To Helen

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To Helen (1831) is one of Poe's most famous and frequently anthologized poems, a luminous tribute to classical beauty inspired by the mother of a childhood friend. "Helen, thy beauty is to me / Like those Nicean barks of yore."
Author Edgar Allan Poe 
Helen, thy beauty is to me
    Like those Nicean barks of yore,
  That gently, o'er a perfumed sea,
    The weary, wayworn wanderer bore
    To his own native shore.

  On desperate seas long wont to roam,
    Thy hyacinth hair, thy classic face,
  Thy Naiad airs have brought me home
    To the glory that was Greece,
  To the grandeur that was Rome.

  Lo! in yon brilliant window niche,
    How statue-like I see thee stand,
    The agate lamp within thy hand!
  Ah, Psyche, from the regions which
    Are Holy Land!

1831.





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