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

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       Lift her with care;

       Fashion’d so slenderly,

       Young, and so fair!

       Ere her limbs frigidly

       Stiffen too rigidly,

       Decently,- kindly,-

       Smooth and compose them;

       And her eyes, close them,

       Staring so blindly!

       Dreadfully staring

       Through muddy impurity,

       As when with the daring

       Last look of despairing

       Fixed on futurity.

       Perishing gloomily,

       Spurred by contumely,

       Cold inhumanity,

       Burning insanity,

       Into her rest,-

       Cross her hands humbly,

       As if praying dumbly,

       Over her breast!

       Owning her weakness,

       Her evil behaviour,

       And leaving, with meekness,

       Her sins to her Saviour!

      The vigour of this poem is no less remarkable than its pathos. The versification although carrying the fanciful to the very verge of the fantastic, is nevertheless admirably adapted to the wild insanity which is the thesis of the poem.

      Among the minor poems of Lord Byron is one which has never received from the critics the praise which it undoubtedly deserves:—

      Though the day of my destiny’s over,

       And the star of my fate hath declined

       Thy soft heart refused to discover

       The faults which so many could find;

       Though thy soul with my grief was acquainted,

       It shrunk not to share it with me,

       And the love which my spirit hath painted

       It never hath found but in thee.

       Then when nature around me is smiling,

       The last smile which answers to mine,

       I do not believe it beguiling,

       Because it reminds me of thine,

       And when winds are at war with the ocean,

       As the breasts I believed in with me,

       If their billows excite an emotion,

       It is that they bear me from thee.

       Though the rock of my last hope is shivered,

       And its fragments are sunk in the wave,

       Though I feel that my soul is delivered

       To pain- it shall not be its slave.

       There is many a pang to pursue me:

       They may crush, but they shall not contemn-

       They may torture, but shall not subdue me-

       ’Tis of thee that I think- not of them.

       Though human, thou didst not deceive me,

       Though woman, thou didst not forsake,

       Though loved, thou forborest to grieve me,

       Though slandered, thou never couldst shake,-

       Though trusted, thou didst not disclaim me,

       Though parted, it was not to fly,

       Though watchful, ’twas not to defame me,

       Nor mute, that the world might belie.

       Yet I blame not the world, nor despise it,

       Nor the war of the many with one-

       If my soul was not fitted to prize it,

       ’Twas folly not sooner to shun:

       And if dearly that error hath cost me,

       And more than I once could foresee,

       I have found that whatever it lost me,

       It could not deprive me of thee.

       From the wreck of the past, which hath perished,

       Thus much I at least may recall,

       It hath taught me that which I most cherished

       Deserved to be dearest of all:

       In the desert a fountain is springing,

       In the wide waste there still is a tree,

       And a bird in the solitude singing,

       Which speaks to my spirit of thee.

      Although the rhythm here is one of the most difficult, the versification could scarcely be improved. No nobler theme ever engaged the pen of poet. It is the soul-elevating idea that no man can consider himself entitled to complain of Fate while in his adversity he still retains the unwavering love of woman.

      From Alfred Tennyson, although in perfect sincerity I regard him as the noblest poet that ever lived, I have left myself time to cite only a very brief specimen. I call him, and think him the noblest of poets, not because the impressions he produces are at all times the most profound — not because the poetical excitement which be induces is at all times the most intense — but because it is at all times the most ethereal — in other words, the most elevating and most pure. No poet is so little of the earth, earthy. What I am about to read is from his last long poem, “The Princess”:—

      Tears, idle tears, I know not what they mean,

       Tears from the depth of some divine despair

       Rise in the heart, and gather to the eyes,

       In looking on the happy Autumn fields,

       And thinking of the days that are no more.

       Fresh as the first beam glittering on a sail,

       That brings our friends up from the underworld,

       Sad as the last which reddens over one

       That sinks with all we love below the verge;

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