CRITICISM

by Edgar Allan Poe

  That when I loved him not I cannot say.

  Mid the green mountains many and many a song

  We two had sung like gladsome birds in May.

  Another specimen, and one still more to the purpose may be given from Milton whose accurate ear (although he cannot justly be called the best of versifiers) included and balanced without difficulty the rhythm of the longest passages.

  But say, if our Deliverer up to heaven

  Must re-ascend, what will betide the few

  His faithful, left among the unfaithful herd,

  The enemies of truth? who then shall guide

  His people, who defend? Will they not deal

  More with his fo than with him they dealt?

  Be sure they will, said the Angel.

  The other metrical faults in The Ages are few. Mr. Bryant is not always successful in his Alexandrines. Too great care cannot be taken, we think, in so regulating this species of verse as to admit of the necessary pause at the end of the third foot- or at least as not to render a pause necessary elsewhere. We object, therefore, to such lines as

  A palm like his, and catch from him the hallowed flame.

  The truth of heaven, and kneel to Gods that heard them not. That which concludes Stanza X, although correctly cadenced in the above respect, requires an accent on the monosyllable the, which is too unimportant to sustain it. The defect is rendered the more perceptible by the introduction of a Trochee in the first foot.

  The sick untended then

  Languished in the damp shade, and died afar from men.

  We are not sure that such lines as

  A boundless sea of blood and the wild air.

  The smile of heaven, till a new age expands. are in any case justifiable, and they can be easily avoided. As in the Alexandrine mentioned above, the course of the rhythm demands an accent on monosyllables too unimportant to sustain it. For this prevalent heresy in metre we are mainly indebted to Byron, who introduced it freely, with the view of imparting an abrupt energy to his verse. There are, however, many better ways of relieving a monotone.

  Stanza VI is, throughout, an exquisite specimen of versification, besides embracing many beauties both of thought and expression.

  Look on this beautiful world and read the truth

  In her fair page; see every season brings

  New change, to her, of everlasting youth;

  Still the green soil with joyous living things

  Swarms; the wide air is full of joyous wings;

  And myriads, still, are happy in the sleep

  Of ocean's azure gulfs, and where he flings

  The restless surge. Eternal love doth keep

  In his complacent arms the earth, the air, the deep. The cadences, here, at the words page, swarms, and surge respectively, cannot be surpassed. We shall find, upon examination, comparatively few consonants in the stanza, and by their arrangement no impediment is offered to the flow of the verse. Liquids and the most melodious vowels abound. World, eternal, season, wide, change, full, air, everlasting, wings, flings, complacent, surge, gulfs, myriads, azure, ocean, sail, and joyous, are among the softest and most sonorous sounds in the language, and the partial line after the pause at surge, together with the stately march of the Alexandrine which succeeds, is one of the finest imaginable of finales Eternal love doth keep

  In his complacent arms, the earth, the air, the deep. The higher beauties of the poem are not, we think, of the highest. It has unity, completeness,- a beginning, middle and end. The tone, too, of calm, hopeful, and elevated reflection, is well sustained throughout. There is an occasional quaint grace of expression, as in

  Nurse of full streams, and lifter up of proud

  Sky-mingling mountains that o'erlook the cloudor of antithetical and rhythmical force combined, as in

  The shock that burled

  To dust in many fragments dashed and strewn

  The throne whose roots were in another world

  And whose far-stretching shadow awed our own.

  But we look in vain for something more worthy commendation. At the same time the piece is especially free from errors. Once only we meet with an unjust metonymy, where a sheet of water is said to

  Cradle, in his soft embrace, a gay

  Young group of grassy islands. We find little originality of thought, and less imagination. But in a poem essentially didactic, of course we cannot hope for the loftiest breathings of the Muse.

  To the Past is a poem of fourteen quatrains- three feet and four alternately. In the second quatrain, the lines

  And glorious ages gone

  Lie deep within the shadow of thy womb. are, to us, disagreeable. Such things are common, but at best, repulsive. In the present case there is not even the merit of illustration. The womb, in any just imagery, should be spoken of with a view to things future; here it is employed, in the sense of the tomb, and with a view to things past. In Stanza XI the idea is even worse. The allegorical meaning throughout the poem, although generally well sustained, is not always so. In the quatrain

  Thine for a space are they

  Yet shalt thou yield thy treasures up at last;

  Thy gates shall yet give way

  Thy bolts shall fall inexorable Past! it seems that The Past, as an allegorical personification, is confounded with Death.

  The Old Man's Funeral is of seven stanzas, each of six lines- four Pentameters and Alexandrine rhyming. At the funeral of an old man who has lived out his full quota of years, another, as aged, reproves the company for weeping. The poem is nearly perfect in its way- the thoughts striking and natural- the versification singularly sweet. The third stanza embodies a fine idea, beautifully expressed.

  Ye sigh not when the sun, his course fulfilled,

  His glorious course rejoicing earth and sky,

  In the soft evening when the winds are stilled,

  Sings where his islands of refreshment lie,

  And leaves the smile of his departure spread

  O'er the warm-colored heaven, and ruddy mountain head. The technical word chronic should have been avoided in the fifth line of Stanza VI No chronic tortures racked his aged limb.

  The Rivulet has about ninety octo-syllabic verses. They contrast the changing and perishable nature of our human frame, with the greater durability of the Rivulet. The chief merit is simplicity. We should imagine the poem to be one of the earliest pieces of Mr. Bryant, and to have undergone much correction. In the first paragraph are, however, some awkward constructions. In the verses, for example

  This little rill that from the springs

  Of yonder grove its current brings,

  Plays on the slope awhile, and then

  Goes prattling into groves again. the reader is apt to suppose that rill is the nominative to plays, whereas it is the nominative only to drew in the subsequent lines,

  Oft to its warbling waters drew

  My little feet when life was new. The proper verb is, of course, immediately seen upon reading these latter lines- but the ambiguity has occurred.

  The Praries. This is a poem, in blank Pentameter, of about one hundred and twenty-five lines, and possesses features which do not appear in any of the pieces above mentioned. Its descriptive beauty is of a high order. The peculiar points of interest in the Prairie are vividly shown forth, and as a local painting, the work is, altogether, excellent. Here are moreover, evidences of fine imagination. For example The great heavens

  Seem to stoop down upon the scene in love A nearer vault and of a tenderer blue

  Than that which bends above the eastern hills.

  Till twilight blushed, and lovers walked and wooed

  In a forgotten language, and old tunes

  From instruments of unremembered form

  Gave the soft winds a voice.

  The bee

  Within the hollow oak. I listen long

  To his domestic hum and think I hear

  The sound of the advancing multitude

  Which soon shall fill th
ese deserts.

  Breezes of the south!

  Who toss the golden and the flame-like flowers,

  And pass the prairie-hawk that poised on high,

  Flaps his broad wing yet moves not!

  There is an objectionable ellipsis in the expression "I behold them from the first," meaning "first time;" and either a grammatical or typographical error of moment in the fine sentence commencing

  Fitting floor

  For this magnificent temple of the sky With flowers whose glory and whose multitude

  Rival the constellations!

  Earth, a poem of similar length and construction to The Prairies, embodies a noble conception. The poet represents himself as lying on the earth in a "midnight black with clouds," and giving ideal voices to the varied sounds of the coming tempest. The following passages remind us of some of the more beautiful portions of Young.

  On the breast of Earth

  I lie and listen to her mighty voice;

  A voice of many tones-sent up from streams

  That wander through the gloom, from woods unseen

  Swayed by the sweeping of the tides of air,

  From rocky chasm where darkness dwells all day,

  And hollows of the great invisible hills,

  And sands that edge the ocean stretching far

  Into the night- a melancholy sound!

  Ha! how the murmur deepens! I perceive

  And tremble at its dreadful import. Earth

  Uplifts a general cry for guilt and wrong

  And Heaven is listening. The forgotten graves

  Of the heart broken utter forth their plaint.

  The dust of her who loved and was betrayed,

  And him who died neglected in his age,

  The sepulchres of those who for mankind

  Labored, and earned the recompense of scorn,

  Ashes of martyrs for the truth, and bones

  Of those who in the strife for liberty

  Were beaten down, their corses given to dogs,

  Their names to infamy, all find a voice!

  In this poem and elsewhere occasionally throughout the volume, we meet with a species of grammatical construction, which, although it is to be found in writing of high merit, is a mere affectation, and, of course, objectionable. We mean the abrupt employment of a direct pronoun in place of the customary relative. For example Or haply dost thou grieve for those that die For living things that trod awhile thy face,

  The love of thee and heaven, and how they sleep,

  Mixed with the shapeless dust on which thy herds

  Trample and graze? The note of interrogation here, renders the affectation more perceptible.

  The poem To the Apenines resembles, in meter, that entitled The Old Man's Funeral, except that the former has a Pentameter in place of the Alexandrine. This piece is chiefly remarkable for the force, metrical and moral, of its concluding stanza.

  In you the heart that sighs for Freedom seeks

  Her image; there the winds no barrier know,

  Clouds come and rest and leave your fairy peaks;

  While even the immaterial Mind, below,

  And Thought, her winged offspring, chained by power,

  Pine silently for the redeeming hour.

  The Knight's Epitaph consists of about fifty lines of blank Pentameter. This poem is well conceived and executed. Entering the Church of St. Catherine at Pisa, the poet is arrested by the image of an armed knight graven upon the lid of a sepulchre. The epitaph consists of an imaginative portraiture of the knight, in which he is made the impersonation of the ancient Italian chivalry.

  Seventy-six has seven stanzas of a common, but musical versification, of which these lines will afford an excellent specimen.

  That death-stain on the vernal sword,

  Hallowed to freedom all the shore In fragments fell the yoke abhorred The footsteps of a foreign lord

  Profaned the soil no more.

  The Living Lost has four stanzas of somewhat peculiar construction, but admirably adapted to the tone of contemplative melancholy which pervades the poem. We can call to mind few things more singularly impressive than the eight concluding verses. They combine ease with severity, and have antithetical force without effort or flippancy. The final thought has also a high ideal beauty.

  But ye who for the living lost

  That agony in secret bear

  Who shall with soothing words accost

  The strength of your despair?

  Grief for your sake is scorn for them

  Whom ye lament, and all condemn,

  And o'er the world of spirit lies

  A gloom from which ye turn your eyes. The first stanza commences with one of those affectations which we noticed in the poem "Earth."

  Matron, the children of whose love,

  Each to his grave in youth have passed,

  And now the mould is heaped above

  The dearest and the last.

  The Strange Lady is of the fourteen syllable metre, answering to two lines, one of eight syllables, the other six. This rhythm is unmanageable, and requires great care in the rejection of harsh consonants. Little, however, has been taken, apparently, in the construction of the verses

  As if they loved to breast the breeze that sweeps the cool clear sky.

  And thou shoudst chase the nobler game, and I bring down the bird. Or that strange dame so gay and fair were some mysterious foe, which are not to be pronounced without labor. The story is old- of a young gentleman who going out to hunt, is inveigled into the woods and destroyed by a fiend in the guise of a fair lady. The ballad character is nevertheless well preserved, and this, we presume, is nearly every thing intended.

  The Hunter's Vision is skilfully and sweetly told. It is a tale of a young hunter who, overcome with toil, dozes on the brink of a precipice. In this state between waking and sleeping, he fancies a spirit-land in the fogs of the valley beneath him, and sees approaching him the deceased lady of his love. Arising to meet her, he falls, with the effort, from the crag, and perishes. The state of reverie is admirably pictured in the following stanzas. The poem consists of nine such.

  All dim in haze the mountains lay

  With dimmer vales between;

  And rivers glimmered on their way

  By forests faintly seen;

  While ever rose a murmuring sound

  From brooks below and bees around.

  He listened till he seemed to hear

  A strain so soft and low

  That whether in the mind or ear

  The listener scarce might know.

  With such a tone, so sweet and mild

  The watching mother lulls her child.

  Catterskill Falls is a narrative somewhat similar. Here the hero is also a hunter- but of delicate frame. He is overcome with the cold at the foot of the falls, sleeps, and is near perishing- but being found by some woodmen, is taken care of, and recovers. As in the Hunters Vision, the dream of the youth is the main subject of the poem. He fancies a goblin palace in the icy network of the cascade, and peoples it in his vision with ghosts. His entry into this palace is, with rich imagination on the part of the poet, made to correspond with the time of the transition from the state of reverie to that of nearly total insensibility.

  They eye him not as they pass along,

  But his hair stands up with dread,

  When he feels that he moves with that phantom throng

  Till those icy turrets are over his head,

  And the torrent's roar as they enter seems

  Like a drowsy murmur heard in dreams.

  The glittering threshold is scarcely passed

  When there gathers and wraps him round

  A thick white twilight sullen and vast

  In which there is neither form nor sound;

  The phantoms, the glory, vanish all

  Within the dying voice of the waterfall.

  There are nineteen similar stanzas. The metre is formed of Iambuses and Anapests.

/>   The Hunter of the Prairies (fifty-six octosyllabic verses with alternate rhymes) is a vivid picture of the life of a hunter in the desert. The poet, however, is here greatly indebted to his subject.

  The Damsel of Peru is in the fourteen syllable metre, and has a most spirited, imaginative and musical commencement

  Where olive leaves were twinkling in every wind that blew,

  There sat beneath the pleasant shade a damsel of Peru. This is also a ballad, and a very fine one-full of action, chivalry, energy and rhythm. Some passages have even a loftier merit-that of a glowing ideality. For example For the noon is coming on, and the sunbeams fiercely beat,

  And the silent hills and forest-tops seem reeling in the heat.

  The Song of Pitcairn's Island is a sweet, quiet and simple poem, of a versification differing from that of any preceding piece. We subjoin a specimen. The Tahetian maiden addresses her lover.

  Come talk of Europe's maids with me

  Whose necks and cheeks they tell

  Outshine the beauty of the sea,

  White foam and crimson shell.

  I'll shape like theirs my simple dress

  And bind like them each jetty tress,

  A sight to please thee well

  And for my dusky brow will braid

  A bonnet like an English maid.

  There are seven similar stanzas.

  Rispah is a scriptural theme from 2 Samuel, and we like it less than any poem yet mentioned. The subject, we think, derives no additional interest from its poetical dress. The metre resembling, except in the matter of rhyme, that of "Catterskill Falls," and consisting of mingled Iambuses and Anapaests, is the most positively disagreeable of any which our language admits, and, having a frisky or fidgetty rhythm, is singularly ill-adapted to the lamentations of the bereaved mother. We cannot conceive how the fine ear of Mr. Bryant could admit such verses as,

  And Rispah once the loveliest of all

  That bloomed and smiled in the court of Saul, amp;c.

  The Indian Girl's Lament and The Arctic Lover have nearly all the peculiarities of the "Song of Pitcairn's Island."

  The Massacre at Scio is only remarkable for inaccuracy of expression in the two concluding lines Till the last link of slavery's chain

  Is shivered to be worn no more. What shall be worn no more? The chain- but the link is implied.