Text: Anonymous, “Poe and Other Poets,” The Academy (London, UK), vol. 78, whole no. 1984, May 14, 1910, pp. 467-471

[page 467, column 2, continued:]

POE AND OTHER POETS

The criticisms oftenest, and perhaps with greatest semblance of justice, urged against the poetry of Edgar Allan Poe are two — namely, that his entire poetic output is so small, and that whatever excellence his work possesses is almost wholly that of outward form. Poe, his critics declare in effect, really had nothing of serious import to say, but said it well, sometimes even, as has been reluctantly confessed by his chiefest censors, marvellously well. But, after all, the man meant nothing, [page 468:] say they; and if he had genius, that much disputed and abused gift, it was a genius for virtuosity alone. He was, in their view, little more than a juggler with words, albeit the greatest of his kind; and for critics of this class, both at home and abroad, Poe seems to be still and only what Emerson declared him. The first of these criticisms, on a superficial inspection, appears to be justified. Poe did produce comparatively little verse, his entire poetical output, including all his boyish effusions, comprising only about forty-five titles; and even Keats, dead in his youth, has more than three times as many. And yet, if anthologies are of value, the relative worth of Poe's verse, when compared with its bulk, makes rather a remarkable showing. To take, for instance, the first compilation that comes to hand, here is the “Treasury of American Songs and Lyrics,’ by Knowles, with nine of Poe's poems, eight of Longfellow's, and three of Emerson's. Stedman's “American Anthology,” a well-known work, has twelve of Poe's poems. twenty-five of Longfellow's, twenty-one each of Emerson's and Whittier's, and seventeen of Holmes's. Emerson was, possibly, the least voluminous of this group, except Poe; but even Emerson far exceeded Poe in the number of poems that bear his name, and Longfellow has too many titles to count. The same proportion is to be seen also in “ Warner's Library of Literature.” In this work, Poe has eight titles in verse, Emerson nine, Whittier nineteen, and Longfellow thirty-six. Even when measured with the English poets, the relative amount of Poe's work worth quoting, as compared with his entire production, is noticeable. In the “Library of Literature,” out of one hundred and fifty titles in his collected poems, Keats has but eleven here, Coleridge the same number out of one hundred and twenty, while Tennyson has but eighteen, and out of the crowded pages of Wordsworth but twenty-four poems are reproduced. True it is that other verse, perhaps of equal merit. could have been culled from these poets, or from the last two, at least, and no such thing is possible in the case of Poe. And yet, when every just deduction is made, these figures seem to show that, scanty as his product was, the poetry of Poe has, in proportion to its mass, more of the fine gold of verse than is to be found in the wide labours of many a happier bard. But, add the critics in opposition, what is left of Poe's work is singularly, superlatively bad. That is a pre-eminence we are loath to admit. To say nothing of the deft commonplaces of Longfellow, gentlest of men and most ladylike of poets, Emerson's rough-hewn strength may have been incapable of the mellifluous tenuosity of some of Poe's verse; but just as surely is Poe guiltless of the oracular absurdity of a thing like “Brahma.” It is difficult to imagine the author of “Israfel” writing nursery-rhymes at all; and certainly he has given us none like those, immortal by the price paid for them, beginning: —

or these : —

and, finally, Poe indited no poem to “A Darling Room,”

These gems adorn no less a page than Tennyson's; and also to Tennyson, the most consummate artificer that ever linked our English syllables into song, is to be credited the stuttering cacophony of the “Second Owl Song”: —

Moreover, it is Tennyson who does for Wordsworth the same unwelcome service we do here for him, as, in truth, he might with equal ease have done for every English poet from Shakespeare down, and with that mighty name still at the head of the list. Something like this, indeed, has already been done, although rather in the severer domain of morals, by Sidney Lanier, in his too-little known poem, “The Crystal.” But the world of books is still waiting for a new anthology, to be gathered by some keen-minded commercialist, more covetous of gain than of fame, and entitled somewhat thus: — “Bad Poetry by Great Poets.” It will be no little book, be sure, this new “Index Censorious”; and there is small danger of Poe's having in it the most conspicuous place.

A second, and much graver, censure has been levelled at Poe. It is that which denies him any excellence beyond a mere technical [column 2:] dexterity in the poetic art; and it is that we wish now to consider. It is to be remarked at the outset that if this criticism be allowed as a sufficient description of our poet, it imposes upon the critics themselves a more difficult problem than has ever yet afflicted the admirers of Poe. How, in that case, are we to account for the popularity of this man, not among the people only, but among scholars and critics as well? — When did any mere juggler with his trumpery tricks come so far on the road to immortality? True, it may be early yet to predict immortality of Poe. But he is dead sixty years now, and still, new lives of him, and new and costly editions of his works continue to appear; translations of them are made into various tongues; and among the three great races of the world, two of them of alien speech, Poe's name is more widely known, and his work more keenly discussed to-day than was ever the case during hig short and troubled life. Indeed, as any acute observer has perceived, there has long been a Poe cult on both sides of the sea, and that, too, both in prose and in verse, a thing true of no other American writer, with the possible exception of Whit man, and true of him only in verse, and in far less degree. Is this, then, the “jingle man”? And can the great world of letters be so thoroughly and so long befooled? If Poe be not the genius his admirers think him, he must be something more. One thing that bears on Poe's alleged virtuosity has never, in our judgment, been sufficiently considered. It is the fact that, perhaps to a greater degree than any other modern writer, Poe has suffered from the elocutionists. This is for two reasons. One is that certain of his poems lend themselves apparently with unusual readiness to the reciter's art — if it is an art — and are, therefore, oftener heard than other men's work. The second reason grows out of this. As these ms are those oftenest heard on the parlour stage, it comes about that people unconsciously associate with the text the tricks and manners of the elocutionist, until one is tempted to declare it an injury to the author and the audience alike to hear “The Raven” read aloud. Even when there are no mouthings, satiety of rhyme, however skilfully the rhyme may have been constructed, comes quickly to the bodily ear; while the mind of the quiet reader, apprehending the measured cadences partly by the spiritual sense, is far less quickly cloyed. It is a poet, himself immortal for his melody, who declares: —

Indeed, heretical as it may seem, it is much to be doubted if it is an unmixed delight to hear the best verse read aloud even by its author. The booming chant, for instance, in which Tennyson used to declaim his own poetry, must have fixed its meaning in his hearer's memory, to his gain, no doubt, but assuredly somewhat also to his loss. For, be it said, there are some things we do not want fixed. The very soul of poetry, of music, of any art, is its suggestiveness, its haunting glimpse and promise of an unhorizoned possible, rather than of the actual; and this is the vision that every man, like Job of old, longs to see, “for himself, and his own eyes behold, and not another.” For this reason the true poet at his best is chiefly a guide, or a gate-keeper, rather than an interpreter. He does not stand on lonely peaks remote, to our unaided strength as inaccessible as heaven, and from that envied height tell us what wondrous things he sees. Rather his genius leads and helps our clumsier souls to his view-point; and when once we come thither, we do our own seeing. Surely he is not yet ready for heaven who, even when brought inside the gates, must ask his angel guide what is to be done next. And yet, despite the ravages wrought by the various “renditions “ we have heard, “The Raven” and “The Bells” remain great poems still; and their melancholy music, if it be not the best of Poe's making, is to be reckoned with in any serious consideration of American verse. There may be somewhat too much of “The Raven,” if the ear alone is to judge, as has already been implied; and, whether or not we are to give full credence to Poe's account of its making, it would have been perhaps a greater poem if it had been less artfully handled. Nevertheless, taking it as it stands, if the whole world of letters were called upon to name the greatest American poem, “The Raven,” rightly or wrongly, would be the foremost, and probably the chosen candidate for the place.

The fame of other of Poe's verse, while perhaps scarcely so widespread, rests upon a securer, and, after all, a more artistic foundation. Every member of the group of poems generally mentioned in any discussion of his work, makes its own claim to favour. Men may still dispute the relative importance of this claim; but that it is both distinct and unique is not to be denied. Name over this little group, “Israfel,” “To Helen,’ “To One in Paradise,” “Annabel Lee,” “The Sleeper,” “The [page 469:] Haunted Palace,” “For Annie,” “Lenore,” and “Ulalume,”’ arid in each of them a note is struck more unique, more keenly individual, than is to be heard in the work of any other American. poet; a note that even among English poets has its counterpart in Coleridge alone. This fact is emphasised because of the singular dissociation of Poe's muse from all surroundings. Not this side of the Greeks themselves has any poet been so strangely innocent of provincial mark or any purely local appeal, as was he. For aught themselves have to show, his poems might have been written a thousand vears ago, and amid the loneliness that haunts still undiscovered poles. We cannot track him home. None of his native clay clings to his feet, and the burr of his neighbour's speech is never on his tongue. He is of no section, North, South, East, or West; and, although he wrote at a time when his country was still ablaze with patriotic ardour, Poe is not even American. And yet, wholly lacking as his verse is in all appeal to local interests and sympathies, it has for its readers a power to possess the mind and haunt the memory that has been denied to many a so-called masterpiece. It has this power largely because of its intense individuality. The author of “Israfel,”’ “The Sleeper,” and “The City in the Sea,” is the Melchisedec of literature. Coleridge, it may be, is intellectually more akin to him than any other, but neither Coleridge nor any other is his father. Indeed, he had scarcely antecedents; and while he has detractors many, and friends not a few, he can never have imitators. But individuality even so striking as his own is far from being the whole of Poe. Individuality does not necessarily imply excellence. The giraffe is one of the most unique of animals, but it can scarcely be called one of the most beautiful. It is the distinction of Poe to be superbly excellent as well as unique; and it is his excellence, and not his individuality, that keeps his memory warm. Writing as he did, in a country still new almost to rawness in literary affairs, somewhat of freshness might naturally have been expected, something of the youthful and unspoiled outlook that has its place in literature as truly as in life. This is not Poe's case. His is not the naiveté of inexperience; and his individuality becomes all the more wonderful because his themes are never local nor occasional, but as ageless and universal as humanity itself. Whether Poe's verse is to be ranked with the great things of English poetry or not, by some chance it has the manner of great poetry. Not America, nor England, but Greece, Rome, and the Holy Land, are alike and as well his scene; and his themes are as universal as the blue of the sky. There, indeed, is the wonder of it, that in the first half-century of American literature, on the very frontier of a new civilisation should have arisen a poet whose work has all the aloofness from the local and the occasional that marks always the highest and ripest art: and work which is at the same time shot through and through with an originality and selfhood rarely witnessed in any field. And yet, the censors cry, Poe's verse means nothing. So, for instance, declares the English critic selected to prepare the essay on Poe in Warner's Library. He has in hand the lines from “The Haunted Palace,” —

and speaks appreciatively of their striking beauty, but adds complacently, “These lines contain no particular idea.” We read these words with a vast surprise. We thought all the world knew that “The Haunted Palace” is an allegorical description of the human countenance; and we still think these “ banners yellow, glorious, golden,” as apt and beautiful a description of waving human hair as is to be found in English literature. The same writer speaks in a similar strain of “Ulalume,” criticism of such a poem being, in his eyes, “like breaking a moth on the wheel.” Now, we freely admit that we have no quarrel with any reader who ranks “Ulalume “ somewhat lower than other work of Poe's genius; but, on the other hand, it is by no means the light and trivial performance our critic would have us believe. It is a poetical tour-de-force, a curiosity, an experiment in verse, perhaps, rather than a great poem. But it is precisely that sort of experiment that all but great poets very wisely leave untried. The only man since Poe who could have written “Ulalume “‘ is Swinburne, the justly vaunted metrical expert and exquisite of his generation ; and even Swinburne never essayed a more difficult metre, nor carried through any that he did essay with a larger skill and success. Let any reader with an open mind read together “Ulalume” and “A Forsaken Garden,” and then judge which of the two comes upon him with the greater intellectual impact, or seizes the memory with the stronger grasp. Even in the matter of alliteration, which it is the fashion nowaday to flout, largely because so few can manage it successfully, where has Swinburne any lines quite equal to those :- —

And yet, be it repeated, in mere poetical technique Swinburne had no master in his day.

Indeed, the mistiness in the. poetry of Poe, of which so much has been made, has only a partial justification in fact. In the first place; the charge cannot be brought against his verse as a whole. What is there of vagueness and indefiniteness about “The Raven,” or “Israfel,” or “The Haunted Palace’? And as for “Annabel Lee,” Poe has here achieved an engaging simplicity quite as lucid as, that of “Edward Grey,” and withal with a lyrical charm that the latter poem in nowise attains. Furthermore due allowance is always to be made for the character of the subject. One scarcely expects the same definite characterisation of “The Ghoul-King” that is required when the hero is the Village Blacksmith. Poe undoubtedly loved the “misty mid-regions of Weir,” and the ghoulish shapes and shades that there inhabit; and these, it must be admitted, are the burden of his song. We have wished, very heartily, that he might sometimes come out of his shadows, and sing us a song in full and open day. But this, the quality of his genius and the melancholy burden of his life alike forbade. And, after all, we can ask no more of any singer than that his song may be in keeping with his theme. Lack of space forbids the consideration we should have liked to give to several of Poe's poems, taken separately, so one or two remarks must suffice. His poems are assuredly not sermons. While there is nowhere a line that offends the saddest-faced morality, Poe is essentially a pagan, almost as much so as Emerson. Neither are his verses wholly song, although the lyrical quality in them is one of their marked characteristics. The one adjective that belongs to all his metrical work, as it does to that of few other writers of verse, is poetical. The word may seem to bring us forward not a whit. To say that a poem is poetical is like putting x=x. And yet this is the word that, better than any other, sums up the quality of Poe's verse, and quality that is pre-eminently his. His ideas are imaginative, in the highest degree, not descriptive, but creative; and set to numbers of singular melody, variety, and charm. His “City in the Sea.” in the compass of a few short lines draws for us its terrible picture with a vividness and completeness which “The City of Dreadful Night,” with all its heaped-up wretchednesses, still fails to reach. True, indeed, most of Poe's verse is in one sorrowful key, as has just been said. He, even more than Coleridge, is the poet of the twilight world; and other critics than Professor Woodberry have found in this fact the limitations of a narrow genius. But since when has the outside world presumed to say to the poet, “This, or this, shall be the burden of your song”? The poet, above all men, “looks in his heart and writes”; and while it is true that Poe's range is narrow, we may set over against that criticism the fact that he never repeats himself. The notes may be few, and the key the same, but the music and the metre astonish us well nigh as much with their variety as with their haunting power. But we did not set out in this paper to match opinions, but poets. There must surely be some standard of appraisement in English literature, other than mere individual opinion. We propose to seek it out; or, in other words, to set Poe's work in comparison with acknowledged masterpieces of English poetry. We select three short lyrics, because we intend to compare with them a short lyric of Poe's, and only three, out of the riches of our common tongue, because we think them fairly representative of the best English verse.

First is Hood's

“THE DEATH-BED.

Take next Wordsworth's

“THE SOLITARY REAPER.

The last of the three is

“CROSSING THE BAR.

Now, we think it cannot be denied that these three poems are justly taken as examples of the best of our poetry; and yet we venture to set over against them certain verses of Poe's, written in his boyhood, not as in all respects equal to the august company in which we have placed them, but as, nevertheless, having a claim to be set just here. They are the shorter lines addressed

“TO HELEN.

We know of no other American poem wholly worthy of this company, with the possible exception of Lanier's “Ballad of Trees and the Master,” and even that is spoiled for’ our resent purpose by its laboured quaintness. But that the lines “To Helen” are justly ranked here we think can be proved in detail; and to that we proceed.

The first poem of the group, “The Death Bed,” has dignity, strength, and beauty in an extraordinary degree, and all wrought together with the consummate simplicity of a Greek statue. Its subtle appeal lies largely in the fact that it makes absolutely no appeal except the simple eloquence of truth. Here are no tropes and figures, no ornaments, nor even a superfluous word. Death is not even a “crossing the bar,” but the barest, oldest, and saddest of all mortal experiences — but swallowed up in what inexpressible peace! Pity it is that we cannot have such poetry in our hymns, since it is the facts that lie behind our hymns that make our poetry possible. And, as it is, we turn away from the exquisite pathos of the picture Hood has shown us with the words of another poet in our hearts, “After life's fitful fever she sleeps well.” But if all this is true, what ails the poem? It is a species of cruelty to point it out; it is just to state that its existence has been indignantly denied; and it is needless to say that it is none of our finding. The fly in the ointment is the apparent pun in the second stanza:

Shakespeare was deliberately guilty of the same fault in his exquisite funeral-hymn in “Cymbeline”; but Shakespeare is not looked on as a professional humorist, and Hood is; or else he might have escaped the charge that defaces the pathetic beauty of this bit of verse. Wordsworth's poem, “The Reaper,” is even more famous than “The Death Bed.” It exhibits, in the happiest light, its author's chief characteristic — his ability to lift the commonplace into realms of art. His theme, the chance song of a woman in the harvest-field, does not, it is true, equal in dignity that of Hood, or that of Tennyson, presently to be considered, and has no advantage over that of Poe. But Wordsworth, with the poet's licence, weaves into the simple song of the lonely Highland girl the high imaginings of his own soul, until the poem grows into one of the loftiest, albeit serenest, flights. of English song. It is to be doubted if there is in the whole range of our literature a more exquisite stanza than the third stanza of this poem; and if immortal lines of verse were as few among us as are members of the French Academy in France, the couplet here:

would surely have place among them. And yet, even in a poem so justly celebrated, the author has not wholly escaped the exigencies of verse. “A voice more thrilling ne’er was heard [[/]] In spring-time from the cuckoo-bird.” Both the hyphenated words here are unnecessary, except for the requirements of metre, and the second is a calamity. Was there danger that some reader might mistake his cuckoo for a squirrel or a beetle? Indeed, hazardous as the suggestion may seem in the case of a piece of work so well established in the world's regard, it has appeared to the present writer that the entire stanza containing these lines is superfluous. Eight lines, or one-fourth of the entire poem, are required to tell us that the reaper's song is superior to either the nightingale's or the cuckoo-bird's: appeal; and the poem seems actually to gather strength and momentum if the whole stanza is omitted. Let the reader examine it thus amended, and see for himself. In the last of the famous trio we have chosen, Tennyson's “Crossing the Bar,” we have the dignity and poignant beauty of both Hood and Wordsworth, and with an added enchantment that belongs to Tennyson alone. There is a magic here that has never been excelled, and but too rarely approached, in all the tongues of men. Take the line, “Turns again home,” and what words of English, or of any other speech, have homelier grasp and heavenlier reach? They are like Jacob's ladder, set with one end on the earth, within the reach of human feet, and, for aught we know, compact of earthly substance, but with the other end as high as heaven. Or take that other line,

The dark! It was that we were afraid of in our childhood, and it is that our children fear to-day; it is that to which we are going again, the strongest and the bravest of us, when the last bedtime comes ; and going alone, ashamed, and afraid, [page 471:] but that the hope itself ry older and diviner still than the divinest of all our mortal speech, this poem should pass here wholly untouched of criticism. Even as it is, the criticism that is offered is, we must repeat, not only not original, but irksome, and, to the present writer, almost captious. But it has been made, and, indeed, seems unavoidable. Tennyson has either misfitted his facts, or has so described them as to confuse the mind of the reader. What bar is it that is to be crossed, the one on this or on the other shore? If it is that on the nearer shore, it is precisely when that bar is crossed, in actual life, that the pilot leaves the ship, now supposed to be on the open sea. If it is the bar on the farther shore that is meant, it cannot be that named in the first stanza, and the result is confusion. The difficulty is all the more remarkable because Tennyson is usually quite careful of his facts, of whatever character, and no other slip like this can be recalled; but no satisfactory explanation of the present instance has appeared. As has already been said, other selections might have been made from the cs gardens of English verse, and selections no doubt quite as happy as those here gathered. Wordsworth and Tennyson both, and especially Tennyson, have other brief lyrics which, in some respects, may even surpass those now under discussion ; and if personal preference alone had been allowed to determine our choice, Tennyson's earlier song, “Tears, Idle Tears,” might have appeared here rather than “Crossing the Bar.” But, all things considered, it is insisted that we have here three of the most deservedly famous of English lyrics. And yet, while we do not maintain that the m “To Helen”’ is in some respects, for instance, in the dignity and seriousness of its theme, equal to the illustrious company in which we have placed it, in other regards it easily holds its own with these compeers; a statement which the following comparison will show. In these four poems, then, Hood and Tennyson have advantage in the respects just named — that is, in the innate importance of their themes. Wordsworth's theme, however, scarcely excels that of Poe. It is a woman's song, over against a woman's beauty. In the matter of poetical form, Poe easily surpasses the other three, albeit the last of the three is Tennyson, and we repeat, the most skilful versifier that ever wrote English. More of the mere trickery of verse, indeed, is to be found in Swinburne, but only because Tennyson lacked the liking, and not the ability, for that sort of composition. Hood's m is in common metre, the commonest known, and without the variation of a syllable from the prescribed form for that kind of verse. Wordsworth's metre is better, always easy, and in some parts flowing and graceful; but has no other distinction. Tennyson alone here compares with Poe, and even Tennyson is inferior. Poe's metre is more difficult and much more distinctive, but handled with consummate mastery. Its beautiful irregularity, its royal diversions from accepted rules, is one of the beauties of the poem. The last lines of his three stanzas have respectively six, seven, and four syllables. It is always a sign — yea, and a proof — of mediocrity to follow. invariably the iron-bound prescriptions of prosody; and a railway track is a poor ideal of a poet's path. It requires, indeed, genius to know when and how to leave the ordered way ; but genius has no surer proof of its own being than just this, that it does wander away at will to make its own the bloom and beauty of all the wayside round. And it is this lordly ease with which the chains of verse are worn, not only in this poem, but quite as strikingly in others, that is one of the chief distinctions of Poe's muse. Again, this poem exhibits in high degree another of Poe's characteristics, and that is his uniqueness. What other bit of verse anywhere is like “To Helen”? Whether it be the metre or the thought, it has an individuality, an aloofness, that belongs to none of the other three. One of our American poets, for instance, has written a little poem which, from the similarity of theme and metre, so inevitably suggests “The Death Bed” as to spoil its own claims; and several of Tennyson's poems strike practically the note that rings so sweetly in “Crossing the Bar”; but the song “To Helen” remains an immortal solo. Moreover, there is in Poe's m a richness of allusion, a haunting suggestiveness, that has already been pointed out as the very essence of all true art. There is not an allusion in either Hood or Tennyson; and Wordsworth's one glimpse of Arabia could, as we have already intimated, very well have been spared. Poe's song, on the other hand, the shortest of the four, in its brief career passes through Greece, Rome, and Palestine, and in such a way as incomparably to enhance the beauty of its music. Indeed, the lines are crowded with allusions; the Nicean bark, the Naiad airs, hyacinth hair, end classic face are the fit setting and belongings of his Psyche and her agate lamp. None of this, be it remarked, is mere broidery and ornament, but is part of the construction and substance of the poem itself. Finally, this little poem has [column 2:] furnished two instances of poetic limes that have made themselves common property, and at the same time the pride of the people who speak their speech. The first, and the more famous, is in the lines,

and the second is the concluding line of the poem,

These lines have no counterpart in “The Death Bed,” nor in “Crossing the Bar,” whatever may be said of either of these poems as a whole. Wordsworth has, indeed, in “The Reaper “ a couplet of equal fame, the lines already quoted. But it is, as critics have averred, a performance unparalleled in English verse to strike such a note twice in the compass of three short stanzas. Byron never did it once in all this work, and we recall nothing like it in Shelley; while it is to be doubted if even Coleridge, in genius more akin to Poe than any other, ever struck it quite so surely as is done here. The man, and the only man, who does it twice in fifteen short lines is Edgar Allan Poe; and there are critics who think the lines “To Helen” by no means the best of Poe's work.