The Complete Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Edgar Allan Poe [1042]
So live, that when thy summons comes to join
The innumerable caravan that moves
To that mysterious realm where each shall take
His chamber in the silent halls of Death,
Thou go not, like the quarry slave at night,
Scourged to his dungeon; but, sustained and soothed
By an unfaltering trust, approach thy grave.
Like one who wraps the drapery of his couch
About him, and lies down to pleasant dreams.
Mr. L. thus:
To him the wind, aye and the yellow leaves
Shall have a voice and give him eloquent teachings.
He shall so hear the solemn hymn that Death
Has lifted up for all, that he shall go
To his long resting-place without a tear.
Again, in his "Prelude to the Voices of the Night," Mr. Longfellow says:
Look then into shine heart and write!
Sir Philip Sidney in the "Astrophal and Stella" has:
Foole, said my Muse to me, looke in thy heart and write!
Again — in Longfellow's "Midnight Mass " we read:
And the hooded clouds like friars.
The Lady in Milton's "Comus" says:
—— When the gray-hooded even
Like a sad votarist in palmer's weeds.
And again: — these lines by Professor Longfellow will be remembered by everybody:
Art is long and time is fleeting,
And our hearts, though stout and brave,
Still like muffled drums are beating
Funeral marches to the grave.
But if any one will turn to page 66 of John Sharpe's edition of Henry Headley's "Select Beauties of Ancient English Poetry," published at London in 1810, he will there find an Exequy on the death of his wife by Henry King, Bishop of Chichester, and therein also the following lines, where the author is speaking of following his wife to the grave:
But hark! my pulse, like a soft drum,
Beats my approach — tells thee I come!
And slow howe'er my marches be,
I shall at last sit down by thee.
Were I disposed, indeed, to push this subject any farther, I should have little difficulty in culling, from the works of the author of "Outre Mer," a score or two of imitations quite as palpable as any upon which I have insisted. The fact of the matter is, that the friends of Mr. Longfellow, so far from undertaking to talk about my "carping littleness" in charging Mr. Longfellow with imitation, should have given me credit, under the circumstances, for great moderation in charging him with imitation alone. Had I accused him, in loud terms, of manifest and continuous plagiarism, I should but have echoed the sentiment of every man of letters in the land beyond the immediate influence of the Longfellow coterie. And since I, "knowing what I know and seeing what I have seen" — submitting in my own person to accusations of plagiarism for the very sins of this gentleman against myself — since I contented myself, nevertheless, with simply setting forth the merits of the poet in the strongest light, whenever an opportunity was afforded me, can it be considered either decorous or equitable on the part of Professor Longfellow to beset me, upon my first adventuring an infinitesimal sentence of dispraise, with ridiculous anonymous letters from his friends, and moreover, with malice prepense, to instigate against me the pretty little witch entitled "Miss Walter;" advising her and instructing her to pierce me to death with the needles of innumerable epigrams, rendered unnecessarily and therefore cruelly painful to my feelings, by being first carefully deprived of the point?
It should not be supposed that I feel myself individually aggrieved in the letter of Outis He has praised me even more than he has blamed. In replying to him, my design has been to place fairly and distinctly before the literary public certain principles of criticism for which I have been long contending, and which, through sheer misrepresentation, were in danger of being misunderstood.
Having brought the subject, in this view, to a close, I now feel at liberty to add a few words, by way of freeing myself of any suspicion of malevolence or discourtesy. The thesis of my argument, in general, has been the definition of the grounds on which a charge of plagiarism may be based,