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.