Serenade

(In honor of National Poetry Month)

So sweet the hour, so calm the time,
I feel it more than half a crime,
When Nature sleeps and stars are mute,
To mar the silence ev'n with lute.
An image of Elysium lies:
Seven Pleaiades entranced in Heaven,
Form in the deep another seven:
Endymion nodding from above
Sees in the sea a second love.
Within the valleys dim and brown,
and on the spectral mountains crown,
The wearied light is dying down,
And earth, and stars, and sea, and sky
Are redolent of thee and thine
Enthralling love, my Adeline.
--by Edgar Allen Poe