Complete Essays, Literary Criticism, Cryptography, Autography, Translations & Letters. Эдгар Аллан По

Чтение книги онлайн.

       Read from some humbler poet,

       Whose songs gushed from his heart,

       As showers from the clouds of summer,

       Or tears from the eyelids start;

       Who through long days of labor,

       And nights devoid of ease,

       Still heard in his soul the music

       Of wonderful melodies.

       Such songs have power to quiet

       The restless pulse of care,

       And come like the benediction

       That follows after prayer.

       Then read from the treasured volume

       The poem of thy choice,

       And lend to the rhyme of the poet

       The beauty of thy voice.

       And the night shall be filled with music,

       And the cares that infest the day

       Shall fold their tents like the Arabs,

       And as silently steal away.

      With no great range of imagination, these lines have been justly admired for their delicacy of expression. Some of the images are very effective. Nothing can be better than —

      -the bards sublime,

       Whose distant footsteps echo

       Down the corridors of Time.

      The idea of the last quatrain is also very effective. The poem on the whole, however, is chiefly to be admired for the graceful insouciance of its metre, so well in accordance with the character of the sentiments, and especially for the ease of the general manner. This “ease” or naturalness, in a literary style, it has long been the fashion to regard as ease in appearance alone — as a point of really difficult attainment. But not so:— a natural manner is difficult only to him who should never meddle with it — to the unnatural. It is but the result of writing with the understanding, or with the instinct, that the tone, in composition, should always be that which the mass of mankind would adopt — and must perpetually vary, of course, with the occasion. The author who, after the fashion of “The North American Review,” should be upon all occasions merely “quiet,” must necessarily upon many occasions be simply silly, or stupid; and has no more right to be considered “easy” or “natural” than a Cockney exquisite, or than the sleeping Beauty in the waxworks.

      Among the minor poems of Bryant, none has so much impressed me as the one which he entitles “June.” I quote only a portion of it:—

      There, through the long, long summer hours,

       The golden light should lie,

       And thick young herbs and groups of flowers

       Stand in their beauty by.

       The oriole should build and tell

       His love-tale, close beside my cell;

       The idle butterfly

       Should rest him there, and there be heard

       The housewife-bee and humming bird.

       And what if cheerful shouts at noon,

       Come, from the village sent,

       Or songs of maids, beneath the moon,

       With fairy laughter blent?

       And what if, in the evening light,

       Betrothed lovers walk in sight

       Of my low monument?

       I would the lovely scene around

       Might know no sadder sight nor sound.

       I know, I know I should not see

       The season’s glorious show,

       Nor would its brightness shine for me;

       Nor its wild music flow;

       But if, around my place of sleep,

       The friends I love should come to weep,

       They might not haste to go.

       Soft airs and song, and the light and bloom,

       Should keep them lingering by my tomb.

       These to their soften’d hearts should bear

       The thoughts of what has been,

       And speak of one who cannot share

       The gladness of the scene;

       Whose part in all the pomp that fills

       The circuit of the summer hills,

       Is- that his grave is green;

       And deeply would their hearts rejoice

       To hear again his living voice.

      The rhythmical flow here is even voluptuous — nothing could be more melodious. The poem has always affected me in a remarkable manner. The intense melancholy which seems to well up, perforce, to the surface of all the poet’s cheerful sayings about his grave, we find thrilling us to the soul — while there is the truest poetic elevation in the thrill. The impression left is one of a pleasurable sadness. And if, in the remaining compositions which I shall introduce to you, there be more or less of a similar tone always apparent, let me remind you that (how or why we know not) this certain taint of sadness is inseparably connected with all the higher manifestations of true Beauty. It is, nevertheless,

      A feeling of sadness and longing

       That is not akin to pain,

       And resembles sorrow only

       As the mist resembles the rain.

      The taint of which I speak is clearly perceptible even in a poem so full of brilliancy and spirit as “The Health” of Edward Coate Pinckney:—

      I fill this cup to one made up

       Of loveliness alone,

       A woman, of her gentle sex

       The seeming paragon;

       To whom the better elements

       And kindly stars have given

       A form so fair that, like the air,

       ’Tis less of earth than heaven.

       Her every tone is musies own,

       Like those of morning birds,

СКАЧАТЬ