The Complete Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Edgar Allan Poe [1588]
From the torrent, or the fountain,
From the red cliff of the mountain.
But in some of the lines the pauses of punctuation do not come at the right points to make smooth reading:
From the same source I have not taken
My sorrow; I could not awaken
My heart to joy at the same tone;
And all I loved, I loved alone.
The semicolon after "sorrow" should have come at the end of the line instead of in the middle. Poe had not yet learned the secret of the rhythmic flow which we find in such perfection in "The Bells," for instance.
But in the last part of the poem we find a beauty of image and comparison that thrills us, and something of that strange, weird suggestiveness which was characteristic of all of Poe's poetry, the thing he has in common with no other poet.
This weird suggestiveness is found in still greater vividness in another poem entitled "The Lake." In this, besides, we see how Poe had a sort of fascination for the horrible. Notice how he says:
Yet that terror was not fright,
But a tremulous delight.
Here is the complete poem. The young student of poetry may study it for himself, and discover, if he can, its shortcomings, as we have pointed out the faults in the poem "Alone."
In spring of youth it was my lot
To haunt of the wide world a spot
The which I could not love the less,—
So lovely was the loveliness
Of a wild lake, with black rock bound,
And the tall pines that towered around.
But when the night had thrown her pall
Upon that spot as upon all,
And the mystic wind went by
Murmuring in melody,—
Then,—ah, then I would awake
To the terror of the lone lake.
Yet that terror was not fright,
But a tremulous delight,—
A feeling not the jeweled mine
Could teach or bribe me to define,—
Nor Love—although the Love were thine.
Death was in that poisonous wave,
And its gulf a fitting grave
For him who thence could solace bring
To his lone imagining,—
Whose solitary soul could make
An Eden of that dim lake.
These poems are chiefly interesting as they give us some idea of the nature of the young poet's mind. Poe had what may be called a scientific mind, infused through and through with poetry. At times he was exact, keen-minded, and patient as the scientist; then again he wandered away into mere fanciful suggestion of things that "never were on land or sea." His scientific turn we see in his detective stories; his poetic nature we see struggling against this intellectual exactness in the following sonnet:
Science! True daughter of Old Time thou art!
Who alterest all things with thy peering eyes.
Why preyest thou upon the poet's heart,
Vulture, whose wings are dull realities?
How should he love thee? or how deem thee wise,
Who wouldst not leave him in his wandering
To seek for treasure in the jeweled skies,
Albeit he soared with an undaunted wing?
Hast thou not dragged Diana from her car?
And driven the Hamadryad from the wood
To seek a shelter in some happier star?
Hast thou not torn the Naiad from her flood,
The Elfin from the green grass, and from me
The summer dream beneath the tamarind tree?
CHAPTER VIII
POE'S CHILD WIFE
While Poe was in Baltimore, after he had begun to earn something by his pen, he went to live with his aunt, Mrs. Clemm. She was very poor, and whatever Poe earned went toward the support of the whole family, which included not only Poe and his aunt, but her young daughter Virginia, at this time only eleven years of age.
Virginia was an exceedingly delicate and beautiful girl. She had dark hair and eyes, and a fine, transparent complexion. She was very modest and quiet; but she had a fine mind, and a very sweet and winning manner. She had also a poetic nature, and became an accomplished musician.
Mrs. Clemm, on the other hand, was a large, coarsely formed woman, and it seemed impossible that she could be the mother of so delicate and graceful a girl. She was very faithful and hardworking, however,