Lyric Poem · Nature
Evening Star
'Twas noontide of summer,
And midtime of night,
And stars, in their orbits,
Shone pale, through the light
Of the brighter, cold moon.
'Mid planets her slaves,
Herself in the Heavens,
Her beam on the waves.
I gazed awhile
On her cold smile;
Too cold — too cold for me —
There passed, as a shroud,
A fleecy cloud,
And I turned away to thee,
Proud Evening Star,
In thy glory afar
And dearer thy beam shall be;
For joy to my heart
Is the proud part
Thou bearest in Heaven at night,
And more I admire
Thy distant fire,
Than 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.
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