To Helen (1831)

by Edgar Allan Poe

Published 1831


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Helen, thy beauty is to me 
    Like those Nicean barks of yore, 
That gently, o’er a perfum’d sea, 
    The weary way-worn 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 beauty of fair Greece, 
And the grandeur of old Rome.

Lo ! in that little window-niche 
    How statue-like I see thee stand! 
    The folded scroll within thy hand — 
A Psyche from the regions which 
    Are Holy land !


To Helen,” one of many poems by Edgar Allan Poe, was published in 1831 in Poems of Edgar A. Poe. It is one of two poems by Poe titled “To Helen,” the other being published in 1848.