different take by poe:

Sonnet—To Science

By Edgar Allan Poe

Science! true daughter of Old Time thou art!

   Who alterest all things with thy peering eyes.

Why preyest thou thus upon the poet’s heart,

   Vulture, whose wings are dull realities?

How should he love thee? or how deem thee wise,

   Who wouldst not leave him in his wandering

To seek for treasure in the jewelled skies,

   Albeit he soared with an undaunted wing?

Hast thou not dragged Diana from her car,

   And driven the Hamadryad from the wood

To seek a shelter in some happier star?

   Hast thou not torn the Naiad from her flood,

The Elfin from the green grass, and from me

The summer dream beneath the tamarind tree?

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Martin Mc Carthy's avatar

On the night that's in it, 'Pale Through Her Eyes' is, in my opinion, the perfect Halloween poem. Who among us - who among the secret acolytes of 'the darkside' - could fail to relish this darkly vivid portrait of a female vampire that endeavours to seize our imaginations from the very first stanza?

Pale through her eyes,

her lips are scarlet

from drinking our blood,

this child, this harlot

Halloween poetry, and indeed vampire poetry specifically, doesn't come much better than this. It would almost make you want to be a vampire - albeit a romantic one, who seeks a life, an existence beyond the grave - which, of course, is the very essence of the whole vampire genre, and these dark rejoicings.

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