The Complete Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Edgar Allan Poe [1103]
And lofty coignes, or sat and downward gazed
On those who strode below and gazed above —
I filled it; in the centre framed a hall:
Central in that, a throne; and for the light,
Forged mighty hammers that should rise and fall
On slanted rocks of granite and of flint,
Worked by a torrent, for whose passage down
A chasm I hewed. And here the god could take,
Midst showery sparks and swathes of broad gold fire
His lone repose, lulled by the sounds he loved;
Or, casting back the hammer-heads till they choked
The water’s course, enjoy, if so he wished,
Midnight tremendous, silence, and iron sleep.
The description of the Hell in “Paradise Lost” is altogether inferior in graphic effect, in originality, in expression, in the true imagination — to these magnificent — to these unparalleled passages. For this assertion there are tens of thousands who will condemn us as heretical; but there are a “chosen few” who will feel, in their inmost souls, the simple truth of the assertion. The former class would at least be silent, could they form even a remote conception of that contempt with which we hearken to their conventional jargon.
We have room for no farther extracts of length; but we refer the reader who shall be so fortunate as to procure a copy of “Orion,” to a passage at page 22, commencing
One day at noontide, when the chase was done.
It is descriptive of a group of lolling hounds, intermingled with sylvans, fawns, nymphs and oceanides. We refer him also to page 25, where Orion, enamored of the naked beauty of Artemis, is repulsed and frozen by her dignity. These lines end thus:
And ere the last collected shape he saw
Of Artemis, dispersing fast amid
Dense vapory clouds, the aching wintriness
Had risen to his teeth, and fixed his eyes,
Like glistening stones in the congealing air.
We refer, especially, too, to the description of Love, at page 29; to that of a Bacchanalian orgie, at page 34; to that of drought succeeded by rain, at page 70; and to that of the palace of Eos, at page 104.
Mr. Horne has a very peculiar and very delightful faculty of enforcing, or giving vitality to a picture, by some one vivid and intensely characteristic point or touch. He seizes the most salient feature of his theme, and makes this feature convey the whole. The combined n;auaiveté and picturesqueness of some of the passages thus enforced, cannot be sufficiently admired. For example:
The arches soon
With bow-arm forward thrust, on all sides twanged
Around, above, below.
Now, it is this thrusting forward of the bow-arm which is the idiosyncrasy of the action of a mass of archers. Again: Rhexergon and his friends endeavor to persuade Akinetos to be king. Observe the silent refusal of Akinetos — the pecu-liar passiveness of his action — if we may be permitted the paradox.
“Rise, therefore, Akinetos, thou art king.”
So saying, in his hand he placed a spear.
As though against a wall’ [[t ]]were set aslant,
Flatly the long spear fell upon the ground.
Here again: Merope departs from Chios in a ship.
And, as it sped along, she closely pressed
The rich globes of her bosom on the side
O’er which she bent with those black eyes, and gazed
Into the sea that fled beneath her face.
The fleeing of the sea beneath the face of one who gazes into it from a ship’s side, is the idiosyncrasy of the action of the subject. It is that which chiefly impresses the gazer.
We conclude with some brief quotations at random, which we shall not pause to classify. Their merits need no demonstration. They gleam with the purest imagination. They abound in picturesqueness — force — happily chosen epithets, each in itself a picture. They are redolent of all for which a poet will value a poem.
— her silver sandals glanced i’ the rays,
As doth a lizard playing on a hill,
And on the spot where she that instant stood
Naught but the bent and quivering grass was seen.
Above the Isle of Chios, night by night,
The clear moon lingered ever on her course,
Covering the forest foliage, where it swept
In its unbroken breadth