The Complete Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Edgar Allan Poe [1100]
Dense were the rolling clouds, starless the glooms;
But o’er a narrow rift, once drawn apart,
Showing a field remote of violet hue,
The high Moon floated, and her downward gleam
Shone on the upturned giant faces. Rigid
Each upper feature, loose the nether jaw;
Their arms cast wide with open palms; their chests
Heaving like some large engine. Near them lay
Their bloody clubs, with dust and hair begrimed,
Their spears and girdles, and the long-noosed thongs.
Artemis vanished; all again was dark.
With day’s first streak Orion rose, and loudly
To his companions called. But still they slept.
Again he shouted; yet no limb they stirr’d,
Tho’ scarcely seven strides distant. He approached,
And found the spot, so sweet with clover flower
When they had cast them down, was now arrayed
With many-headed poppies, like a crowd
Of dusky Ethiops in a magic cirque
Which had sprung up beneath them in the night.
And all entranced the air.
There are several minor defects in “Orion,” and we may as well mention them here. We sometimes meet with an instance of bad taste in a revolting picture or image; for example, at page 59, of this edition:
Naught fearing, swift, brimfull of raging life,
Stiff’ning they lay in pools of jellied gore.
Sometimes — indeed very often — we encounter an altogether purposeless oddness or foreignness of speech. For example, at page 78:
As in Dodona once, ere driven thence
By Zeus for that Rhexergon burnt some oaks.
Mr. Horne will find it impossible to assign a good reason for not here using “because.”
Purevaguenesses of speech abound. For example, page 89:
— one central heart wherein
Time beats twin pulses with Humanity.
Now and then sentences are rendered needlessly obscure through mere involution — as at page 103:
Star-rays that first played o’er my blinded orbs,
E’en as they glance above the lids of sleep,
Who else had never known surprise, nor hope,
Nor useful action.
Here the “who” has no grammatical antecedent, and would naturally be referred to sleep; whereas it is intended for “me,” understood, or involved, in the pronoun “my;” as if the sentence were written thus — “rays that first played o’er the blinded orbs of me, who &c.” It is useless to dwell upon so pure an affectation.
The versification throughout is, generally, of a very remarkable excellence. At times, however, it is rough, to no purpose; as at page 44:
And ever tended to some central point
In some place — nought more could I understand.
And here, at page 81:
The shadow of a stag stoops to the stream
Swift rolling toward the cataract and drinks deeply.
The above is an unintentional and false Alexandrine — including a foot too much, and that a trochee in place of an iambus. But here, at page 106, we have the utterly unjustifiable anomaly of half a foot too little:
And Eos ever rises circling
The varied regions of Mankind, &c.
All these are mere inadvertences, of course; for the general handling of the rhythm shows the profound metrical sense of the poet. He is, perhaps, somewhat too fond of “making the sound an echo to the sense.” “Orion” embodies some of the most remarkable instances of this on record; but if smoothness — if the true rhythm of a verse be sacrificed, the sacrifice is an error. The effect is only a beauty, we think, where no sacrifice is made in its behalf. It will be found possible to reconcile all the objects in view. Nothing can justify such lines as this, at page 69:
As snake-songs midst stone hollows thus has taught me.
We might urge, as another minor objection, that all the giants are made to speak in the same manner — with the same phraseology. Their characters are broadly distinctive, while their words are identical in spirit. There is sufficient individuality of sentiment, but little, or none, of language.
We must object, too, to the personal and political allusions — to the Corn-Law question, for example — to Wellington’s statue, &c. These things, of course, have no business in a poem.
We will conclude our fault-finding with the remark that, as a