Page images
PDF
EPUB
[graphic][ocr errors]

over that little phrase. Again, line 53 reads in the
first edition, "That veil the Oregon where he hears
no sound." Clearly the poet was thinking of the
sound of the vowels as well as the meaning when he
changed this line to, "Where rolls the Oregon and
hears no sound." Line 70 is given as it is found in
the little blue and gold edition of 1862, "And the
sweet babe and the gray-headed man." In the edi-
tion of 1821 this, with the preceding line, ran thus:

The bowed with age, the infant in the smile
And beauty of its innocent age cut off.

In the complete edition of 1883, representing, we
may suppose, the author's latest thought about the
lines, they read:

In the full strength of years, matron and maid,
The speechless babe and the gray-headed man.

As originally published in the "North American Re-
view," the poem began with the words, "Yet a few
days,” in line 17, and closed with line 66, "And make
their bed with thee." The introduction and the close
were written for the edition of 1821.

There could scarcely be imagined a life more entirely contrasted to Bryant's than that of Edgar Allan Poe. He was the child of David and Elizabeth Arnold Poe, who were at the time of his birth members of the dramatic company of the Federal Street Theatre, Boston. In that city Poe was born, January 19, 1809. Left an orphan in his childhood, he was adopted by Mr. John Allan, a wealthy merchant of Richmond, Virginia. He accompanied his

[blocks in formation]

adopted parents to England, and was at school for five years at Stoke-Newington. This school he has described in the story "William Wilson." He spent a short time at the University of Virginia, and then for a little while was in Mr. Allan's counting-room in Richmond. He left here "to seek his fortune," and at Boston in 1827 issued his first volume, “Tamerlane, and Other Poems." Thus his poetical career began early, as did Bryant's. But the poems in this volume do not bear the relation to Poe's subsequent work that "Thanatopsis" does to Bryant's. His earnings from his literary work were not large; and probably in a fit of despair he enlisted in the United States army. He did well as a soldier, and was promoted; and Mr. Allan, learning of his whereabouts, secured his appointment to a cadetship at West Point. He was more interested in poetry than in his professional studies, however; neglected his studies, and in 1831 was cashiered. From this time he earned a precarious support by his pen. He was editor of magazines in Richmond, Philadelphia, and New York. He gained distinction as a critical writer, and by his weird and powerful tales. On the 29th of January, 1845, "The Raven" appeared in the New York "Evening Mirror," and from that time Poe was famous. The last years of his life were spent in New York, his home being at Fordham, a suburb of the city. His home relations were happy, in the sense that a tender and faithful affection existed between him and his wife. Her health was always delicate, however, and her death confirmed Poe's tendency to

irregular habits, which were the cause, or at least the occasion, of his own death, in Baltimore, in October, 1849.

The judgments upon Poe's life and work have been varied in the extreme. Lowell wrote in the "Fable for Critics":

There comes Poe with his raven like Barnaby Rudge,
Three-fifths of him genius, and two-fifths sheer fudge.

It is a great deal to say of any one that he is threefifths genius. It is severe, however, to call the remaining two-fifths sheer fudge. On the other hand, some critics have maintained that Poe is the only original genius in American Literature. All agree in ascribing to him genius, which is the highest praise that can be given to a writer, but probably no two of them would agree exactly in their answers if asked just what they mean by genius. There can be no doubt, however, that in "The Raven," "The Bells," "Ulalume," "The Conquering Worm," "Annabel Lee," "Israfel," and indeed in most of his lyrics, Poe displays a mastery of sound, and a power of expressing feelings of despair, regret, and a wild sort of aspiration, which are of a very high degree, and of a kind all his own. It cannot be said that Poe is like any of the British poets. He is certainly not Wordsworthian, nor Byronic, nor is he like Shelley. He is Poe, and no one else, and like no one else. He is essentially lyrical. He did not believe in the Epic style, maintaining that if a poem or tale exceeded a certain moderate limit of length, its effect

If we

was injured; that the perfect poem must be a short poem. This is, of course, true of the lyrical poem, which appeals strongly to the emotions, and expresses the personality of the writer. Poe is intensely personal. It is his own despair, his own regrets, his own baffled hopes and desires, which inspire his verse. He seems to have little of the dramatic power of conceiving other beings, and expressing their thoughts, feelings, hopes, and characters. His poems interpret his own soul. They do not interpret nature. read Bryant's "Thanatopsis" or his "Hymn to Death," and then read Poe's "Conquering Worm," we can hardly fail to feel the contrast in thought and method. Bryant goes to nature for the meaning of death. Poe keeps his eye fixed upon the human being, and upon the body after death; and as he looks no further than the imagination can see, the effect is terrible. The horrors that nature hides from us, Poe drags to the light. Bryant imitates the reserve of the nature he studies. But Poe has what Bryant lacks, warmth and passion. His lyrics take a grip upon one that cannot easily be unloosed. "The Raven" and "The Bells" have probably been committed to memory and recited more frequently than any other American poems, and this is because of certain very high qualities of excellence. The refrain, which is a prominent characteristic of both, is of course an aid to the memory. But the intensely vivid picturing of the thought, and the perfect adaptation of the sound to the feeling, are the real secrets of the ease of memorizing. Take "The Bells" as an

« PreviousContinue »