The Complete Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Edgar Allan Poe [914]
So light that, gazing breathless there,
Lest the celestial dream should go,
You’d think the music in the air
Waved the fair vision to and fro,
Or think the melody’s sweet flow
Within the radiant creature played,
And those soft wreathing arms of snow
And white sylph feet the music made.
Now gliding slow with dreamy grace,
Her eyes beneath their lashes lost,
Now motionless, with lifted face,
And small hands on her bosom crossed.
And now with flashing eyes she springs —
Her whole bright figure raised in air,
As if her soul had spread its wings
And poised her one wild instant there!
She spoke not — but, so richly fraught
With language are her glance and smile,
That, when the curtain fell, I thought
She had been talking all the while.
This is, indeed, poetry — and of the most unquestionable kind — poetry truthful in the proper sense — that is to say, breathing of Nature. There is here nothing forced or artificial — no hardly sustained enthusiasm. The poetess speaks because she feels, and what she feels; but then what she feels is felt only by the truly poetical. The thought in the last line of the quatrain will not be so fully appreciated by the reader as it should be; for latterly it has been imitated, plagiarized, repeated ad infinitum: — but the other passages italicized have still left them all their original effect. The idea in the two last lines is exquisitely näive and natural; that in the two last lines of the second quatrain, beautiful beyond measure; that of the whole fifth quatrain, magnificent — unsurpassed in the entire compass of American poetry. It is instinct with the noblest poetical requisite — imagination.
Of the same trait I find, to my surprise, one of the best exemplifications among the “Juvenile Rhymes.”
For Fancy is a fairy that can hear,
Ever, the melody of Nature’s voice
And see all lovely visions that she will.
She drew a picture of a beauteous bird
With plumes of radiant green and gold inwoven,
Banished from its beloved resting place,
And fluttering in vain hope from tree to tree,
And bade us think how, like it, the sweet season
From one bright shelter to another fled —
First from the maple waved her emerald pinions,
But lingered still upon the oak and elm,
Till, frightened by rude breezes even from them,
With mournful sigh she moaned her sad farewell.
The little poem called “The Music Box” has been as widely circulated as any of Mrs. Osgood’s compositions. The melody and harmony of this jeu d’esprit are perfect, and there is in it a rich tint of that epigrammatism for which the poetess is noted. Some of the intentional epigrams interspersed through the works are peculiarly happy. Here is one which, while replete with the rarest “spirit of point,” is yet something more than pointed.
TO AN ATHEIST POET.
Lovest thou the music of the sea?
Callest thou the sunshine bright?
HIS voice is more than melody —
HIS smile is more than light.
Here [[,]] again, is something very similar:
Fanny shuts her smiling eyes,
Then because she cannot see,
Thoughtless simpleton! she cries
“Ah! you can’t see me.”
Fanny’s like the sinner vain
Who, with spirit shut and dim,
Thinks, because he sees not Heaven,
Heaven beholds not him.
Is it not a little surprising, however, that a writer capable of so much precision and finish as the author of these epigrams must be, should have failed to see how much of force is lost in the inversion of “the sinner vain?” Why not have written “Fanny’s like the silly sinner?” — or, if “silly” be thought too jocose, “the blinded sinner?” The rhythm, at the same time, would thus be much improved by bringing the lines,
Fanny’s like the silly sinner,
Thinks because he sees not Heaven,
into exact equality.
In mingled epigram and espieglerie Mrs. Osgood is even more especially at home. I have seldom seen anything in this way more happily done than the song entitled “If He Can.”
“The Unexpected Declaration” is, perhaps, even a finer specimen of the same manner. It is one of that class of compositions which