EDGAR ALLAN POE

1811-1849

THEY are all dreams, if manufactured dreams-The Raven, Lenore, The Bells, Annabel Lee, Eulalie, Ulalume, Dreamland, The City in the Sea, A Dream within a Dream, For Annie, Bridal Ballad, Israfel, To Helen. We see things happening, being done, being suffered. We hear words. We speak them. Though we are there only because we are subject or object, we know we have nothing in reality to do with the whole. We are conscious that it is an illusion from which we are sure to wake up, if once we can shake ourselves. Throughout the entire range of poetry nothing like it is to be found; not Christabel ; Kubla Khan may compare, though chiefly by way of contrast of the nature in it, with the artifice in Poe. In prose some of De Quincey's visions might stand in the same line, were they not pervaded by a palpable reasonablePoe's in a sense have neither thought nor feeling ; and in a sense they are nothing else. Somewhere, several years ago, a writer supposed Man to possess, or be possessed by, two souls; one immortal, a heavenly spark; the other at any rate not heavenly, and certainly mortal, capable of dying with the flesh. That is the sort of soul which animates Poe's verse, if not himself.

ness.

The grace and melody of most of his few poems are indisputable, and all but impossible to analyse and define. The charm is as inscrutable. In The Raven wave after wave of solemn mystery keeps rolling up. There is the opening scene :

Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary,
Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore;
While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,
As of some one gently rapping-rapping at my chamber door.
''Tis some visitor,' I muttered, 'tapping at my chamber door;
Only this, and nothing more.'

Something seems about to happen, as, on the discovery that the sound is at the window lattice,

Open here I flung the shutter, when, with many a flirt and flutter,
In there stepped a stately Raven of the saintly days of yore,
Not the least obeisance made he; not a minute stopped or stayed he ;
But, with mien of lord or lady, perched above my chamber door—
Perched upon a bust of Pallas just above my chamber door-
Perched, and sat, and nothing more.

the Raven, never flitting, still is sitting, still is sitting On the pallid bust of Pallas, just above my chamber door; And his eyes have all the seeming of a demon's that is dreaming, And the lamplight o'er him streaming throws his shadow on the floor;

And my soul from out that shadow that lies floating on the floor Shall be lifted-nevermore ! 1

Yet, withal, a sentiment is produced that things of import are, and have been, happening, and will happen; that the atmosphere is surcharged with them; and that the key to the secret is held by the Raven.

Then there is the sister puzzle, Lenore :

Come, let the burial rite be read, the funeral song be sung ;
An anthem for the queenliest dead that ever died so young,—
A dirge for her, the doubly dead, in that she died so young.2

Ever we seem to be clutching hold of the fringe of an idea, which, the moment we draw it nearer, breaks between our fingers :

'Wretches! ye loved her for her wealth and hated her for her pride,
And when she fell in feeble health ye blessed her, that she died!
How shall the ritual then be read-the requiem how be sung,
By you-by yours, the evil eye-by yours, the slanderous tongue,
That did to death the innocence that died, and died so young?' s

Not that either is otherwise than clear and simple by the side of Ulalume! A maze of fantastic, intentionally dishevelled romance that; yet of an absurd, preposterous beauty, smelling strong of the lamp by the light of which doubtless it was conjured up, on the

when,

night in the lonesome October
year;

Of my most immemorial

Of

through an alley Titanic cypress, I roamed with my Soul,

Of cypress, with Psyche, my Soul.

These were days when my heart was volcanic
As the scoriac rivers that roll,—

As the lavas that restlessly roll
Their sulphurous currents down Yaanek
In the ultimate climes of the pole,-
That groan as they roll down Mount Yaanek
In the realms of the boreal pole !

Relatively the lay of The Bells is simple and sane, as they ring out their appeals of triumph, dismay, anger, and lamentation, till we feel, as it were, the tower rocking under our feet. It concerns us little-gratuitously cruel as seems the burden of the chimes-that

The people-ah, the people—

They that dwell up in the steeple,
All alone,

Tolling, tolling, tolling,

In that muffled monotone,

Feel a glory in so rolling

On the human heart a stone.5

Annabel Lee, besides being comparatively intelligible,

even is sweet :

It was many and many a year ago,

In a kingdom by the sea,

That a maiden there lived whom you may know
By the name of Annabel Lee;

And this maiden she lived with no other thought
Than to love and be loved by me.

I was a child, and she was a child,

In this kingdom by the sea;

But we loved with a love that was more than love,

I and my Annabel Lee;

With a love that the winged seraphs of heaven
Coveted her and me.

The angels not half so happy in heaven,

Went envying her and me;

Yes! that was the reason-as all men know

In this kingdom by the sea

That the wind came out of the cloud by night
Chilling and killing my Annabel Lee.

And last, far from least, For Annie! On the face of it a riddle-or it would not be Edgar Allan Poe's—it is soon guessed; only, the answer is as enigmatical as the question. But the theme is grandly audacious, almost sublime; just an ecstasy of life's unexplained, perhaps inexplicable, perhaps unreal, unreasonable despair, become bliss through the embrace of Death by Love :

Thank Heaven, the crisis,

The danger is past,

And the lingering illness

Is over at last;

And the fever called 'living'
Is conquered at last.

And I rest so composedly
Now in my bed,

That any beholder

Might fancy me deadMight start at beholding me, Thinking me dead.

And, O! of all tortures

That torture the worst
Has abated-the terrible
Torture of thirst

For the naphthaline river
Of Passion accurst;
I have drunk of a water

That quenches all thirst :-
And, ah! let it never
Be foolishly said
That my room it is gloomy
And narrow my bed;
For man never slept

In a different bed-
And, to sleep, you must slumber
In just such a bed.

And so I lie happily,

Bathing in many

A dream of the truth

And the beauty of AnnieDrowned in a bath

Of the tresses of Annie.

She tenderly kissed me,

She fondly caressed,

And then I fell gently

To sleep on her breast

Deeply to sleep

From the heaven of her breast.

When the light was extinguished

She covered me warm,

And she prayed to the angels
To keep me from harm—
To the queen of the angels
To shield me from harm.