Lyric Poem · Nature
Evening Star
1'Twas noontide of summer,
2 And midtime of night,
3And stars, in their orbits,
4 Shone pale, through the light
5Of the brighter, cold moon.
6 'Mid planets her slaves,
7Herself in the Heavens,
8 Her beam on the waves.
9 I gazed awhile
10 On her cold smile;
11Too cold — too cold for me —
12 There passed, as a shroud,
13 A fleecy cloud,
14And I turned away to thee,
15 Proud Evening Star,
16 In thy glory afar
17And dearer thy beam shall be;
18 For joy to my heart
19 Is the proud part
20Thou bearest in Heaven at night,
21 And more I admire
22 Thy distant fire,
23Than that colder, lowly light.
Full-text availability follows the United States display decision recorded below; status can differ elsewhere.
“Evening Star” by Edgar Allan Poe — quilloak.com/poems/evening-star
Quick facts
- Poem
- Evening Star
- Poet
- Edgar Allan Poe
- Length
- 23 lines
- Form
- Lyric Poem
- Themes
- Nature, Peace, Summer
Craft notes
How this poem works
Measured from the text on this page, not copied from a summary. Counts are approximate: syllables and rhymes come from the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary, which models General American English, so dialect, older pronunciation, and performance can all change what you hear.
- Shape
- 23 lines · 2 stanzas of 8–15 lines
- Line length
- Lines run 4-7 syllables (median 5). No single length dominates, which is normal once elision and contraction are in play.
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Text, source & rights
A traceable edition
Full-text display is based on the committed source record and a United States term-expiry review.
- Author record
- Edgar Allan Poe1809–1849
- Source record
- PoetryDBEvening Star by edgar-allan-poe, PoetryDB transcription
- Display decision
- Full text · United States · reviewed 2026-07-18
- Publication record
- Not recorded in the imported source
- Text fingerprint
- SHA-256 72abb4b3689b20ec…
- Editorial handling
- Whitespace and stanza breaks normalized for web display; no material wording change recorded.