The Sleeper
Edgar Allan Poe
1809 to 1849
Drag the words to the correct places to complete the poem. To reset the game, click on the "Reset Game" button located below the poem. This will clear all the words you've placed in the blanks, returning them to the word bank and resetting the poem to its original state with empty blanks.
At midnight, in the month of June,
I stand ______ the mystic moon.
An opiate vapor, dewy, dim,
Exhales ______ out her golden rim,
And softly dripping, drop by drop,
Upon the quiet mountain top,
Steals drowsily and musically
______ the universal valley.
The rosemary nods upon the grave;
______ lily lolls upon the wave;
Wrapping the fog about ______ breast,
The ruin moulders into rest;
Looking like Lethe, see! the lake
A conscious slumber seems to take,
And ______ not, for the world, awake.
All Beauty sleeps!—and lo! where lies
Irene, with her Destinies!
Oh, lady bright! ______ it be right—
This window open to the night?
______ wanton airs, from the tree-top,
Laughingly through the lattice drop—
The bodiless airs, a wizard rout,
Flit through thy ______ in and out,
And wave the curtain canopy
So fitfully—so fearfully—
Above the closed and fringéd lid
’Neath which ______ slumb’ring soul lies hid,
That, o’er the floor and ______ the wall,
Like ghosts the shadows rise and fall!
Oh, lady dear, hast thou no fear?
Why and what ______ thou dreaming here?
Sure thou art come o’er far-off seas,
A wonder to these garden trees!
Strange is thy pallor! strange thy dress!
Strange, above all, thy length of tress,
And this all solemn silentness!
The lady sleeps! Oh, ______ her sleep,
Which is enduring, so be deep!
Heaven ______ her in its sacred keep!
This chamber changed for ______ more holy,
This bed for one more melancholy,
I ______ to God that she may lie
Forever with unopened eye,
While the pale sheeted ghosts go by!
My love, ______ sleeps! Oh, may her sleep,
As it is lasting, ______ be deep!
Soft may the worms about her creep!
______ in the forest, dim and old,
For her may ______ tall vault unfold—
Some vault that oft hath flung ______ black
And wingéd pannels fluttering back,
Triumphant, o’er the ______ palls
Of her grand family funerals—
Some sepulchre, remote, alone,
Against whose portals she hath thrown,
In childhood, many ______ idle stone—
Some tomb from out whose sounding door
______ ne’er shall force an echo more,
Thrilling to think, ______ child of sin!
It was the dead who groaned within.