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Poe and his “Precursor”
WE HAVE RECENTLY examined a copy of a paper-covered volume of two-and-thirty pages, entitled “The Lost Pleiad, and Other Poems,” by T. H. Chivers, M.D., New York, printed by Edward O. Jenkins, 1845. The copy is one that belonged to the author, and contains many emendations and alterations in his handwriting. Even the title has been changed, the later version being “Woodland Melodies; or, The Dial of Early Days.” A written “Proem” has been inserted, with the signature “T. H. C.” and the date-line “Villa Allegra, Ga., April 10th, 1850.” And on the inside page of the front cover is pasted a flattering notice of the book, by Poe, reprinted from The Broadway Journal. What is particularly praised, in this brief review, is the author's freedom from the influence (“taint,” the reviewer calls it) of Byron, Shelley, Wordsworth, Coleridge or Tennyson.
But Poe himself was by no means so free from all “taint” of a poet who might be less advantageously imitated than either of these five — to wit, Dr. Chivers himself. The Georgian was an older man than he, and began writing at an earlier date; and no one familiar with Poe's work can read these verses without feeling that they had a strong influence upon the muse of the younger and more famous poet. If — as would seem to be plainly established — Dr. Chivers wrote “To Allegra Florence in Heaven” before his friend Poe composed “The Raven,” it were impossible to doubt that the latter poem owed something to the earlier one — as well as to “Geraldine's Courtship” and “The Ancient Mariner,” as pointed out by Mr. Stedman. Here are the seventh and the last of the eleven stanzas. (As printed by Dr. Chivers, they are divided into eight lines each.)
“Holy angels now are bending to receive thy soul ascending
Up to Heaven to joys unending, and to bliss which is divine;
While thy pale cold form is fading under Death's dark wings now shading
Thee with gloom which is pervading this poor broken heart of mine!”
“And as God doth lift the spirit up to Heaven there to inherit
Those rewards which it doth merit, such as none have reaped before:
Thy dear father will to-morrow lay thy body with deep sorrow,
In the grave which is so narrow, there to rest forevermore.”
Anyone hearing for the first time the following “Song to Isa Singing” would pretty surely think of Poe, even if the reference to Israfel were lacking : —
“Upon thy lips now lies
The music-dew of love;
And in thy deep blue eyes
More mild than heaven above
The meekness of the dove.
More sweet than the perfume
Of snow white jessamine,
When it is first in bloom,
Is that sweet breath of thine,
Which mingles now with mine.
Like an Æolian sound
Out of an ocean shell,
Which fills the air around
With music, such as fell
From lips of Israfel;*
Over thy lips now flow,
Out of thy heart, for me,
Sweet songs, which none can know
But him who hopes to be
Forever more with thee.
And like the snow-white Dove
Frightened from earth at even —
On tempests borne above —
My swift-winged soul is driven
Upon thy song to heaven!”
Yet the essential fact remains that these laments, threnodies, elegies, dirges, apostrophes, etc., are in themselves in no way memorable or worthy of preservation. If Poe had not echoed them, they would hardly have been heeded when they were first written, much less remembered or referred to now. It is a case where the note itself is nothing; the echo, everything. How little of a poet the author was, can be best demonstrated by two similes in the very poem on which the chief charge of plagiarism against [page 328:] Poe is based — the one “To Allegra.” The stanza following the first of the two quoted above begins in this wise : —
“For, as birds of the same feather
On the earth will flock together,
So around thy Heavenly Father
They now gather there with thee.”
And the one before the last opens thus: —
“As an egg, when broken, never
Can be mended, but must ever
Be the same crushed egg forever,
So shall this dark heart of mine!”
The poet who could compare the gathering of angels in heaven to the flocking together of “birds of a feather,” and a broken heart with a crushed egg, ought in mercy to be allowed “the sleep which has no waking,” for which, in this last stanza, he declares his heart “shall never more cease aching.” R. I. P.
“He hates him
That would upon the rack of this tough world
Stretch him out longer.”
I have been prompted to consider this question by Mr. Joel Benton's “Was Poe a Plagiarist?” in the May Forum. The subject was discussed by the same writer, a few years since, in another magazine, under the title “A Precursor of Poe.” The author of “To Allegra” and “Rosalie Lee” brought charges of plagiarism against the author of “Annabel Lee” and “The Raven” as long ago as 1853; but he signed a nom de guerre, and not Thomas Holley Chivers, to his article in The Waverley Magazine. He was not without his partizans; but if the case was not positively decided in the court of public opinion at the time, it was only for lack of popular interest in it. To-day the name of Chivers is forgotten.
J. B. G.
[The following footnote appears at the bottom of page 327, column 2:]
* “The angel Israfel, who has the most melodious voice of all God's creatures.” — SALE.
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Notes:
None.
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[S:0 - TCNY, 1897] - Edgar Allan Poe Society of Baltimore - A Poe Bookshelf - Poe and his Precursor (J. B. G., 1897)