Sarah Helen Whitman

Sarah Helen Power Whitman (January 19, 1803 – June 27, 1878) was a poet, essayist, transcendentalist, Spiritualist and a romantic interest of Edgar Allan Poe.

Quotes

Poems (Boston: Houghton, Osgood and Company, 1879)

Enchantress of the stormy seas,
Priestess of Night's high mysteries.

• When summer gathers up her robes of glory,
  And, like a dream of beauty, glides away.
  • "A Still Day in Autumn", line 3, p. 3.

• Warm lights are on the sleepy uplands waning
  Beneath dark clouds along the horizon rolled,
  Till the slant sunbeams, through the fringes raining,
  Bathe all the hills in melancholy gold.
  • "A Still Day in Autumn, line 13, p. 4.

• Beside the brook and on the umbered meadow,
  Where yellow fern-tufts fleck the faded ground,
  With folded lids beneath their palmy shadow,
  The gentian nods, in dewy slumbers bound.
  • "A Still Day in Autumn", line 21, p. 4.

• Enchantress of the stormy seas,
  Priestess of Night's high mysteries!
  • "Moonrise in May", line 45, p. 11.

• The shy little may-flower weaves her nest;
  But the south wind blows o'er the fragrant loam,
  And betrays the path to her woodland home.
  • "Wood-Walks in Spring", line 26, p. 16.

• The summer skies are darkly blue,
  The days are still and bright,
  And Evening trails her robes of gold
  Through the dim halls of Night.
  • "Summer's Call to the Little Orphan", line 1, p. 38.
  • Compare: "I heard the trailing garments of the Night / Sweep through her marble halls", Longfellow.

• And still the aster greets us, as we pass,
  With her faint smile,—among the withered grass.
  • "A Day of the Indian Summer", line 35, p. 54.

• Again the fair azalea bows
  Beneath her snowy crest.
  • "She Blooms No More", line 5, p. 67.

• Raven from the dim dominions
  On the Night's Plutonian shore,
  Oft I hear thy dusky pinions
  Wave and flutter round my door—
  See the shadow of thy pinions
  Float along the moonlit floor.
  • "The Raven", line 1, p. 72. (written as a counterpart to Poe's poem by the same name).

• Tell him I lingered alone on the shore,
  Where we parted, in sorrow, to meet nevermore;
  The night-wind blew cold on my desolate heart
  But colder those wild words of doom,—“Ye must part.”
  • "Our Island of Dreams", line 1, p. 76.

• Star of resplendent front! Thy glorious eye
  Shines on me still from out yon clouded sky.
  • "Arcturus" (To Edgar Allan Poe, October 1849), line 1, p. 86.

• The sweet imperious mouth, whose haughty valor
  Defied all portents of impending doom.
  • "The Portrait" (Of Poe), line 7, p. 195.

External links

• Sarah Helen Power Whitman on about.com
• Whitman's letters to and from Poe at the Edgar Allan Poe Society online