The Complete Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Edgar Allan Poe [973]
And softly through the forest bars
Light lovely shapes, on glossy plumes,
Float ever in, like winged stars,
Amid the purpling glooms —
which are, unquestionably, the finest in the poem.
The reflections suggested by the scene — commencing:
Alas! the very path I trace,
are, also, something more than merely natural, and are richly ideal; especially the cause assigned for the early death; and “the fragrant bough”
That drops its blossoms o’er me now.
The two concluding stanzas are remarkable examples of common fancies rejuvenated, and etherealized by grace of expression, and melody of rhythm.
The “light lovely shapes” in the third stanza (however beautiful in themselves), are defective, when viewed in reference to the “birds” of the stanza preceding. The topic “birds” is dismissed in the one paragraph, to be resumed in the other.
“Drops,” in the last line of the fourth stanza, is improperly used in an active sense. To drop is a neuter verb. An apple drops; we let the apple fall.
The repetition (”seemed,” “seem,” “seems,”) in the sixth and seventh stanzas, is ungraceful; so also that of “heart,” in the last line of the seventh, and the first of the eighth. The words “breathed” and “whispered,” in the second line of the fifth stanza, have a force too nearly identical. “Neath,”just below, is an awkward contraction. All contractions are awkward. It is no paradox, that the more prosaic the construction of verse, the better. Inversions should be dismissed. The most forcible lines are the most direct. Mrs. Welby owes three-fourths of her power (so far as style is concerned), to her freedom from these vulgar, and particularly English errors — elision and inversion. O’er is, however, too often used by her in place of over, and ‘twas for it was. We see instances here. The only inversions, strictly speaking, are
The moon within our casement beams,
and — “Amid the shadows deep.”
The versification throughout, is unusually good. Nothing can excel
And birds and streams with liquid lull
Have made the stillness beautiful . . . . .
And sealed them on thy lips, my love,
Beneath the apple-boughs . . . . .
or the whole of the concluding stanza, if we leave out of view the unpleasant repetition of “And,” at the commencement of the third and fifth lines. “Thy white hand trained “ (see stanza the fourth) involves four consonants, that unite with difficulty — ndtr — and the harshness is rendered more apparent, by the employment of the spondee, “hand trained,” in place of an iambus. “Melody,” is a feeble termination of the third stanza’s last line. The syllable dy is not full enough to sustain the rhyme. All these endings, liberty, property, happily, and the like, however justified by authority, are grossly objectionable. Upon the whole, there are some poets in America (Bryant and Sprague, for example), who equal Mrs. Welby in the negative merits of that limited versification which they chiefly affect — the iambic pentameter — but none equal her in the richer and positive merits of rhythmical variety, conception — invention. They, in the old routine, rarely err. She often surprises, and always delights, by novel, rich and accurate combination of the ancient musical expressions.
BAYARD TAYLOR.
I BLUSH to see, in the Literary World, an invidious notice of BAYARD TAYLOR’s “Rhymes of Travel.” What makes the matter worse, the critique is from the pen of one who, although undeservedly, holds, himself, some position as a poet: — and what makes the matter worst, the attack is anonymous, and (while ostensibly commending) most zealously endeavors to damn the young writer “with faint praise.” In his whole life, the author of the criticism never published a poem, long or short, which could compare, either in the higher merits, or in the minor morals