The Complete Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Edgar Allan Poe [991]
Your early splendor’s gone
Like stars into a cloud withdrawn —
Like music laid asleep
In dried up fountains. . . .
Enough, I am, and shall not choose to die.
No matter what our future Fate may be,
To live, is in itself a majesty. . . .
And Truth, arising from yon deep,
Is plain as a white statue on a tall, dark steep. . .
————— Then
The Earth and Heaven were fair,
While only less than Gods seemed all my fellow men.
Oh, the delight — the gladness —
The sense, yet love, of madness —
The glorious choral exultations —
The far-off sounding of the banded nations —
The wings of angels in melodious sweeps
Upon the mountain’s hazy steeps —
The very dead astir within their coffined deeps —
The dreamy veil that wrapt the star and sod —
A swathe of purple, gold, and amethyst —
And, luminous behind the billowy mist;
Something that looked to my young eyes like God.
I admit that the defect charged, by an envious critic, upon Bayard Taylor — the sin of excessive rhetoricianism — is, in some measure, chargeable to Wallace. He, now and then, permits enthusiasm to hurry him into bombast; but at this point he is rapidly improving; and, if not disheartened by the cowardly neglect of those who dare not praise a poetical aspirant with genius and without influence, will soon rank as one of the very noblest of American poets. In fact, he is so now.
ESTELLE ANNA LEWIS.
The maiden name of MRS. LEWIS was Robinson. She is a native of Baltimore. Her family is one of the best in America. Her father was a distinguished Cuban of English and Spanish parentage, wealthy, influential, and of highly cultivated mind: — from him, perhaps, Mrs. Lewis has inherited the melancholy temperament which so obviously predominates in her writings. Between the death of her father and her present comfortable circumstances, she has undergone many romantic and striking vicissitudes of fortune, which, of course, have not failed to enlarge her knowledge of human nature, and to develop the poetical germ which became manifest in her earliest infancy.
Mrs. Lewis is, perhaps, the best educated, if not the most accomplished of American authoresses — using the word “accomplished” in the ordinary acceptation of that term. She is not only cultivated as respects the usual ornamental acquirements of her sex, but excels as a modern linguist, and very especially as a classical scholar; while her scientific acquisitions are of no common order. Her occasional translations from the more difficult portions of Virgil have been pronounced, by our first Professors, the best of the kind yet accomplished — a commendation which only a thorough classicist can appreciate in its full extent. Her rudimental education was received, in part, at Mrs. Willard’s celebrated Academy at Troy; but she is an incessant and very ambitious student, and, in this sense, the more important part of her education may be said to have been self-attained.
In character, Mrs. Lewis is everything which can be thought desirable in woman — generous, sensitive, impulsive; enthusiastic in her admiration of Beauty and Virtue, but ardent in her scorn of wrong. The predominant trait of her disposition, as before hinted, is a certain romantic sensibility, bordering upon melancholy, or even gloom. In person, she is distinguished by the grace and dignity of her form, and the nobility of her manner. She has auburn hair, naturally curling, and expressive eyes of dark hazel. Her portrait, by Elliot, which has attracted much attention, is most assuredly no flattering likeness, although admirable as a work of art, and conveying a forcible idea of its accomplished original,