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Classic-Fiction

The Complete Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Edgar Allan Poe [946]

By Root 17085 0

wing

And link her heart with Juliet’s in a dream,

And feel the music of a sister string

That thrilled the current of her vital stream.

How delightful a picture we have here! A lady is lending one of her wings to the spirit, or genius, called Imagination, who, of course, has lost one of his own. While thus employed with one hand, with the other she is chaining her heart to the heart of the fair Juliet. At the same time she is feeling the music of a sister string, and this string is thrilling the current of the lady’s vital stream. If this is downright nonsense we cannot be held responsible for its perpetration; it is but the downright nonsense of Mr. Dawes.

Again —

Without the Palinurus of self-science

Byron embarked upon the stormy sea,

To adverse breezes hurling his defiance

And dashing up the rainbows on his lee,

And chasing those he made in wildest mirth,

Or sending back their images to earth.

This stanza we have more than once seen quoted as a fine specimen of the poetical powers of our author. His lordship, no doubt, is herein made to cut a very remarkable figure. Let us imagine him, for one moment, embarked upon a stormy sea, hurling his defiance (literally throwing his gauntlet or glove,) to the adverse breezes, dashing up rainbows on his lee, laughing at them, and chasing them at the same time, and, in conclusion, “sending back their images to earth.” But we have already wearied the reader with this abominable rigmarole. We shall be pardoned, (after the many specimens thus given at random,) for not carrying out the design we originally intended: that of commenting upon two or three successive pages of “Geraldine,” with a view of showing, (in a spirit apparently more fair than that of particular selection,) the entireness with which the whole poem is pervaded by unintelligibility. To every thinking mind, however, this would seem a work of supererogation. In such matters, by such understandings, the brick of the skolastikos will be received implicitly as a sample of the house. The writer capable, to any extent, of such absurdity as we have pointed out, cannot, by any possibility, produce a long article worth reading. We say this in the very teeth of the magnificent assembly which listened to the recital of Mr. Dawes, in the great hall of the University of New York. We shall leave “Athenia of Damascus,” without comment, to the decision of those who may find time and temper for its perusal, and conclude our extracts by a quotation, from among the minor poems, of the following very respectable

ANACREONTIC.

Fill again the mantling bowl

Nor fear to meet the morning breaking!

None but slaves should bend the soul

Beneath the chains of mortal making:

Fill your beakers to the brim,

Bacchus soon shall lull your sorrow;

Let delight

But crown the night,

And care may bring her clouds to-morrow.

Mark this cup of rosy wine

With virgin pureness deeply blushing;

Beauty pressed it from the vine

While Love stood by to charm its gushing;

He who dares to drain it now

Shall drink such bliss as seldom gladdens;

The Moslem’s dream

Would joyless seem

To him whose brain its rapture maddens.

Pleasure sparkles on the brim —

Lethe lies far deeper in it —

Both, enticing, wait for him

Whose heart is warm enough to win it;

Hearts like ours, if e’er they chill

Soon with love again must lighten.

Skies may wear

A darksome air

Where sunshine most is known to brighten.

Then fill, fill high the mantling bowl!

Nor fear to meet the morning breaking;

Care shall never cloud the soul

While Beauty’s beaming eyes are waking.