The Complete Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Edgar Allan Poe [993]
After the publication of the “Records,” Mrs. Lewis contributed more continuously to the periodicals of the day — her writings appearing chiefly in the “American Review,” and the “Democratic Review,” and “Graham’s Magazine.” In the autumn of 1848, Mr. G. P. Putnam published, in exquisite style, her “Child of the Sea, and Other Poems” — a volume which at once placed its fair authoress in the first rank of American authors. The composition which gives title to this collection is a tale of sea-adventure — of crime, passion, love and revenge — resembling, in all the nobler poetic elements, the “Corsair” of Lord Byron — from which, however, it widely differs in plot, conduct, manner, and expression. The opening lines not only give a general summary of the design, but serve well to exemplify the ruling merits of the composition: —
Where blooms the myrtle and the olive flings
Its aromatic breath upon the air;
Where the sad bird of Night forever sings
Meet anthems for the children of Despair,
Who, silently, with wild dishevelled hair,
Stray through those valleys of perpetual bloom;
Where hideous War and Murder from their lair
Stalk forth in awful and terrific gloom
Rapine and Vice disport on Glory’s gilded tomb:
My fancy pensive pictures youthful Love,
Ill-starred yet trustful, truthful and sublime
As ever angels chronicled above: —
The sorrowings of Beauty in her prime;
Virtue’s reward; the punishment of Crime;
The dark, inscrutable decrees of Fate;
Despair untold before in prose or rhyme;
The wrong, the agony, the sleepless hate
That mad the soul and make the bosom desolate.
One of the most distinguishing merits of the “Child of the Sea,” is the admirable conduct of its narrative — in which every incident has its proper position — where nothing is inconsequent or incoherent — and where, above all, the rich and vivid interest is never, for a single moment, permitted to flag. How few, even of the most accomplished and skilful of poets, are successful in the management of a story, when that story has to be told in verse. The difficulty is easily analyzed. In all mere narrations there are particulars of the dullest prose, which are inevitable and indispensable, but which serve no other purpose than to bind together the true interest of the incidents — in a word, explanatory passages, which are yet to be “so done into verse “ as not to let down the imagination from its pride of place. Absolutely to poetize these explanatory passages is beyond the reach of art, for prose, and that of the flattest kind, is their essentiality; but the skill of the artist should be sufficient to gloss them over so as to seem poetry amid the poetry by which they are surrounded. For this end a very consummate art is demanded. Here the tricks of phraseology — quaintnesses — and rhythmical effects, come opportunely into play. Of the species of skill required, Moore, in his “Alciphron,” has given us, upon the whole, the happiest exemplification; but Mrs. Lewis has very admirably succeeded in her “Child of the Sea.” I am strongly tempted, by way of showing what I mean, to give here a digest of her narrative, with comments — but this would be doing the author injustice, in anticipating the interest of her work.
The poem, although widely differing in subject from any of Mrs. Lewis’ prior compositions, and far superior to any of them in general vigor, artistic skill, and assured certainty of purpose, is nevertheless easily recognisable as the production of the same mind which originated “Florence” and “The Forsaken.” We perceive, throughout, the same passion, the same enthusiasm, and the same seemingly reckless abandon of thought and manner which I have already mentioned as characterizing the writer. I should have spoken also, of a fastidious yet most sensitive and almost voluptuous sense of Beauty. These are the general traits of “The Child of the Sea;” but undoubtedly the chief value of the poem, to ordinary readers, will be found to lie in the aggregation of its imaginative passages — its quotable