The Complete Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Edgar Allan Poe [1003]
The story, or as the epics have it, the argument, although brief, is by no means particularly easy of comprehension. The design seems to be based upon a passage in Mr. Irving’s “Astoria.” He tells us that the Indians who inhabit the Chippewyan range of mountains, call it the “Crest of the World,” and “think that Wakondah, or the Master of Life, as they designate the Supreme Being, has his residence among these aerial heights.” Upon this hint Mr. Mathews has proceeded. He introduces us to Wakondah standing in person upon a mountain-top. He describes his appearance, and thinks that a Chinook would be frightened to behold it. He causes the “Master of Life” to make a speech, which is addressed, generally, to things at large, and particularly to the neighboring Woods, Cataracts, Rivers, Pinnacles, Steeps, and Lakes — not to mention an Earthquake. But all these (and, we think, judiciously) turn a deaf ear to the oration, which, to be plain, is scarcely equal to a second-rate Piankitank stump speech. In fact, it is a barefaced attempt at animal magnetism, and the mountains, &c., do no more than show its potency in resigning themselves to sleep, as they do.
Then shone Wakondah’s dreadful eyes.
— then he becomes very indignant, and accordingly launches forth into speech the second — with which the delinquents are afflicted, with occasional brief interruptions from the poet, in proper person, until the conclusion of the poem.
The subject of the two orations we shall be permitted to sum up compendiously in the one term “rigmarole.” But we do not mean to say that our compendium is not an improvement, and a very considerable one, upon the speeches themselves — which, taken altogether, are the queerest, and the most rhetorical, not to say the most miscellaneous orations we ever remember to have listened to outside of an Arkansas House of Delegates. In saying this we mean what we say. We intend no joke. Were it possible, we would quote the whole poem in support of our opinion. But as this is not possible, and, moreover, as we presume Mr. Mathews has not been so negligent as to omit securing his valuable property by a copyright, we must be contented with a few extracts here and there at random, with a few comments equally so. But we have already hinted that there were really one or two words to be said of this effusion in the way of commendation, and these one or two words might as well be said now as hereafter. The poem thus commences —
The moon ascends the vaulted sky to-night;
With a slow motion full of pomp ascends,
But, mightier than the moon that o’er it bends,
A form is dwelling on the mountain height
That boldly intercepts the struggling light
With darkness nobler than the planet’s fire, —
A gloom and dreadful grandeur that aspire
To match the cheerful Heaven’s far-shining might.
If we were to shut our eyes to the repetition of “might,” (which, in its various inflections, is a pet word with our author, and lugged in upon all occasions,) and to the obvious imitation of Longfellow’s Hymn to the Night, in the second line of this stanza, we should be justified in calling it good. The “darkness nobler than the planet’s fire” is certainly good. The general conception of the colossal figure on the mountain summit, relieved against the full moon, would be unquestionablygrand were it not for the bullish phraseology by which the conception is rendered, in a great measure, abortive. The moon is described as “ascending,” and its “motion” is referred to, while we have the standing figure continuously intercepting its light. That the orb would soon pass from behind the figure, is a physical fact which the purpose of the poet required to be left out of sight, and which scarcely any other language than that which he has actually employed would have succeeded in forcing upon the reader’s attention. With all these defects, however, the passage, especially as an opening passage, is