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

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СКАЧАТЬ of the few, the immortal names

       That are not born to die.

      It will be seen that these arrangements of the subject are skillfully contrived — perhaps they are a little too evident, and we are enabled too readily by the perusal of one passage, to anticipate the succeeding. The rhythm is highly artificial. The stanzas are well adapted for vigorous expression — the fifth will afford a just specimen of the versification of the whole poem.

      Come to the bridal Chamber, Death!

       Come to the mother’s when she feels

       For the first time her first born’s breath;

       Come when the blessed seals

       That close the pestilence are broke,

       And crowded cities wail its stroke,

       Come in consumption’s ghastly form,

       The earthquake shock, the ocean storm;

       Come when the heart beats high and warm,

       With banquet song and dance, and wine;

       And thou art terrible- the tear,

       The groan, the knell, the pall, the bier,

       And all we know, or dream, or fear

       Of agony, are thine.

      Granting, however, to Marco Bozzaris, the minor excellences we have pointed out we should be doing our conscience great wrong in calling it, upon the whole, any more than a very ordinary matter. It is surpassed, even as a lyric, by a multitude of foreign and by many American compositions of a similar character. To Ideality it has few pretensions, and the finest portion of the poem is probably to be found in the verses we have quoted elsewhere —

      Thy grasp is welcome as the hand

       Of brother in a foreign land,

       Thy summons welcome as the cry

       That told the Indian isles were nigh

       To the world-seeking Genoese,

       When the land-wind from woods of palm

       And orange groves, and fields of balm

       Blew o’er the Haytian seas.

      The verses entitled Burns consist of thirty-eight quatrains — the three first lines of each quatrain being of four feet, the fourth of three. This poem has many of the traits of Alnwick Castle, and bears also a strong resemblance to some of the writings of Wordsworth. Its chief merits, and indeed the chief merit, so we think, of all the poems of Halleck is the merit of expression. In the brief extracts from Burns which follow, our readers will recognize the peculiar character of which we speak.

      Wild Rose of Alloway! my thanks:

       Thou mind’st me of that autumn noon

       When first we met upon “the banks

       And braes o’bonny Doon”-

       Like thine, beneath the thorn-tree’s bough,

       My sunny hour was glad and brief-

       We’ve crossed the winter sea, and thou

       Art withered-flower and leaf,

       There have been loftier themes than his,

       And longer scrolls and louder lyres

       And lays lit up with Poesy’s

       Purer and holier fires.

       And when he breathes his master-lay

       Of Alloways witch-haunted wall

       All passions in our frames of clay

       Come thronging at his call.

       Such graves as his are pilgrim-shrines,

       Shrines to no code or creed confined-

       The Delphian vales, the Palastines,

       The Meccas of the mind.

       They linger by the Doon’s low trees,

       And pastoral Nith, and wooded Ayr,

       And round thy Sepulchres, Dumfries!

       The Poet’s tomb is there.

      Wyoming is composed of nine Spenserian stanzas. With some unusual excellences, it has some of the worst faults of Halleck. The lines which follow are of great beauty.

      I then but dreamed: thou art before me now,

       In life- a vision of the brain no more,

       I’ve stood upon the wooded mountain’s brow,

       That beetles high thy love! valley o’er;

       And now, where winds thy river’s greenest shore,

       Within a bower of sycamores am laid;

       And winds as soft and sweet as ever bore

       The fragrance of wild flowers through sun and shade

       Are singing in the trees, whose low boughs press my head.

      The poem, however, is disfigured with the mere burlesque of some portions of Alnwick Castle — with such things as

      he would look particularly droll

       In his Iberian boot and Spanish plume;

      and

      A girl of sweet sixteen

       Love-darting eyes and tresses like the morn

       Without a shoe or stocking- hoeing corn,

      mingled up in a pitiable manner with images of real beauty.

      The Field of the Grounded Arms contains twenty-four quatrains, without rhyme, and, we think, of a disagreeable versification. In this poem are to be observed some of the finest passages of Halleck. For example —

      Strangers! your eyes are on that valley fixed

       Intently, as we gaze on vacancy,

       When the mind’s wings o’erspread

       The spirit world of dreams.

      and again —

      O’er sleepless seas of grass whose waves are flowers.

      Red-jacket has much power of expression with little evidence of poetical ability. Its humor is very fine, and does not interfere, in any great degree, with the general tone of the poem.

      A Sketch should have been omitted from the edition as altogether unworthy of its author.

      The СКАЧАТЬ