^ 
 
The Dilettante Series, I. 
 
 EDGAR ALLAN POE 
 
 THE MAN : THE MASTER : THE MARTYR 
 
 By OLIVER LEIGH 
 
 ["Geoffrey Quarles"] 
 
 PORTRAITS 
 
 CHICAGO 
 
 THE FRANK M. MORRIS CO. 
 1906 
 
Copyright, 1906, 
 By THE FRANK M. MORRIS CO. 
 
 Entered at Stationers Hall, London 
 First Edition, May, igob 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 FRONTISPIECE: The Transposable Portrait. 
 
 I. Notes on the Portraits of Poe 3 
 
 Notes on the Faces 8 
 
 The Wedding Year Portrait. 
 
 II. The "Lavante" Satire 18 
 
 Some of the Poets satirized 25 
 
 The Profile Study. 
 
 III. His Biographers, Censors, and Champions 45 
 
 The Widower Year Portrait. 
 
 IV. The "Philosophy of Composition" 64 
 
 THE ORGAN : an Experiment 69 
 
 V. His Monument. 
 
 the sketch 79 
 
 the rhymes 80 
 
 283082 
 
\ 
 
 r 
 
NOTES 
 
 ON THE PORTRAITS OF POE 
 
 There are six or seven faces of Poe which are 
 actually portraits, and perhaps a score of masks, 
 that conceal or disfigure the original, and all these 
 have been careering through the book world to 
 the confusion of the trustful reader. The former 
 are Daguerreotype photographs, and therefore as 
 reliable as sun pictures are supposed to be, which 
 is not saying much. The others are hand copies 
 by painters and engravers, who usually improve, 
 more or less, upon their model, not always to the 
 gain of the original. Pretty pictures are one 
 thing, and character portraits quite another. 
 Fashion favors the picture rather than the mirror 
 ing. This latter is the aim of the present portrayer, 
 who, needless to confess, is an entirely untrained 
 dabbler with the pencil, with no plea to offset the 
 artistic criticisms of the scornful. 
 
 My finding of the "Lavante" satire while rum 
 maging, as a stranger, among the catalogues of 
 the Astor Library in New York (see page 18) 
 led to renewed interest in everything concerning 
 Poe, his character and career. The duality of his 
 nature had long exercised the wits of one addicted 
 
EDGAR ALLAN POE. 
 
 The two 
 Poes. 
 
 the dark and clustering hair, the mouth whose 
 smile was sweet and winning .... this man has not 
 only the gift of beauty but the passionate love of 
 beauty. . . .But look at some Daguerreotype taken 
 shortly before his death, and it is like an inaus 
 picious mirror, that shows all too clearly the 
 ravage made by a vexed spirit within and loses 
 the qualities which only a living artist could feel 
 and capture. . . .Here is. . . .the bitterness of scorn 
 .... In Bendann s likeness, indubitably faithful, we 
 find. . . .hardened lines in chin and neck. . . .the 
 face tells of battling, of conquering external ene 
 mies, of many a defeat when the man was at war 
 with his meaner self." 
 
 Posing has become an art and science in these 
 progressive days. Who would grudge woman 
 kind the artless joy of being "taken" in the guise 
 of a star actress, an empress, or a reigning beauty? 
 None but the wretch who could hint that the step 
 was a mistake, because the pose imposes. Who 
 has the heart to smile at the youth, whose name 
 is legion, because he assumes a noble expression 
 when facing the camera? If he is not Napoleon 
 crossing the Alps he is Washington crossing the 
 Delaware, and not until he contemplates that pic 
 ture does he realise his full measure of potential 
 greatness. He never forgets it afterwards. The 
 trouble about this kind of portrait is disconcerting 
 oftentimes. One s reading of these impressive 
 pictures may prepare us to meet greatness as 
 greatness should be met with courtesies and 
 
NOTES ON HIS PORTRAITS. 
 
 expectations proportioned to the figure, which 
 may dwindle to dwarf stature at the first spoken 
 word. 
 
 So in the search for the verisimilitude of a 
 famous person we are thrown off the scent by 
 Daguerreotypes, glass and paper photographs, in 
 which the well-meaning sun, emblem of divine 
 light and power, gets badly foiled by those shadow 
 imps who symbolize the Prince of Darkness. The 
 veriest gradation between a light and a shade in 
 photography imparts beauty or ugliness to a fea 
 ture, which often means salvation or damnation 
 to the character. The philanthropic profession of 
 the deft retoucher would no doubt long ere this 
 have been classed and rewarded as is that of the 
 pulpiteer but for our modest reluctance to own 
 our indebtedness to her saving grace. And then, 
 there is no little agony of conscience in deciding 
 on the degree of fidelity in the photos of our 
 friends, whose more exquisite traits seem to come 
 out in studios of strangers and shrink back when 
 we welcome them to our hearts and homes. 
 
 Poe, for instance. Two legends circulate about 
 him, the one portrays him as "beautiful" of aspect, 
 the other as the reverse. Even his biographers, 
 and biographers are always infallible, paint his 
 character in the two extremes, something less than 
 a saint, something worse than a sinner; an angel, 
 perhaps ; fallen, sure. The pages which follow deal 
 with some major and minor characteristics of one 
 whom I may not speak of as the greatest, or one 
 
 Sun 
 portraits. 
 
EDGAR ALLAN POE. 
 
 The 
 
 Button 
 
 clue. 
 
 among the great, or even as the least of American 
 poets, because New York s "Hall of Fame" has 
 no niche for Poe, and the readers of New York s 
 literary "Critic" would not include him in their 
 list of the Ten Foremost Writers of the United 
 States. 
 
 NOTES ON THE FACES 
 
 The faces here presented are offered as charts 
 rather than pictures, the intent being to get at, if 
 at all possible by rule of thumb guided by this and 
 that light of the eye, the sum of Poe s contradic 
 tory characteristics, of face and mind. One can 
 pick out a line here and a twist there from the 
 various Daguerreotypes, and construct a fairly 
 probable index to Poe s make up, but the feature 
 that bothered pure intellect most was the Button. 
 The great Button problem is not to be ignored in 
 this field of scientific research. Some of these 
 absolutely faithful because photographic por 
 traits show us that Poe had this among his peculi 
 arities of genius, his coat buttons were on the left 
 side. This trait indicated, of course, that the 
 gentle Poe inherited the feminine temperament, 
 as women never wear their buttons right. We 
 stand open to correction by the tailor-made lady, 
 whose better judgment in all matters ever com 
 mands our homage. 
 
 We of the laity talk glibly of photographic nega 
 tives though we might be puzzled to define a 
 positive. A Daguerreotype is, used to be, a sil- 
 
NOTES ON THE FACES. 
 
 vered metal plate, the mirror of the ancients. The 
 victim looked into this mirror, which "took" him 
 in beautifully. When we look at a Daguerreotype 
 we see him as it saw him, i. e., in reverse. Now, 
 not many of us can stand reverses without losing 
 something, particularly our pleasant expression, 
 which is the photographer s most valuable asset. 
 In analysing these portraits, as reproduced in book 
 plates, it was puzzling to be sure whether Poe 
 parted his hair on the right side or the left. So 
 much in character depends on the turn of a hair. 
 But for fear of inspiring fond mothers with a new 
 and cruel intellectual fad, I might remark in pass 
 ing that more men of uncommon abilities have 
 their natural parting on the right side than I have 
 noticed among the lefts, in proportion to numbers. 
 On the principle, doubtless, by which black sheep 
 are the distinguished minority of their, and often 
 of our, flock. Poe had the brand of wig that any 
 one could part anywhere and itself everywhere, as 
 witness these painful efforts to depict the hue, 
 sheen, style and corkscruity of each separate lock. 
 Those were the heydays of romantic poets and 
 corybantic orators, so many of whom safely reck 
 oned on the common herd appreciating the calf- 
 brain according to the display of full-grown Buf- 
 falo-billity outside. 
 
 Here came the grand solution by the differentia] 
 button calculus. If in this portrait Poe s hair is 
 parted on his right side, and in that one on his 
 left, he evidently did it for the gratification of his 
 
 The 
 
 turn of 
 a hair. 
 
10 
 
 EDGAR ALLAN POE. 
 
 biographers lacking any stronger proofs of their 
 contention that he was a lineal descendant of the 
 "Imp of the Perverse." But in copies of the same 
 Daguerreotype the hair is parted now on the but 
 ton side, and again on the side of the buttonholes. 
 For example, take the one now owned by the 
 Players Club, New York. It is a fine portrait in 
 essentials, and is distinguished by triplet ringlets 
 standing out at right angles from the left side of 
 his head. This is the side of the hair parting. 
 How do we know? Because it is the buttonhole 
 side. The same photo is reproduced, that is, 
 exquisitely engraved on steel as the frontispiece in 
 Prof. Woodberry s "Life of Poe," lavishly fattened 
 and beautified out of character-semblance, but it 
 adorns a book that needs it. In the "India Paper 
 Edition" (see body of the book for fuller notices 
 of these biographies) this Players portrait is 
 identically copied. In volume XII of Professor 
 Harrison s Virginia Edition, is a feeble wash, 
 wishy-wash, drawing of this portrait, but reversed, 
 and in volume XVI is another reversed copy, with 
 the character details nicely washed out. Another 
 and an important full face Daguerreotype, pretty 
 surely the last one taken, a few months before Poe 
 died, misleads us into swearing that he parted his 
 hair on the right, especially as his right hand, as 
 it seems, is thrust into his vest. Not until we 
 note that the parting is on the buttonhole side, 
 and not on the right, do we awake to the fact 
 that this is one of the negative Daguerreotypes, 
 
NOTES ON THE FACES. 
 
 ii 
 
 showing Poe as in the permanent mirror, and not 
 as to our eye. 
 
 So be it, says the patient reader, and what if it 
 is? Much ado about trifles. To which pardon 
 able criticism the answer is please turn to the 
 Transposable Portrait which forms the frontis 
 piece. 
 
 This is an experiment in the obverse and reverse, 
 the positive and negative, in faces. The above 
 mentioned Daguerreotypes show different charac 
 teristics, speaking generally, as we view them on 
 the page, and then look at them from the back 
 as we hold the page to the light. To test one s 
 theory of Poe s contradictory temperament and 
 features I made a tracing of the largest face I 
 have seen in a magazine (either the first 8cribner 9 8 
 or the Century some years ago). This tracing has 
 been somewhat accentuated for the present pur 
 pose, and forms the uncut page. The cut, or 
 divided page, shows when both halves are united 
 a reversed duplicate of the former. Note the 
 prominent temple, and the contrast between the 
 expressions in positive and negative. Ignore but 
 tons. 
 
 Now, suppose that the right and left of Poe s 
 head and face had been cast in exactly the same 
 mould, might that have affected his character in 
 some way? 
 
 Turn down one of the half-faces and observe the 
 outcome of this experiment in re-forming Poe s 
 make-up. In the swelled-head unity we see the 
 
 The 
 
 experi 
 ment. 
 
12 
 
 EDGAR ALLAN POE. 
 
 The 
 
 levelled 
 
 head. 
 
 top-heavy brain that bred and fed on eerie fancies, 
 strange monstrosities, grotesques and arabesques, 
 of the unbalanced mind that "laughs but smiles 
 no more." This head will reel at the sight of even 
 a pencil drawing of Cork, with the bottle a hun 
 dred miles away. Happily all round, including a 
 biographer or two, Poe had no more, at most, 
 than half a head like this, the typical poet-head of 
 the common hydrocephalic species. 
 
 Now lift that and lay down the other half-face. 
 Philip is himself again, sober and sane. The 
 square headed constructor of stories and poems, 
 architect, builder, and adorner with art. If only 
 Poe had administered one of the drugs his loving 
 "life" writers guess at, being certain only of 
 "coffee and wine" (!), if he had found a way to 
 still the midnight revelry of that wild sleepless 
 bloated half-brain, long enough to let the bal 
 anced-half conduct the business and worldly-wise 
 tactics of a struggler s life, Poe could have sanc 
 tified his fame in the estimation of well-to-do pur 
 veyors of lightning lunch literature, cooked and 
 flavored to order. But the brain of Poe the Critic 
 and Poe the Poet was a lordly house divided 
 against itself. This experiment is worth what it 
 is worth to the curious in such matters and is 
 indifferent to valuations so long as interest pro 
 vokes to further thought. 
 
 And there is interest, indeed, in the testimony 
 of Mrs. Maria Louise Shew, the friend in need 
 in Poe s darkest hours. Herself trained in the 
 
NOTES ON THE FACES. 
 
 medical profession of her father, this excellent 
 lady recorded the significant fact in her diary that 
 "in his best health he had lesion of one side of the 
 brain. As he could not bear stimulants or tonics, 
 without producing insanity, I did not feel much 
 hope that he could be raised up from brain fever 
 brought on by extreme suffering of mind and 
 body actual want and hunger and cold having 
 been borne by this heroic husband in order to sup 
 ply food, medicine and comforts to his dying wife, 
 until exhaustion and lifelessness were so near at 
 every reaction that even sedatives had to be 
 administered with extreme caution." 
 
 When we speak of a beautiful or a handsome 
 face, our testimony does not stand unless backed 
 by that essential which it is almost a universal rule 
 to ignore definition. An old lantern has not a 
 prepossessing appearance, but see it when glorified 
 by its light in the dark. Beauty may be skin deep, 
 which makes it popular, or so deep that skin fan 
 ciers fail to find it in the depths, whereupon they 
 dub it "homely." This prostitution of the sweetest 
 descriptive in the language could never have 
 become general if the American people (politicians 
 excepted) had been trained in the common sense 
 practice of defining their terms, or in the true 
 appreciation of all the beauties that ennoble this 
 despised word homeliness. Poe was called beau 
 tiful by men as well as women, and in all sincerity, 
 as they spoke of his moments of exaltation. They 
 saw the ocean sparkling in the summer sun, and 
 
 "Homely 
 faces. 
 
EDGAR ALLAN POE. 
 
 Poe 
 self- 
 portrayed. 
 
 happily escaped the sight of it in the black mid 
 night, writhing in its normal state of sullen, chill 
 ing gloom. He was born with the makings of a 
 male stage beauty, long, black wavy hair, pallid 
 complexion, dark, expressive eyes and other 
 coveted features, yet he knew that they failed to 
 bring the crowning charm. Of his tormenting 
 demons one delighted to spoil the lantern oil. 
 With genius enough to keep a score of plain faces 
 aglow, he let his own endure eclipse till it wore 
 sombreness as a perpetual veil. 
 
 Let us see his own picture of the Poe he had 
 known. 
 
 "It was with difficulty that I could bring myself 
 to admit the identity of the wan being before me 
 with the companion of my early boyhood. Surely, 
 man had never before so terribly altered, in so brief 
 a period. Yet the character of his face had been 
 at all times remarkable. A cadaverousness of 
 complexion; an eye large, liquid, and luminous 
 beyond comparison; lips somewhat thin and very 
 pallid, but of a surpassingly beautiful curve ; a nose 
 of a delicate Hebrew model, but with a breadth 
 of nostril unusual in similar formations; a finely 
 moulded chin, speaking, in its want of prominence, 
 of a want of moral energy; hair of a more than 
 web-like softness and tenuity ; these features, with 
 an inordinate expansion above the regions of the 
 temple, made up altogether a countenance not 
 easily to be forgotten. And now !" 
 
 I stop thus abruptly this extract from "The Fall 
 
NOTES ON THE FACES. 
 
 of the House of Usher." The Wedding Year face 
 is a fanciful attempt to recall the young man of 
 twenty-five under a favoring glint of sunshine. 
 
 Few profiles indicate the full-face expression. 
 This is why many prefer that pose. Half a loaf, 
 the proverb says, is better than no bread at all; 
 undoubtedly, but in portraiture an honest slice of 
 the loaf is preferable to a pretty bit of corner 
 crust. As the current portraits give no sure and 
 certain outline of Poe s nose, which was a cross 
 between Greek and aquiline, I have ventured a 
 delineation, which differs from that of Zolnay s 
 bust, on Poe s own authority. 
 
 This is more or less a copy of the Daguerreotype 
 (mentioned above) taken within about twelve 
 months of Poe s death. Several replicas seem to 
 be in existence, some printed in reverse, and they 
 are dated by guesswork 1848 and 1849. The one 
 certainty is that they portray the poet in his last 
 and deplorable phase. Here are the deep-etched 
 tracks of sorrow, the uncanny curves contrived by 
 the ugly demon to caricature the once pure lines 
 of grace. The eyes have dissolved partnership, 
 the long lovelocks are changed to snakes that 
 wriggle and writhe like things of evil set on to 
 madden the precious spirit in the casket prisoned. 
 This is the portrait of a high priest of despair. 
 
 Five years earlier than the date of this, the "Sat 
 urday Museum" gave a biography and a portrait 
 of Poe, famous before he wrote "The Raven/ He 
 sent a copy to a friend, "herewith I forward the 
 
 The 
 Smiling 
 
 face. 
 
 The 
 
 Profile 
 
 study. 
 
 The 
 
 Widower 
 year 
 portrait. 
 
EDGAR ALLAN POE. 
 
 The 
 Fates 
 as face 
 artists. 
 
 8. M., containing a biography and caricature, both 
 of myself. I am ugly enough, God knows, but not 
 quite so bad as that. 
 
 Later caricaturist biographers sniff the traces of 
 evil drugs, "coffee and wine," as they turn up their 
 superfine noses at these portraits in reverse. 
 Again Poe: 
 
 "The errors and frailties which I deplore, it can 
 not at least be asserted that I have been the coward 
 to deny. Never, even, have I made attempt at 
 extenuating a weakness which is (or, by the bless 
 ing of God, was) a calamity, although those who 
 did not know me intimately had little reason to 
 regard it otherwise than as a crime. For, indeed, 
 had my pride, or that of my family, permitted, 
 there was much very much there was every 
 thing to be offered in extenuation. There was 
 an epoch at which it might not have been wrong 
 in me to hint what by the testimony of Dr. Fran 
 cis and other medical nin I might have demon 
 strated, that the irregularities so profoundly 
 lamented were the effect of a terrible evil rather 
 than its cause." This is from Poe s letter "To the 
 Public" in the Philadelphia "Spirit of the Times," 
 1846. 
 
 Recurring to the portrait in the Players Club, 
 I quote a bit from a letter written by Gabriel Har 
 rison in 1865 to Mrs. Clemm, the good mother of 
 Virginia Poe and her famous husband. It is given 
 in the Virginia Edition of Poe s works. 
 
 "You know how much respect I have for the 
 
NOTES ON THE FACES. 
 
 memory of Eddie, a memory that takes its grace 
 from his great genius, and as I always believed 
 him to have had a gentler and nobler nature I 
 have of late felt it a sacred duty to see justice done 
 his likeness. All the pictures that have as yet been 
 published of him, or prefixed to his Poems, are 
 to me perfect failures. 
 
 I have photographed the Daguerreotype of him 
 which is in my possession, and which in my opin 
 ion is excellent, as I remember him, and have been 
 working it up in water colors for the purpose of 
 presenting it to the Long Island Historical 
 Society, therefore I desire it to be the authentic 
 likeness of our great poet." 
 
 This refers to the prematurely aged face here 
 presented. The reader will indulge his fancy in 
 picturing the living original, somewhere between 
 Gabriel Harrison s loyally "worked up" water 
 color, and my possibly worked down interpreta 
 tion of defective prints from an unsatisfactory 
 Daguerreotype. 
 
 The 
 retoucher. 
 
20 
 
 EDGAR ALLAN POE. 
 
 Choosing 
 a Sample. 
 
 prises about 950 lines. The fact of Poe s author 
 ship was pretty clearly shown a few years ago by 
 an enterprising gentleman, hiding himself behind 
 the nom de plume of Geoffrey Quarles, who 
 unearthed the original Philadelphia edition in 
 some out of the way place and carefully edited a 
 reprint." This extract is credited by Mr. W. M. 
 Griswold to the New York Evening Post of July 
 8, 1893. 
 
 If a London publication of the exalted literary 
 status of the New York Evening Post were to 
 speak of a similar "find" in the Reading Room of 
 the British Museum or the Guildhall Library as 
 having been "unearthed in some out of the way 
 place" (the Astor Library), the literary tribe of 
 that metropolis would feel it awkward that a strik 
 ing poem, by a striker poet on his stricken con 
 temporaries, could so long have escaped their 
 patriotic familiarity with their poets and greatest 
 libraries. 
 
 The only recognition from Professors Harrison 
 and Kent personally is this sentence : "The editor 
 (of Vol. VII, endorsed by the editor of the seven 
 teen volumes) has copied one hundred lines of the 
 Lavante satire from the Philadelphia edition of 
 1847, an d herewith presents them to the reader for 
 his judgment as to whether they are Poe s or not." 
 
 Then follow one hundred lines of the satire, 
 being the first and introductory lines, bearing the 
 same relation to the satire proper as the average 
 preface to the contents of a book. The learned 
 
THE WEDDING YEAR PORTRAIT, page 15. 
 
 This maiden she lired with no other thought than to love and be 
 loved by me. 
 
 Annabel Lee." 
 
THE "LAV ANTE" SATIRE. 
 
 editors did not leave room in the seventeen vol 
 umes for a hundred, nor a score, nor even ten of 
 the satire lines that paint the literary portraits of 
 thirty American poets as "Lavante" saw them. If 
 among these thirty the famous but inconvenient 
 Poe had been portrayed, it is just conceivable that 
 a ten-line space might have been spared to enable 
 the Virginia Edition to illustrate the "Lavante" 
 gallery as fairly as it does its doorway. 
 
 The discriminating editors dissent from my con 
 clusion that "Lavante" and Poe are identical, but 
 they do not attempt to discuss, nor even cuss, 
 openly, my cumulative argument. They do not 
 notice my pile of evidence, which fills, with the 
 argument, over forty pages of the book of no 
 pages in which I reprinted the satire. 
 
 They deem it judicious, if not judicial, to consti 
 tute the average "reader" the court competent to 
 try a case requiring special knowledge, arid the 
 careful weighing of intricate details withheld from 
 this court. They present, with an engaging air 
 of impartiality, as a sufficient exhibit in the case, 
 the portico of a house as yet unbuilt, from which 
 the court is to judge the architecture and strength 
 of the invisible edifice. Then, to> enlighten this 
 myopic tribunal and encourage its expected 
 adverse decision, the editors have appended this 
 helpful hint to their one-tenth per cent sample of 
 the satire ; 
 
 "Dr. Kent does not believe that these lines are 
 by Poe." 
 
 Assisting 
 
 the 
 
 judgment. 
 
22 
 
 EDGAR ALLAN POE. 
 
 Grisw old s 
 Immor 
 tals. 
 
 When the court gets one eye clear it perceives 
 that this admirably ambiguous dictum is consist 
 ent with silent belief that the satire portraits in the 
 remaining 850 lines are verily by Poe, or cannot 
 be denied him. 
 
 Actuated by more primitive notions of justice 
 than are allowed to linger in some advanced 
 coteries of certain progressive centres of scholar 
 ship, appeal is now taken to the higher court of 
 impartial investigation by experts, and those will 
 ing to become so by simply sifting the evidence 
 here given for the truth, the whole truth, and noth 
 ing but the truth. 
 
 SUMMARY OF FACTS AND PROBABILITIES. 
 
 Only the briefest epitome of these is possible 
 here, but this and other matters of interest con 
 cerning Poe, not adequately studied by his 
 biographers, will be treated in a work by the pres 
 ent writer, which will include some efforts at the 
 true portrayal of a select company of poets born 
 under his luckless star. 
 
 The satire opens fire on Rufus Griswold, the 
 dispenser of laurels to his bookful of one hundred 
 and fifty immortals, in which Poe only got a place 
 by ungracious compulsion. Of this number Poe s 
 drastic criticisms killed and scattered all but about 
 ten. "What a cartoon he drew," says Mr. Edmund 
 Clarence Stedman, "of the writers of his time 
 the corrective of Griswold s optimistic delinea 
 tions !" 
 
THE "LAV ANTE" SATIRE. 
 
 In 1847, the wretchedest year he ever 
 experienced, his output was unusually small. In 
 1843 and 1845 ne na d lectured in Baltimore and 
 New York on "The Poets and Poetry of America," 
 The American Review, February, 1845, reports 
 that in this lecture Poe "made unmitigated war 
 upon the prevalent Puffery, and dragged several 
 popular idols from their pedestals." 
 
 The Home Journal of March 20, 1847, 
 announced that there would shortly be published 
 "The Authors of America, in Prose and Verse ; by 
 Edgar Allan Poe." Mr. Woodberry, in his "Amer 
 ican Men of Letters biography, published before 
 my "Lavante" brochure, says this never appeared. 
 Note the curious phrasing in the above title. Is 
 there a Poesque cryptic suggestion that he, Poe, 
 might write of the "American Authors" in his own 
 Prose and Verse? 
 
 This 1847 "Lavante" satire was anonymous, and 
 so was the only typical Poe-poem published 
 in that year "Ulalume." In December, 1846, 
 Poe says, "I am now at this body and soul." At 
 what? Preparing to publish "Some honest 
 Opinions about (the Literati), Autorial Merits and 
 Demerits, with occasional words of Personality," 
 etc. Ingram, the English biographer who errs on 
 the side of partiality for Poe, confesses an uncom 
 fortable doubt as to the possibility of the MS. 
 of this work in prose and verse having been "lost" 
 by Rufus Griswold, to whose keeping as literary 
 executor Poe s papers were entrusted. This is 
 
 Foe s 
 "losf 
 work. 
 
EDGAR ALLAN POE. 
 
 The 
 
 "lost" 
 work 
 found. 
 
 unkind. All we really know is that Griswold had a 
 fine talent as a literary executioner during Poe s 
 lifetime, and that it quite unnecessarily gave vim 
 to his notorious obituary anathematization of the 
 poor corpse in the New York Tribune on the day 
 after the poet s death. 
 
 Among the press notices of my argument on 
 Lavante" were a couple of suggestions that the 
 satire was probably the work either of Lambert 
 A. Wilmer, whose "Quacks of Helicon 7 was killed 
 by Poe s review of it, or of Laughton Osborn, 
 whose "Vision of Rubeta" Poe rescued from 
 oblivion, its title only, by his more friendly crit 
 ique. I dismiss this matter with the remark that 
 there has not yet been a serious attempt to dis 
 prove my contention. 
 
 As to the euphonious pseudonym, "Lavante," 
 Poe was, and remains, the supreme euphonist 
 One of his characters in "Politian" is "Lalage." 
 In other of his pages we find "Levante" and 
 "Lalande," and a hundred verbal symphonies. 
 
 I might elaborate these materials to fill every 
 page in this book, but will stop here. I submit 
 that anyone anxious to disprove the Poe author 
 ship of this satire (which is none the less poetical 
 despite his warning that "a satire is, of course, no 
 poem"), must produce on the witness stand a man 
 who, with Poe s motives, Poe s intellect, Poe s 
 strength and weakness, Poe s literary judgments, 
 prejudices, contempt for mediocrities, and love of 
 mystery, was yet not Poe himself. 
 
THE 
 POETS AND POETRY OF AMERICA 
 
 A SATIRE 
 
 Clime of the brave! entire from sea to sea! 
 Vain is thy boast that thou art blest and free ! 
 Oh, servile slave to eastern rules and rhyme, 
 Almost from Milton s blank to Chaucer s chime! 
 Thy own proud bards behold ! a motley band 
 To lead the music of their native land. 
 
 Immortal GRISWOLD! thine the deathless name 
 Shall bear the palm of more than mortal fame ! 
 For thine the lofty boast at once to save 
 The humble bard perchance from hapless grave, 
 Weave with his crown thy fadeless laurel bays, 
 And with thy nursling gain undying praise. 
 
 [Poe did not conceal his contempt for this self- 
 appointed accoucheur of his country s poetical 
 genius, even in his review of Griswold s volume, 
 "The Poets and Poetry of America," in Graham s 
 Magazine, June, 1842. Admitting its interest as a 
 collection of national verse, he protested against 
 the exclusion of several writers of distinction, while 
 "there are many mere versifiers included." The 
 Boston coterie were unduly favored, except that 
 Lowell had been inadequately represented. In his 
 
26 
 
 EDGAR ALLAN POE. 
 
 Poetry 
 in the 
 forties. 
 
 review of Griswold s third edition, 1843, 
 experiments in prose satire akin to vituperation. 
 
 "Is Mr. we ask his pardon the Reverend Mr. 
 Griswold (so puffed, praised, and glorified in 
 advance), the man of varied talents, of genius, of 
 overweening intellect, he was somewhere pictured, 
 or is he the arrant literary quack he is now entitled 
 by the American press?. .. .That he has some 
 talents we allow, but they are only those of a 
 mediocre character; indeed, every third man one 
 might meet in a day s walk is his equal, if not his 
 superior. As a critic his judgment is worthless. 
 
 His self-esteem is strangely developed. Here 
 
 we have him in his capacity of author of the 
 Toets and Poetry of America/ as thirteenth in 
 the list, and of course superior to Lowell, Poe 
 (seven others named), who follow him. Un 
 exampled modesty!"] 
 
 Awake, satiric muse! awake in might 
 To strike, for Poesy s insulted right! 
 
 The chase is up, arise and onward press, 
 
 If mean the game yet not the sport is less! 
 
 In modern times, who may not hope for praise 
 
 When all we ask is but unmeaning lays? 
 
 And thoughtless bards can suit the servile throng 
 
 With heartless verse and worse than worthless song. 
 
 [Not Byronic themes, nor Pope s philosophy or 
 wholesome satire, not even Campbell songs of 
 joyous Hope,] 
 
 Alike when life is sad or wrapt in ease ; 
 
 Not these the subjects which our times demand 
 
 To please the public and to curse the land! 
 
NOTES ON THE SATIRE. 
 
 [Shadowy word pictures of filmy fancies, pretty 
 washy drawings of hackneyed scenes or scenery, 
 or sickly dream stuff done up in verse or worse;] 
 
 No more we ask; no more the bard can give 
 In times like these can mind or merit live? 
 
 [Poet Poe was not a prophet. He did not 
 foresee a day when Poesy would flourish as a 
 mechanic art-craft, when "mind" would be content 
 with the quarry slave s work and wage, and 
 "merit" chisel the blocks into cunning fake similes 
 of the more or less antique.] 
 
 Too proud to stoop, or heed the critic s rage, 
 Such is my crime before this righteous age ; 
 I printed but to suit the present whim 
 Without a preface, or a suppliant hymn. 
 
 [He holds no man a genius who dare not risk 
 his work, if satisfactory to himself in point of art, 
 defiant of Mrs. Grundy s goody criticism. "The 
 fact is," says Poe in a notice of Bayard Taylor, 
 "someone should show how and why it is that the 
 ubiquitous quack in letters can always succeed/ 
 while genius which implies self-respect, with a 
 scorn of creeping and crawling must inevitably 
 succumb." This cruel suggestion was all right for 
 those deplorable days, but would he now seriously 
 propose to resurrect another pen-sceptred Herod 
 to massacre the Innocents of the chosen tribe?] 
 
 The poet s heart, the poet s sense sublime 
 
 Was born for torture and his soul for rhyme. 
 
 Intense his feeling and severe his pain, 
 
 That sullen frown no more from love would gain; 
 
 and 
 
 "in times 
 
 like 
 
 these." 
 
EDGAR ALLAN POE. 
 
 The 
 
 tortured 
 
 heart. 
 
 So nice his texture, and so fine the mould 
 
 None e er can guess what ne er to sight is told, 
 
 Nor search the secrets of a soul like his, 
 
 Or from the common mind imagine this, 
 
 The hope, the fear, the rapture and delight 
 
 Are all his own and impulse all his light. 
 
 Earth, air, and sea, the planet and the sun 
 
 Are but the elements of art begun ; 
 
 The inner world, the sphere of thought and mind, 
 
 The mysteries that make and move mankind 
 
 To him are servile, and for him were made, 
 
 Yea, but for him, would still from beauty fade. 
 
 Thus noble wit, as by a skill divine 
 
 Ennobles nature and prevents decline ; 
 
 Thus beauty sways and anguish rends the heart, 
 
 By passion wrought into the height of art. 
 
 [The first ten lines of this passage strikingly 
 recall Poe s essay on "The Poetic Principle," 
 which he delivered as a lecture, and which 
 appeared in "Sartain s Magazine" shortly after his 
 death. If their beauty is impaired by the neces 
 sity of expression in heroic couplets, Poe antici 
 pates the criticism and draws its sting by his 
 significant dictum, "A satire is, of course, no 
 poem." This utterance has been carefully ignored 
 by biographers a.nd reviewers who* have lightly 
 written themselves down as disbelievers in the 
 possibility of Poe having put his lecture, bearing 
 the same title as this satire, into rhymed couplets 
 that do not, "of course," pretend to pose as a Poe 
 poem. Nevertheless, within their limitations these 
 ten lines hold a core of poetry worthy even of 
 him, and certainly none among his half-hearted 
 "friends," rhymers or prosers, in their grudging 
 him the credit of this thorny crown for poetasters, 
 
NOTES ON THE SATIRE. 
 
 29 
 
 has produced an equally eloquent verse vignette 
 of the genuine article. 
 
 Now read again the next ten lines, beginning 
 "Earth, air, and sea. 7 Here the Poet claims the 
 universe as his sphere, with right to soar to the 
 firmament, and from its pure ether view the top 
 most peaks of the knowable and at will probe 
 the dark profundities of philosophy. Does this, 
 too>, strike the august dispensers of Poe-destiny 
 as hopelessly unlike the author of "The Bells," 
 whom they are graciously willing to patronize if 
 he remains screwed up in the nice little casket 
 they have wrought for him? 
 
 Is it forgotten that Poe actually composed and 
 published a philosophical rhapsody? With this 
 extraordinary composition he thought to place the 
 capstone on the edifice of his life-work. If a 
 rhymed satire is no poem, how much less so must 
 be a prose disquisition on the laws of cosmology. 
 Yet this is the title, "EUREKA: A Prose Poem; 
 by Edgar A. Poe." It was a book of some two 
 hundred pages, published the year before his 
 death. Three sentences from its first page must 
 suffice as index to the range of this astounding 
 treatise : 
 
 "What terms shall I find sufficiently simple in 
 their sublimity sufficiently sublime in their sim 
 plicity for the mere enunciation of my theme? 
 I design to speak of the Physical, Metaphysical, 
 and Mathematical of the Material and Spiritual 
 Universe: of its Essence, its tOrigin, its Crea- 
 
 Poe 
 as 
 
 Philoso 
 pher. 
 
EDGAR ALLAN FOR. 
 
 In this 
 
 prose 
 
 outsoar- 
 
 ing all 
 
 poets 
 
 of the 
 
 time. 
 
 Griswold 
 as a 
 "blown 
 god! 
 
 tion, its Present Condition and its Destiny. I 
 shall be so rash, moreover, as to challenge the 
 conclusions, and thus, in effect, to question the 
 sagacity, of many of the greatest and most justly 
 reverenced of men. 
 
 In the full maturity of his powers not merely 
 as a maker of verse and stories but as a (probably 
 too) profound and intense thinker Poe dedicated 
 this Prose Poem to Humboldt. Pitifullest of 
 fates fastidious artist-poet curst with the mad 
 ness for wrenching the secrets of God from the 
 ever unknowable! Conceive if you can the 
 agonized expression of triumph-despair as he 
 dashed down these following words in his short 
 Preface, in the dread instant of halting between 
 letting it live or perish in the flames as a forlorn 
 hope. 
 
 "What I here propound is true: therefore it 
 cannot die : or if by any means it be now trodden 
 down so that it die, it will rise again to the Life 
 Everlasting/ Nevertheless it is as a Poem only 
 that I wish this work to be judged after I am 
 dead."] 
 
 The night was up, when all serene and glad 
 Each tuneful bard was for the banquet clad, 
 While GRISWOLD S self, like Jeffrey on his throne 
 Was raised sublime and to a god was blown. 
 
 [The trembling bards cringe before him, strug 
 gling to offer their vows and incense on the altar 
 of Fame over which the "blown" god presides. 
 Francis Jeffrey was the "hanging judge" of the 
 
NOTES ON THE SATIRE. 
 
 Edinburgh Review, who gleefully sentenced Byron, 
 Wordsworth, Shelley, Coleridge and their school 
 to death which proved the gate to immortality. 
 Poe s criticisms killed only Griswold pets, and the 
 "blown god" himself failed to balloon them to 
 Valhalla.] 
 
 First comes great WILLIS, trembling to his heels, 
 Invokes the god, and for his country feels. 
 But few indeed could boast such matchless head, 
 So well proportioned and so rich in lead ; 
 Each fearful bump phrenologists would say 
 Was thunderproof till thunder s self decay ; 
 So thick the skull where few ideas meet, 
 For dulness and decay a calm retreat. 
 
 [Nathaniel Parker Willis was the most popular 
 writer of verse and chatty prose. He made his 
 way into fashionable literary salons in London, 
 where his dandyism, agreeable ways, and Ameri 
 can celebrity won him the favor of lords and 
 ladies, whose manners and homes he pictured for 
 his countrymen. Lavante honors Willis with a 
 second tribute.] 
 
 All hail ! great searcher of the human heart, ,, , 
 
 As great in prose as in poetic art, MaVian- 
 
 Wn 
 
 Immortal WILLIS, hail! in whom combine 
 The base and great with wit to make thee shine. 
 An exile from thy native land and home, 
 Well pleased in other lands to rhyme and roam, 
 Lest villain hands should strive to make thee just 
 To hungry creditors, ill-fed on trust ; 
 As light in heart as fickle in thy mind, 
 Canst thou describe the motives of mankind? 
 Hast thou acquired the rarer skill to sing 
 The flood of feeling from its fountain spring? 
 As well might Etna s fiery summit bloom, 
 Or light surround the cypress-shaded tomb, 
 
 iel 
 
 Parker 
 
 Willis. 
 
EDGAR ALLAN POE. 
 
 William 
 
 Cullen 
 
 Bryant. 
 
 As thou relate in numbers fresh and true 
 
 Whence actions spring, or life its essence drew. 
 
 Yet thou canst write, from eastern shore, the change 
 
 Of faithless custom, ever wild and strange, 
 
 Or rhyme from thence some tale of hopeless love 
 
 To please fair Venus or her silly dove ; 
 
 Address the Spring, or April, in a lay 
 
 With Wordsworth for thy tune in mellow May, 
 
 Enough to gain the Western critic s praise 
 
 And crown thy brow with fadeless laurel bays, 
 
 Enough to gain, where more should own the name, 
 
 A poet s prize, a poet s envied fame ! 
 
 Such is the toil, and such the slightest care 
 
 To swell to-day this bubble of the air. 
 
 [Compare Poe s note on Willis in The Literati. 
 "Mr. Willis is yet young. . . .Without being hand 
 some his face is somewhat too full, or rather heavy 
 in its lower portions. Neither his nose nor fore 
 head can be defended; the latter would puzzle 
 phrenology. . . . As a poet Mr. Willis is not entitled 
 to so high a rank as he may justly claim for his 
 prose. His style proper may be called extrava 
 gant, Mzarre, pointed." "However highly we 
 respect Mr. Willis s talents we have nothing but 
 contempt for his affectations." Broadway Jour- 
 nal, 1845.] 
 
 In meads of green and woodland shades at rest 
 Next view the lofty BRYANT greatly blest, 
 Who with his brother-bards alone can sing 
 That streamlets gild and flowers deck the spring, 
 Nor little thinks how slight the profit hence 
 When beauty charms, not aids our common sense. 
 
 When sunset softly gilds the western sky 
 And all but paints enchantment to the eye, 
 Nor wakes a sense, but wakes to love the hue 
 From farewell beam on skies of azure blue; 
 Can scene like this, the fairest of our earth 
 
NOTES ON THE SATIRE. 
 
 33 
 
 Awake the thoughts of more than mortal birth, 
 
 Or rouse the nobler feelings of the soul? 
 
 Or is delight the poet s noblest goal? 
 
 Has not the heart its passions, as the brain 
 
 The power to light the fancy in its train? 
 
 Yes ! there are springs of thought and feeling chaste 
 
 No vulgar eye hath to their fountain traced ; 
 
 Nor knows the bard but half his proper art 
 
 Who aims to please the eye, not rend the heart. 
 
 [William Cullen Bryant was but a stripling in 
 his teens when he began writing "Thanatopsis," 
 which was published before he attained his 
 majority. Stedman observes that "no one else 
 of like years ever composed a single poem that 
 had so continuous and elevating an effect upon 
 the literature of a country. It set the heavy 
 pace for aspirants until Longfellow ambled more 
 cheerily and, with "The Waterfowl/ this poem 
 marks the summit of Bryant s poetical genius. 
 
 Though fifty-three years old when this satire 
 was printed it hails him as "the younger Bryant" 
 and notes "young Bryant s scowl." In "The 
 Literati" Poe wrote, "it will never do to claim 
 for Bryant a genius of the loftiest order, but there 
 has been latterly, since the days of Mr. Long 
 fellow and Mr. Lowell, a growing disposition to 
 deny him genius in any respect .... Thanatopsis 
 is the poem by which he is best known but it is 
 by no means his best poem. The concluding 
 thought is exceedingly noble, and has done won 
 ders for the success of the whole composition." 
 
 Again, in "The Poetic Principle," he says, "he 
 who shall simply sing, with however glowing 
 
34 
 
 EDGAR ALLAN POE. 
 
 Oliver 
 
 Wendell 
 
 Holmes. 
 
 enthusiasm or vivid truth of description, of the 
 sights, and sounds, and odors, and colors, and 
 sentiments, which greet Mm in common with all 
 mankind he, I say, has yet failed to prove his 
 divine title. Happily for the undivine, trade 
 in commonplace potrey-padding still flourishes 
 galore.] 
 
 Next comes our noble Doctor, HOLMES we call, 
 Still bent to jest in spite of wit and gall, 
 Still prone to rhyme with or without a soul, 
 Style, ornament, and rhyme the poet s whole. 
 Those tin-pan joys which catch the listless ear 
 Awhile delight, then worse than vile appear. 
 
 Such is thy boast, proud Holmes, to touch the heart, 
 
 If not by genius, by thy native art ! 
 
 For grant thy lofty strain but once begun, 
 
 How rich and how exhaustless is thy fun S 
 
 As true thy song, no doubt, as holy writ, 
 
 One merit more it has some idle wit. 
 
 [Some badinage of "idle wit" follows, pointed 
 by the Doctor s earthly profession.] 
 
 So light thy verse, a plaything of the air, 
 Must mortal live on unsubstantial fare 
 Or he who takes it for an ague chill, 
 Must own at least it was a pleasant pill. 
 
 [Griswold decreed that "as a versifier Holmes 
 is equal to Tennyson, and with the same patient 
 effort would every way surpass him." On which 
 Poe advises Holmes "to beg Mr. Griswold not to 
 puff him, or he may depend upon his poems being 
 incontinently damned." The author of "The 
 Raven" was scarcely by right divine entitled to 
 sit upon the author of "The One Hoss Shay," 
 
NOTES ON THE SATIRE. 
 
 35 
 
 nor to enjoy the carollings of any born i the vein 
 of jollity. Poe s humor was an arrow barbed at 
 both ends, worse luck. Oliver Wendell Holmes 
 physicked more thousands out of their doleful 
 dumps with his inkpot than he cured scores with 
 pills and potions. Where Poe gave, and still 
 gives, weaklings the creeps at midnight, Holmes 
 sends sweet slumbers without the aid of soporifics. 
 The present writer recalls his early experiences 
 under these two treatments, and must hold for 
 once with the doctor as against the minister of 
 dis-ease to minds unripe. Many years later this 
 old esteem took on a flush of vainglory on receiv 
 ing a note from the Tom Hood of America saying 
 that a certain bit of homemade wit-jingle "has 
 given me as much pleasure as if Tom Hood had 
 written it," over the sea.] 
 
 Shall HALLECK not one passing moment claim? 
 Blest bard ! immortal in Bozarris name ! 
 
 [No didactic theme inspired this singer, as it 
 might have swamped him in the blues.] 
 
 But those who bled and fell in freedom s cause 
 Thy worthier theme attest it our applause ! 
 Nay, though the hero bravely fought and fell, 
 Though thine own music fall like magic spell, 
 Grant that thy palm and praise is fairly won, 
 Is all achieved that mortal might have done? 
 
 Scorn the vile throng as if in vengeance set 
 To write for each vile monthly and gazette ; 
 Extend thy sphere, thy native powers expand, 
 And as confessed immortal poet stand. 
 
 Fits- 
 Greene 
 Halleck. 
 
EDGAR ALLAN POE. 
 
 Albert 
 Pike. 
 
 [Fitz-Greene Halleck was gifted with powers 
 that should have ranked him with the highest 
 school of poets, but he was an easy-going cynic, 
 and his backbone gave out when he was made 
 factotum for old John Jacob Astor. 
 
 "Of late days," wrote Poe in Graham s Maga 
 zine, 1843, "Halleck has nearly abandoned the 
 Muses, much to the regret of his friends and to 
 the neglect of his reputation. He is now in the 
 maturity of his powers (in his fifty-fourth year), 
 and might redeem America from an imputation 
 to which she has been too frequently subjected 
 the imputation of inability to produce a great 
 poem. ] 
 
 Who that sings the gods, albeit unlike, 
 
 More seems their proper son than ALBERT PIKE? 
 
 Oh, Albert Pike ! stick to thy godlike lay, 
 
 Thy gods and goddesses in long array ! 
 
 No matter if in wit and judgment weak, 
 
 Thy faults confess, their grace and pardon seek. 
 
 As some soft stream which glides unheard along, 
 
 So glide thy music, so expire thy song ; 
 
 So melt thy melody into the soul, 
 
 That not thy foe may say it all was stole ! 
 
 [Mixed with this raillery there is sincere respect 
 for Pike s "Hymns to the Gods" and other work. 
 The refrain to "The Raven" was charged as a 
 plagiarism or imitation of Pike s "Isadore," which 
 may account for the acidity in the passage partly 
 quoted above. In the prose of his "Autography" 
 Poe writes without bias. "Pike has merit, and 
 
NOTES ON THE SATIRE. 
 
 37 
 
 that of a high order. He is the most classic of 
 our poets in the best sense of the term. Upon 
 the whole, there are few of our native writers to 
 whom we consider him inferior."] 
 
 Hail, soft Humanity ! whose genial ray 
 Delights the soul along thy simple lay! 
 Friend of the slave ! whose rough and rugged verse 
 Might burst his chains, his hopeless fate reverse. 
 
 [To whom could lines like these and the follow 
 ing apply but to John Greenleaf Whittier, the 
 Abolitionist laureate? The satire appears to have 
 been composed piecemeal and carelessly put 
 together for printing. The four lines above, and 
 six more, come on page 17, and fourteen more 
 on page 18, which we do not quote, and then, on 
 page 21, we find thirty-two more, in which 
 Whittier s name first appears.] 
 
 Vain is thy claim to blest Apollo s sacred lyre, ( !) 
 Since not his beams thy lifeless note inspire. 
 
 No matter this let blame be light to thee, 
 Thine be the boast of soft humanity. 
 
 I surely mean not, WHITTIER, an offence. 
 
 [Well for thee in sticking to homely themes, 
 as a touch of the romantic might burst thy 
 genius.] 
 
 No, Whittier, no ! thpu must not stray 
 Where hap like this might snatch thy wits away, 
 Nor seek the south, where spring for ever reigns 
 To deck the sunny mount and sloping plains, 
 Lest too much heat should melt thy feeble brain, 
 And turn thy watery muse to mist again. 
 
 John 
 
 Greenleaf 
 
 Whittier. 
 
EDGAR ALLAN POE. 
 
 Poc s 
 
 dislike 
 
 f 
 
 didactic 
 
 verse. 
 
 No Whittier no ! far better than to roam, 
 To cherish pride in love of sacred home, 
 And worship Nature in her solitude 
 Beneath thy native sky and mountains rude ; 
 Thus safe to sing thy tale of childhood o er, 
 Till infants shout and humbly ask for more. 
 
 [Poe was a southerner, mis-delivered in Boston. 
 He had neither political, personal, nor poetical 
 sympathy with northerners. 
 
 "Man is only incidentally a poetic theme: we 
 mean the heart and intellect of Man; matters 
 which the pseudo-transcendentalists of Frog- 
 pondium (Boston) are perpetually attempting to 
 force into poetry." Broadway Journal, 1845. In 
 the "Autography" he writes, "Whittier is placed 
 by his particular admirers in the very front rank 
 of American poets. We are not disposed to agree 
 with their decision in every respect. He is a fine 
 versifier .... has a certain vivida vis of expression 
 which seems to be his forte, but in taste, and espe 
 cially in imagination .... he is ever remarkably 
 deficient. His themes are never to our liking." 
 
 Some of us roamers through and around the 
 wilderness of printed poetry have made ascents of 
 cloud-capped hills, explored the gorgeous and the 
 wild, the Persian gardens and the dark border 
 lands where Will o the Wisps beguile into foul 
 bogs, and we come back vowing never again to 
 mistake grandeur for true delight in scenery, 
 poetry, or home. Vistas of rolling farm and 
 garden land, studded with village belfry towers, 
 embowered cottage groups, and stately manor 
 
NOTES ON THE SATIRE. 
 
 39 
 
 gables, as in mellowed England, no prisoning hill 
 walls to rob our horizon view and no monotony 
 of prairie flat nor overpowering bullies of forest 
 or torrent to vaunt their bigness over our puny 
 but free-soaring selves this is the scenery we can 
 live with in perfect and unwavering happiness. 
 Of all our American poets commend me to Whit- 
 tier s sweet spirited strain, his uniquely modest 
 pose, and when we ponder his broad-based 
 patriotism, fiery when fire was the need yet charac 
 teristically serene, with sunset glow of peace, it is 
 tempting to whisper that his heart and song would 
 have been cheaply gained for his country s good, 
 at any time these forty years, by swapping for 
 his inspiration nine-tenths of the magazine shoal 
 of pareasitical laureatettes.] 
 
 Shall LOWELL still by dreams inflate his pride 
 And ramble most where most the mists reside? 
 
 [This solitary allusion to James Russell Lowell 
 is like the remnant of a cancelled passage. Poe 
 had various attitudes towards Lowell, according 
 to circumstances, as will be seen. In 1842, as 
 has already been noted, and again in 1844, in 
 Graham s Magazine for March, he writes gra 
 ciously, This new volume of poems by Mr. Low 
 ell will place him. . . .at the very head of the poets 
 of America." In Godey s Lady s Book, August, 
 1845, he gives Lowell instruction in literary pre 
 cision, calls his "Conversations on the Poets" a 
 
 James 
 
 Russell 
 
 Lowell. 
 
40 
 
 EDGAR ALLAN POE. 
 
 Poe, 
 "three- 
 fifths of 
 him 
 genius." 
 
 farce and dubs the author "the Anacharsis Clootz 
 of American letters." 
 
 In 1848 Lowell published his "Fable for 
 Critics," in which he paid his famous compliment 
 to Poe. 
 
 Here comes Poe with his Raven, like Barnaby Rudge, 
 Three-fifths of him genius, and two-fifths sheer fudge ; 
 Who talks like a book of iambs and pentameters, 
 In a way to make all men of common sense d metres ; 
 Who has written some things far the best of their kind, 
 But somehow the heart seems squeezed out by the mind. 
 
 The "Fable" was reviewed by Poe in the 
 Southern Literary Messenger, March, 1849, at 
 great length, and he quotes the lines above, refer 
 ring to himself in the third person. The thing 
 is "loose, ill-conceived and feebly executed. Some 
 good hints and sparkling witticisms do not com 
 pensate for its rambling plot if plot it can be 
 called, and for the want of artistic finish, especially 
 in its versification .... Mr. Lowell is one of the 
 most rabid of the Abolitipn fanatics, and no 
 Southerner who does not wish to be insulted 
 should ever touch a volume by this author. . . . 
 He has not the common honesty to speak well, 
 even in a literary sense, of any man who is not a 
 ranting abolitionist. With the exception of Mr. 
 Poe (who has written some commendatory criti 
 cisms on his poems) no Southerner is mentioned 
 at all in the Table. " Then follows the quotation. 
 
 [Mr. Lowell professed entire ignorance of the 
 
NOTES ON THE SATIRE. 
 
 Lavante satire when it was brought to his notice 
 by the present writer.] 
 
 Arise, ye bards ! assume the nobler lay ! 
 Let common sense and genius lead the way, 
 New worlds create of deathless thought and mind, 
 And prove yourselves an honor to mankind; 
 Ne er let the muse those meaner themes regard, 
 Or not complain the poet s fate is hard ! 
 Let Cambridge rouse her proud adopted son 
 The bard to dare, nor themes sublime to shun, 
 
 [This short allusion to Longfellow avoids the 
 furious controversy which a few years back had 
 raged over Poe s accusations of plagiary and imita 
 tion by the Cambridge Professor. Reviewing the 
 "Ballads and Poems" in 1842, Poe had expressed 
 admiration for Longfellow s "genius" while depre 
 cating "his many errors of affectation and imita 
 tion .... His artistical skill is great and his ideality 
 high, but his conception of the aims of poesy 
 is all wrong, and this we shall prove at some future 
 day. His didactics are all out of place." Three 
 years later, being in an unwontedly genial mood 
 after lecturing in Boston, he indulged in this sweet 
 little reverie in the Broadway Journal. 
 
 "We like Boston. We were born there and 
 perhaps it is just as well not to mention that we 
 are heartily ashamed of the fact. The Bostonians 
 are very well in their way. Their hotels are bad. 
 Their pumpkin pies are delicious. Their poetry 
 is not so good. Their Common is no common 
 thing and the duck pond might answer if its 
 answer could be heard for the frogs. 
 
 Henry 
 Wads- 
 worth 
 Longfel 
 low. 
 
EDGAR ALLAN POE. 
 
 "I too can 
 
 rhvme." 
 
 "But with all these good qualities the Boston- 
 ians have no soul. They have always evinced 
 towards us individually the basest ingratitude for 
 the services we rendered them in enlightening 
 them about the originality of Mr. Longfellow." 
 
 Poe had charged him with imitations of Tenny 
 son, Motherwell, Bryant, and the writer of 
 "Politian." 
 
 And now, in conclusion, a few couplets from 
 "Lavante s" scornful farewell to the minstrels: 
 
 With you, ye minor b ards, I hold not war; 
 Much as yourselves would I that strife abhor, 
 Too dull your muse offence to give or take, 
 My hate to rouse, or at my thrust awake ; 
 So cold your strain, so dead your accents fall 
 Great thanks to GRISWOLD that ye live at all. 
 
 I too can rhyme, and in my time have sung 
 When hope was high, and infant muse was young, 
 Too proud in sense, too much of manly tone, 
 I gave but challenge to be heard and known, 
 No crouching prayer to gain the critic round, 
 No favor sought, nor common mercy found. 
 Yet thanks to Western fools, in haste to kill 
 They could not gall me with satiric quill! 
 
 Once I could bear all which the best can bear, 
 Could scorn at pain, and hate at times the fair, 
 But now, by slight experience taught to strike, 
 I but repel where others make dislike. 
 
 Too well my gentle spirit some may know: 
 Cry up the chase I can repay a blow ; 
 Once I could bend, or feign to bend, the knee, 
 When conscience told twas order s just decree, 
 I could dissemble scorn, and strive to seem 
 As calm as love embracing in a dream; 
 No charge could drag resentment from its rest, 
 My brow was smooth, my heart was well possest, 
 
NOTES ON THE SATIRE. 
 
 43 
 
 What now is done not prudence would recall, 
 If pain ensue, what sooner might befall? 
 Should public hate upon my pen react, 
 No matter this I will not aught retract. 
 
 LAVANTE. 
 
 [Out of the abundance of prose parallels to this 
 defiance quotable from Foe s later writing s only 
 this one is selected. 
 
 "In the (my) late lecture on "The Poets and 
 Poetry of America (at Boston) I took occasion 
 to speak what I know to be the truth and to speak 
 it that there should be no chance of misunder 
 standing in what I intended to say. I told these 
 (editors and their connections) to their teeth that, 
 with a very few noble exceptions, they had been 
 engaged for many years in a system of indis 
 criminate laudation of American books a system 
 which had tended, more than any other one thing 
 in the world, to the depression of that American 
 Literature whose elevation it was desired to effect. 
 Could I, at the moment, have invented any terms 
 more explicit, wherewith to express my contempt 
 of our general editorial course of corruption and 
 puffery, I should have employed them, and should 
 I think of anything more expressive hereafter, I 
 will endeavor to find or make an opportunity for 
 its introduction to the public. (The italics are 
 ours.) 
 
 "And what, for all this had I to anticipate? In 
 a very few cases the open or silent approval of 
 the more chivalrous portion of the press, but in a 
 majority of instances I should have been weak 
 
 Foe s 
 threat of 
 a scathing 
 satire. 
 
44 
 
 EDGAR ALLAN POE. 
 
 The curi 
 ous final 
 couplet. 
 
 indeed to look for anything but abuse." Broad 
 way Journal, 1845. 
 
 FOE S CRYPTOGRAMS. 
 
 Remembering his love of mystery and genius 
 for cryptographic writing it appeared possible that 
 if Poe had versified his lecture, he might have 
 hidden the authorship in the last couplet : 
 
 SHOULD PUBLIC HATE UPON MY PEN REACT, 
 NO MATTER THIS I WILL NOT AUGHT RETRACT. 
 
 I find the four following sentences are contained 
 in this couplet : 
 
 EDGAR ALLAN POE; 
 
 AMERICAN POETS AND POETRY, A SATIRE. 
 
 A SATIRE, EVERY WORD TRUE; EDGAR ALLAN POE, 
 
 A TRUE AND HONEST SATIRE, BY EDGAR ALLAN POE. 
 
 Take this for what it is worth. Curiously 
 enough, the titles of the two satires reviewed by 
 Poe, "The Quacks of Helicon" and "The Vision 
 of Rubeta," cannot be got out of this couplet. 
 Neither can the names of those poets in the satire 
 who just possibly might be suspected of its author 
 ship, Griswold, Lowell, Holmes, Pike, Benjamin, 
 Longfellow, Dawes, Pinkney, Willis, Whittier, 
 Clarke, Halleck, Tucker, Hoffman, Parker. 
 
 Lastly, the very first man to be satirized by any 
 brother poet, and the last one to be omitted from 
 a general round-up, would have been Edgar Allan 
 Poe. The absence of his name it was that started 
 me on this quest. 
 
PROFILE STUDY, page 15. 
 
 Deep into the darkness peering, long 1 stood there, wondering, fearing, 
 Doubting, dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared to dream before. 
 
 "Tlit Raven." 
 
Ill 
 
 HIS BIOGRAPHERS, CENSORS AND 
 CHAMPIONS 
 
 Harrison s Virginia edition of the Complete 
 Works of Poe, 17 vols. 1903. 
 
 As elsewhere stated, this is a welcome work, 
 as complete and well edited with the exceptions 
 noted as is probably possible or needed. It 
 begins to do justice to this master workman in his 
 exclusive field of poetry; as the pioneer of and 
 model for pure criticism in this country; as the 
 first and last of its true-born short story con 
 structors, and the greatest of its literary martyrs. 
 
 And yet the taint of musty prejudice hangs 
 over many a page. 
 
 Under the newer code sanctified by the exam 
 ples of Froude among biographers, Mrs. Harriet 
 Beecher Stowe and later feminine undrapers of 
 Byron, and by the approved usage of majority 
 journalism, I suppose it is excellent taste to reprint 
 the atrocious blackguardisms of Dr. "Ben Bolt" 
 English, digging them up from the grave in which 
 the New York law court thought it was burying 
 them forever when it condemned that slanderer 
 to make a goodly reparation to his victim. This 
 quite unnecessary resurrection of laid ghouls is 
 
 Garbage 
 rakers. 
 
EDGAR ALLAN POE. 
 
 Alas, 
 alas! 
 
 balanced by the long extract from Nathaniel P. 
 Willis s noble defence of Poe against Griswold s 
 despicable obituary assault the day after the poet s 
 death. 
 
 One must not doubt that patriotic charity for 
 the sins of a sinless people s sole great literary 
 man makes it incumbent on his biographers to 
 blazon every echo of magnified scandal, every 
 backbite of ignorant gabble and snarl of envy, in 
 their books, which are the outcome of disinterested 
 longings to show how maddeningly cruel those 
 infamous slanders were to a too sensitive nature. 
 There can, I suppose, be no objection on the plea 
 of kindness, or fairness,, to spice one s business 
 venture in biography with superabundant remind 
 ers that its hero resorted to the biblical recipe* to 
 allay "the extreme anguish and straitened circum 
 stances," which caused "his descent into the moral 
 and physical Maelstrom, a catastrophe which 
 far from kindling scriptural sympathy "made 
 him indeed only a shining mark for malice and 
 malignity." Pious sto-ry tellers about great men, 
 greatly weakened by great tribulations, find it easy 
 to square their gossip-lust with their conscience by 
 tagging on each lapse into uncharity some sweet 
 thing in humanitarian commiseration. 
 
 "Alas, how full of Verlaines, de Mussets and 
 
 *"Give strong drink unto him that is ready to perish, and 
 wine unto those that be of heavy hearts. Let him drink, 
 and forget his poverty, and remember his misery no more." 
 
 Prov. xxxi. 
 
CENSORS AND CHAMPIONS. 
 
 47 
 
 Baudelaires the world has been men like Pae, 
 endowed with preternaturally sensitive nerves (our 
 italics), unable to grapple with the coarse flesh and 
 blood around them, pierced on all sides by the 
 slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, and suc 
 cumbing at last to the superincumbent mass of 
 misery." This is a very beautiful Shakespearean 
 passage, but it is pretty poor Virginian logic for 
 literary college professors to pile stale shame on 
 the memory of a dead university brother because 
 his "endowment" brought him its inevitable usury 
 of agony until welcome death. Endowments 
 come from outside ourselves. Who gave Poe this 
 dower? 
 
 What! Baudelaire, de Musset, Verlaine, "men 
 like Poe"! Pen wielders of Poe s school if you 
 please as versemongers, but to class Poe, the deep- 
 eyed Critic, the clean-souled Reasoner in master- 
 prose, the exemplar of pure work, pure style and 
 sane writing as poet, analyst, instructor, corrector 
 of false scales, entertainer, and journalist, with 
 these and other useless drivellers of the sickening 
 Decadent school, is to suggest a slander so base 
 as could only ooze from "malice, malignity," or 
 amusing ignorance. If only they would resurrect 
 Poe to teach his old university his knack of clear 
 speech ! 
 
 Woodberry s Life of Poe, American Men of Let 
 ters series. 
 
 This work was issued about 1886, when the last 
 
 "Endowed 
 with" 
 slings and 
 arrows. 
 
4 8 
 
 EDGAR ALLAN POE. 
 
 Aqua 
 
 pura 
 
 from 
 
 tainted 
 
 wells. 
 
 of the Poe copyrights were expiring, and pub 
 lishers saw their opportunity for creating a Poe 
 revival. The only "Life" with pretensions to 
 authority then available was that by Richard 
 Henry Stoddard, its main points of interest being 
 that the author was a poet and a "friend" of Poe. 
 This biography by the learned gentleman who was 
 appointed to a professorship in Columbia Uni 
 versity soon after its appearance, was hailed as the 
 long overdue standard "Life of Poe," and was 
 duly applauded by the reviewers. 
 
 Mr. Woodberry frankly states that he bases his 
 narrative upon, inter alia, Griswold s first sketch, 
 printed when they were friends; Griswold s 
 Memoir, written as Poe s literary executor, "and 
 prefixed to the third volume of the original edition 
 of Poe s Works/ 1850, but now suppressed"; and 
 Stoddard s "Life." These "authorities," says 
 Woodberry, "each .... contains original matter 
 peculiar to itself," a fact sufficiently indicated by 
 his use of the "suppressed" Memoir. His perfectly 
 proper claim to have given judicial consideration 
 to the conflicting statements of the above and the 
 other less important "authorities" is freely 
 acknowledged. Not being a devotee of or versed 
 in the mysteries of the legal profession, his limited 
 acquaintance with the judicial function as exer 
 cised in different tribunals seems to explain the 
 frigid atmosphere of his book. He picks up the 
 culprit at the bar, which is to his stern eye as truly 
 that of a saloon as of public opinion, and though 
 
CENSORS AND CHAMPIONS. 
 
 49 
 
 the case to be tried involves patheti-c issues of fate 
 and human frailty, this junior judge proceeds to 
 handle the subtle as well as the coarser points as 
 if he were a Master in Chancery unravelling tech 
 nicalities in some pork packers dispute over stock 
 in a cold storage warehouse. 
 
 That one s personal verdict on this book may 
 not be supposed to stand alone, though quite able 
 to do so, I quote from a high literary authority, 
 the Atlantic Monthly, in its review of the edition 
 of Poe s works, edited by Stedman and Wood- 
 berry, and published in 1897. The article is 
 headed "The New Poe." 
 
 "Of all men Poe had best reason to pray that 
 he might be delivered from the hands of his 
 friends .... (The disfavour with which he has been 
 regarded) is chargeable to the extraordinary con 
 fusion of the man with his work of the ethical 
 with the purely literary aspect, which is so charac 
 teristic of literary judgments in this country. The 
 puritanical twang is to be detected even in a study 
 so conscientious as Prof. Woodberry s Life ." 
 How deep rooted this cowardly persecuting spirit 
 still is may be guessed from the fact that this 
 valiant protester against it found it prudent to 
 remain anonymous. 
 
 Woodberry s superior tone does not suffice to 
 nickel-plate the brazen innuendo in such spurious 
 coin as this sentence, following a schoolgirl s 
 reminiscence of Poe, "it is curiously illustrative 
 of the speed with which he established a habit 
 
 Missing 
 the work 
 and 
 hitting 
 the man. 
 
EDGAR ALLAN POE. 
 
 The 
 
 major ex- 
 communi 
 cation. 
 
 of intimacy (our italics) with married women." 
 This gem from his mine of "authorities" is all his 
 little own, but it flashes far. About Poe s fame 
 "has grown up an idealized legend." He "repeat 
 edly forfeited prosperity, and even the homely 
 honor of an honest name, this on the "authority" 
 of Dr. English the convicted slanderer. Poe only 
 "belonged to the men of culture instead of those 
 of originally perfect power." The women friends 
 of Poe almost the only ones he ever had, and 
 every one of them above the shadow of reproach 
 from his enemies "remained loyal to his mem 
 ory," but their merely feminine weakness is nobly 
 snuffed out by Woodberry, whose closing (death) 
 sentence proclaims "the pitiful justice of Poe s 
 fate, the dark immortality of his fame." 
 
 That the author of these elegant extracts has 
 the advantage of poor Poe in that he "belongs to 
 the men of originally perfect power" and not to 
 mere gentlemen of culture is possibly true. That 
 Prof. Woodberry is or was a powerful poet 
 was impressed on the public mind by his cordial 
 reviewers in the select literary papers, about the 
 time his "power" produced the biography. The 
 title, if memory serves, of his poetry book was 
 "The North Shore Clock, and other Poems." It 
 was pronounced a striking piece, but has not 
 recently been heard in these Western parts, though 
 Connecticut products as a rule are quite popular 
 here. 
 
CENSORS AND CHAMPIONS. 
 
 The International Encyclopaedia has a full-dress 
 article on Poe which deserves high praise for its 
 fairness. The anonymous writer says that the 
 poet s fondness for abnormal aspects of life and 
 experience "places him in the ranks of the modern 
 Decadents whom he has deeply influenced but 
 he differs widely from the men who have followed 
 his lead in the absolute purity of his thought and 
 imagination." 
 
 This is as admirable as it is true. The appalling 
 traditions of cyclopaedic writing are of course 
 responsible for "placing* a defunct pioneer "in 
 the ranks" of an awkward squad whose main title 
 to notice is their smartness in trying to walk in 
 the shoes of the out-of-reach leader "who deeply 
 influenced them." Translated into Poe-prose the 
 above passage reads thus, and succeeds in saying 
 what the writer intended to when he started : 
 
 "Poe deeply influenced the modern Decadents, 
 who wish to claim him as one in their ranks, but 
 the vital fact is in pretending to follow his lead, 
 Poe s purity of thought and imagination is the 
 one quality in which these degenerates have not 
 followed him," 
 
 The latest Poe book is entitled, The Works of 
 Edgar Allan Poe, India paper edition, four thin 
 volumes, with introductions, Recollections of Poe 
 by Richard Henry Stoddard, Biography by 
 George Mercer Adams, contemporary estimates 
 by Lowell and Willis, notes and illustrations. 
 
 Simians 
 
 aping 
 
 Darwin. 
 
 The Thin 
 Poe. 
 
EDGAR ALLAN POE. 
 
 "Slight, 
 
 Pole, 
 polite, 
 elegant, 
 luminous- 
 eyed. 
 
 The paper is that of which Bibles and Prayer 
 books are made, a delicate indication that the 
 wheel is going round and may by and bye raise 
 Poe among the saints in glory. The pages must 
 be fingered by our breath. 
 
 Never seraph spread a pinion 
 Made of fabric half so fair! 
 
 As all the press notices I notice with one voice 
 chanted the praises of this tiny de luxe edition, it 
 had to be secured. These comments shall be con 
 densed to match. The Stoddard piece is, by rare 
 good luck, the only portion of his defunct Memoir 
 one wishes to help to immortality. The editor 
 rightly introduces it as "a glimpse of Poe which 
 has a personal value." Stoddard says he was 
 twenty-one when he met Poe. At that time "Dr. 
 Rufus Wilmot Griswold" was also his friend, 
 "from whom I experienced nothing but personal 
 kindness." 
 
 Keats, a certain English poet, also young, whose 
 name was John, had written a popular poem, an 
 "Ode on a Grecian Urn," Young Stoddard, with 
 fine patriotic spirit, matched it with his own "Ode 
 on a Grecian Flute," and sent it to Poe with 
 generous permission for him to print it in the 
 Broadivay Journal, of which he was editor. After 
 two impatient weeks Stoddard called about his 
 "Flute." "I was struck with his polite manner 
 toward me, and with the elegance of his appear 
 ance. He was slight and pale, with large lumin 
 ous eyes." Two more weeks passed and then 
 
CENSORS AND CHAMPIONS. 
 
 53 
 
 this appeared in the B. J. "We doubt the origi 
 nality of the Ode on a Grecian Flute/ for the 
 reason that it is too good at some points to be 
 so bad at others. Unless the author can reassure 
 us we decline it." 
 
 The indignant stripling went boldly up to 
 Go-liath in his den, and spake these words : 
 
 " Mr. Poe, I called to assure you that I did 
 write the Ode on a Grecian Flute / Poe started, 
 glared at me, and shouted You lie! get out of 
 here, or I ll throw you out ! 
 
 We can credit the act but not the English of 
 the fastidious editor. Stoddard comes in here 
 with his Grecian chorus "Do I blame Poe? The 
 gods forbid !" He had his reasons. Here follows 
 his last word, a paragraph which is itself an 
 imperishable Monument of the Nation s Poet and 
 How it Spoiled him. 
 
 "I had glimpses of Poe afterward in the streets, 
 but we never spoke. The last time that I remem 
 ber to have seen him was in the afternoon of a 
 dreary autumn day. A heavy shower had come 
 up suddenly and he was standing under an awning. 
 I had an umbrella, and my impulse was to share 
 it with him on his way home, but something 
 certainly not unkindness withheld me. I went 
 on, and left him there in the rain, pale, shivering, 
 miserable, the embodiment of his own 
 
 Unhappy master, 
 
 Whom unmerciful disaster 
 
 Followed fast, and followed faster. 
 
 "in the 
 rain, pale, 
 shivering, 
 miserable, 
 penniless, 
 I went on 
 and left 
 him 
 there." 
 
54 
 
 EDGAR ALLAN POE. 
 
 Thinner 
 and 
 thinner 
 still. 
 
 There I still see him, and always shall poor, 
 penniless, but proud, reliant, dominant. May the 
 gods forgive me! I can never forgive myself!" 
 
 We are free to choose our patrons, and one who 
 plays to the gods does so because he is surer of 
 their applause than are those who address the 
 inferior parts of the house. The editors of this 
 edition may for the moment have been under the 
 influence of the gallery spirit when they entitled 
 this Stoddard masterpiece "Meetings with Poe." 
 A finer literary sense might have suggested, 
 "Stoddard s Comedy and Tragedy Partings from 
 Poe," adorned with this couplet from his obituary 
 poem on his famous friend, 
 
 "His faults were many, 
 His virtues few." 
 
 Next after this interesting "glimpse" follows a 
 what-d ye-call-it on Poe by George Mercer 
 Adams, a name that in other of his work com 
 mands high respect. He appears to have been 
 instructed to do Poe cannily, as the Scotch say, 
 in seven pages, or rounds. Comments shall make 
 way in favour of a few beauties. To illuminate the 
 unavoidable parentheses of praise we have these 
 side-lights. First round, first line; "Poe s undis 
 ciplined, wayward .... somewhat vagabond life 
 .... His shiftless life, morally frail nature." 
 Round three; "his degenerate life and vagabond 
 character .... inherited tendency to irregular hab 
 its. .. .given to affectation." Round four; "lived 
 
CENSORS AND CHAMPIONS. 
 
 55 
 
 solely by his pen (how degrading !) and in an 
 erratic and Bohemian fashion .... At no period 
 was he known as a successful man/ 
 
 Round five. "Put forth no personal effort to 
 rise from a lower to a higher and nobler nature .... 
 An ingrate to his best friends. . . .Drink deadened 
 his moral susceptibilities. (So glad to see the 
 preacher admit that the poor wretch ever had 
 any!) His work lacks inspiration of the helpful 
 and ennobling order." Round seventh, the finish. 
 "The end finally came (it usually comes previously 
 in the muddled noddles of platitudinarian homilists 
 in their seventhlies) when Poe, after a prolonged 
 debauch .... fell seriously ill and died." 
 
 One of the imperative duties of the owners of 
 this India paper edition is to either cancel this 
 word "debauch," or so strictly define it that the 
 reader shall be in no doubt as to where the insinua 
 tion leads and ends. What "Imp of the Perverse" 
 seduces publishers into the wild absurdity of set 
 ting radically prejudiced writers to hash up famous 
 men, whose genius they are incapable of appre 
 ciating, and with whose characters and struggles 
 they have no more sympathy than has a cat for 
 its mouse? 
 
 The next duty of the editors is to join brain- 
 forces quickly and labour until they learn the first 
 of the A, B, C, facts in Poe s history, which is 
 that his second name is spelt Allan and not Allen. 
 Twenty years familiarity with the matter war 
 rants the information, now made public, that 
 
 Expert 
 ignorance 
 of Poe s 
 name. 
 
EDGAR ALLAN POE. 
 
 Beatifica 
 tion ex 
 cathedra. 
 
 three times in five Poe s name is misspelt in the 
 public prints. This grand simplicity attains its 
 climax in the pretty frontispiece picture in volume 
 ii of this costly edition, which shows "the Allen 
 house at Richmond, in which "both ( !) Mr. and 
 Mrs. Allen died." Efficient correctors of the 
 press come high, it therefore behooves discreet 
 issuers of exteriorly immaculate little volumes to 
 sit up at nights rather than trust to the editorial 
 talent of hard-worked printers. It is bare justice 
 to announce that the names Edgar, and Poe, are 
 correctly spelt, and two out of three right is an 
 excellent record as times go. It has taken the 
 English nation more than three hundred years 
 to spell Shakespeare properly, and they are not 
 sure of it yet. Marshal Frey, for thirty-five years 
 head of the Baltimore police, published his 
 "Reminiscences" in 1892, from which I learnt that 
 Poe died in Washington! In this book, too, the 
 name is ten times twisted into Allen. The page 
 facsimiles of Poe s handwriting are greatly 
 reduced, it would be well if so stated, lest it should 
 mislead the young. 
 
 The American Catholic Quarterly Review of 
 October, 1891, is treasured for its brilliant sixteen 
 page eulogium of Poe, by W. O Leary Curtis. A 
 poetical heretic fly in amber so rich and old is no 
 ordinary discovery, even if the Review did not 
 awe us by its intimation that "it employs the high 
 est order of literary talent available in this 
 
CENSORS AND CHAMPIONS. 
 
 57 
 
 country. 7 A Quarterly is infallible by prescriptive 
 right, and the literary genius of the present gen 
 eration is so by right divine. Yet, overtopping all 
 else, this particular number proudly exhibits, in 
 Latin and English, the special Apostolic Benedic 
 tion mailed to its staff by His Holiness the late 
 Leo XIII, of noble memory and universal venera 
 tion. 
 
 We are taught some new news about Poe. 
 First of all, "the poet was certainly of Irish 
 descent." A good few steps, though, from his 
 Norman ancestor who settled in Ireland in the 
 reign of Henry II, about the year 1170. It will 
 cheer the dulled spirit of the publishers of that 
 nice little India paper edition to read, in this 
 inspired scripture, that "things now look bad for 
 Poe; Mrs. Allan was dead, Mr. Allen had married 
 again." Here is a glorious lesson in the higher 
 punctuation. "Can we wonder that a scene 
 ensued? That the poet left the house in a rage? 
 That Mrs. Allan complained to her husband of 
 Poe s insolence? with the result that he was for 
 bidden the house." A startling example of the 
 wit-muddling effect of even a suspicion of alcohol 
 in one s ink is worthy the attention of reformers; 
 "He could not shake off the thraldom of the Drink 
 Fiend. . . .The proprietor (of a certain magazine) 
 regretted him, for on starting a new one he offered 
 him its editorship, which he (not him) accepted." 
 
 It is comforting to read that Willis, Poe s friend 
 and champion, was "a distinguished poet," while 
 
 His 
 "high 
 born 
 kinsmen." 
 
EDGAR ALLAN POE. 
 
 The 
 "Leo- 
 nainie" 
 phantasm. 
 
 "Mr. Stoddard" is only a person who "remarks." 
 A certain favorite poet, neither a Poe nor a Willis, 
 but who is entitled to rank as Laureate of the 
 People, ought to be grateful for the rare honour 
 and luck of so priceless an A. C. Q. R. introduction 
 to St. Peter of the Gate, who, I fear, has by this 
 time been soured against supplicants for free 
 admission on the claim that they go Poe one better 
 all round on the jingling lay. 
 
 James Whitcomb Riley manufactured a set of 
 verses in the Poe vein twenty years ago which he 
 called "Leonainie ? and published in the equally 
 euphoniously-named townlet, Kokomo. This 
 anonymous piece was credited to Poe, despite 
 its heroine s "eyes of bloomy moonshine." As 
 recently as April, 1904, so eminent a man, 
 scientist, not poet as the venerable Alfred Russel 
 Wallace published this piece in the Fortnightly 
 Review in London as a brand new discovery in 
 Poe lore. "It was a mistake due to the folly of 
 my youth that I ever wrote that poem," said Riley 
 at the time, "and God knows I have suffered for 
 it. There is nothing for me to do but acknowl 
 edge that I wrote it, as I do, but that does not 
 stand, as I once denied being the author. I wrote 
 it, but I did not. I did not write it, but I did, 
 and am a liar any way you put it." 
 
 Now here I bring solace for both Wallace and 
 Riley, absolution for Riley, encouragement for 
 Wallace. Can there be higher human authority 
 for Wallace s attribution of "Leonainie," to Poe, 
 
CENSORS AND CHAMPIONS. 
 
 59 
 
 and for relieving Riley of his mystification, than 
 the Pronunciamento of the A. C. Q. R.? It runs 
 thus, in much confusion of quotation marks: 
 "This beautiful poem (quoted in full) is not to be 
 found in any of the editions of Poe s works; and 
 our opinion is that no edition should claim com 
 pleteness without it. His poems are too few to 
 allow the loss even of the most inconsiderable or 
 least valuable; and certainly the above poem does 
 not enter into that category ; it has all the charac 
 teristics of Poe at his very best and we do not 
 believe any other American poet could have 
 written it." 
 
 Although the A. C. Q. R. eulogist says, "it is 
 very difficult to write anything new about the 
 poetry of Poe," his genius makes light of the task. 
 The widowed poet "wrote a requiem for his dead 
 wife," a daring breach of the custom which con 
 fines requiems to the living, but in happy accord 
 with newspaper etiquette or eloquence, which 
 always draws our tears by telling how "the Dead 
 Merchant s Body" is being brought home on the 
 train, and the "Funeral of the Dead Millionaire" 
 was mourned by the family of the thrice Dead 
 Pa-rent. A few other new things about Poe are 
 the splitting of one of his poems into "Malume" 
 and "Ulalume;" the making Siamese twins of two 
 others, "For Annie and Lenore," and the beauti 
 fying of his "Ligeia" into "Lisica." 
 
 If this Q-R. Poe curio is ever separately printed 
 
 Posthu 
 mous Poe 
 "at his 
 very best." 
 
6o 
 
 EDGAR ALLAN POE. 
 
 Edmund 
 Clarence 
 Stedman. 
 
 it might help it along if entitled, "Paddy Poe; a 
 judy-spree." 
 
 [The sub-title is in the French language.] 
 
 Edmund Clarence Stedman, on Edgar Allan 
 Poe; "Poets of America." 1885. 
 
 In welcome contrast to the above citations from 
 mediocre, figures ill-affected towards their subject, 
 stand two clear and noble utterances by men of 
 insight and literary authority, Mr. Stedman first, 
 and, later in time, Mr. Mabie. Occasion will ere 
 long be taken, as intimated elsewhere, to try and 
 pay in full the dues countless of Poe champions, 
 here and across the water, to these distinguished 
 representatives of American letters for their 
 courageous, magnanimous, sympathetic, and influ 
 ential vindications of a man too gifted and too 
 delicately moulded to be understood by Demos, 
 his flatterers and his servitors. I take a few words 
 here and there from these fine discourses, as one 
 sprinkles fragrant perfume over a mildewed carpet, 
 that they may clear the fetid atmosphere which 
 hangs over the ghoulish literature about Poe it 
 has been our duty to examine. The too brief 
 extracts are given without note or comment : 
 
 "Poe was unique among his fellows so dif 
 ferent from any other writer that America has 
 produced as really to stand alone. He must have 
 had genius to furnish even the basis for an ideal 
 which excites this persistent interest. Yes, we are 
 
CENSORS AND CHAMPIONS. 
 
 61 
 
 on firm ground with relation to his genuineness as 
 a poet." 
 
 "We begin to understand his spasmodic, versa 
 tile industry, his balks and breaks, his frequent 
 poverty, despondency, self-abandonment, and 
 almost to wonder that the sensitive feminine spirit 
 worshipping beauty and abhorrent of ugliness 
 and pain; combatting with pride, with inherited 
 disease of appetite did not sooner yield, was not 
 utterly overcome almost at the outset of these 
 experiences." 
 
 "It is sad that disaster followed him even after 
 death, in the vicious memoir which Griswold pre 
 fixed to his collected works. Poe should have had 
 for his biographer a man of kind and healthy 
 discernment." 
 
 "Poe was not a man of immoral habits. . . .He 
 was not a libertine. Study and a love of the ideal 
 protect men of his class against the sensuality by 
 which many dull the zest of their appetites.... 
 He was not an habitual drunkard, for a single glass 
 made him the easy prey of any coarse and pitiless 
 hands into which he might fall. He was a man 
 inebriate when sober, his brain surging with 
 emotion, and a stimulant that only served to steady 
 common men bewildered him." 
 
 "It is just that well-balanced persons should 
 rebuke the failings of genius. But let such an 
 one imagine himself with a painfully sensitive 
 
 organization all touch, all eye, all ear with 
 
 a frame in which health and success breed a dan- 
 
 M aligners 
 put to 
 shame. 
 
EDGAR ALLAN POE. 
 
 Hamilton 
 Wright 
 
 Mabic. 
 
 gerous rapture, disease and sorrow a fatal despair. 
 Surmount all this with a powerful intelligence that 
 does not so much rule the structure as it menaces 
 it and threatens to shake it asunder. .. .He too 
 might find his judgment a broken reed .... I have 
 said to friends as they sneered at the ill-managed 
 life of one whose special genius perhaps could not 
 exist but in union with certain infirmities, that 
 instead of recounting these, and deriding them, 
 they should hedge him round with their protec 
 tion. We can find more than one man of sense 
 in a thousand, but how rarely a poet with such 
 a gift!" 
 
 Hamilton Wright Mabie, on "Poe s Place in 
 American Literature" 1903. 
 
 At the unveiling of the idealized bust of Poe in 
 the University of Virginia Mr. Mabie delivered 
 the address which deservedly occupies the place 
 of honour in Prof. Harrison s Virginia edition of 
 Poe s works. It is a dispassionate presentation of 
 the state of American literature before Poe 
 appeared. Other poets had their precursors, he 
 had none. Criticism worthy of the name was 
 unknown until he revealed its spirit and purpose. 
 
 "Poe is inexplicable. He remains the most 
 sharply defined personality in our literary history. 
 His verse and imaginative prose stand out in bold 
 relief against a background which neither suggests 
 nor interprets them. One may go further, and 
 
CENSORS AND CHAMPIONS. 
 
 affirm that both verse and prose have a place by 
 themselves in the literature of the world." 
 
 "He is distinctively and in a unique sense the 
 artist in our literature, the man to whom beauty 
 was a constant and sufficient justification of itself." 
 
 "He was far in advance of the civilization in 
 which he lived, in his discernment of the value of 
 beauty to men struggling for their lives in a world 
 full of ugliness because full of all manner of imper 
 fection. . . .In older countries, looking at our life 
 outside the circle of its immediate needs and tasks, 
 he has found a recognition often denied him 
 among his own people .... The judgment of Eng 
 lish, French, and German critics has been, as a 
 whole, unanimous in accepting Poe at a much 
 higher valuation than has been placed upon him 
 at home, where Lowell s touch-and-go reference 
 in the Fable for Critics has too often been 
 accepted as an authoritative and final opinion from 
 the highest literary tribunal." 
 
 "In the disconnected product of his broken life 
 there is not a line to be blotted out on the score 
 of vulgarity, lack of reticence, or even common- 
 placeness. In his most careless imaginative writ 
 ing the high quality of his mind is always apparent. 
 .... In his worst estate the great traditions of art 
 were safe in his hands." 
 
 Fee s 
 poetical 
 suprem 
 acy. 
 
IV 
 
 POE S 
 "PHILOSOPHY OF COMPOSITION 
 
 and how it was used to grind 
 THE ORGAN. 
 
 If it is possible that there still exist any inno 
 cents past puberty who have never sinned in the 
 direction of verse making, they are pretty sure 
 to succumb when they encounter the temptation 
 of this wicked essay. Our wide-awake generation 
 rather prides itself on thinking it has robbed the 
 glorious soaring scriptures of pious antiquity of 
 their lofty inspiration, heedless of its worse stu 
 pidity in whittling it into picayune aureolas for 
 every rhymester of the hour. There is at least 
 dignity in the olden faith. Faith in the inspiration 
 of modern poetry is a charming nursery delusion. 
 Grant that the very noblest modern thoughts, 
 impressively phrased, bear some traces of being 
 touched by an angel s wing, be assured that the 
 wafter "flourished" in far away ages, for there is 
 nothing new under the sun, and even our finest 
 poetic moonshine is a second-hand light. 
 
 That Poe s essay is wicked, as inspiring artless 
 youth with the art-craft of verse and worse, is 
 
THE WIDOWER YEAR PORTRAIT, page 15. 
 
 It fell 
 Upon me with the touch of Hell. 
 
 "Tamerlane. 
 

THE MAKER OF "THE RAVEN." 
 
 obvious to the philosophic mind. And how cruel ! 
 When we scan the portraits of our poets, posing 
 and imposing in lovely studio designs, the great 
 Smith, with bulbous head leaning on the prop of 
 that inspired right hand; the afflatussed Jones, 
 with eyes in fine frenzy glaring; and the pro tern. 
 immortal Miffkins, bowed with cogibundity of 
 cogitation as a shirtless bust after the antique, we 
 gaze in blithering awe at their inspired expression, 
 caught by happy snapshots at the psychological 
 moment. Then comes Poe, unearthliest of his 
 tribe, and gives away, gratis, the secret tricks of 
 their artful workshops. 
 
 Our verse-founders and tinkers will never con 
 fess their debts to Poe for ideas, for designs, for 
 word-forms, melody, witchery, etc. For that 
 matter he was no more scrupulous than they are in 
 picking up trifles from owners, less expert than 
 himself in knowing their value, than were Shake 
 speare and Tennyson, "Longfellow, and other 
 plagiarists," as he calls them. 
 
 We their readers, adorers, and customers, are 
 vastly indebted to Poe for lifting the lid of the 
 sacred inkpot, and disclosing the business recipes 
 by which prose bread is converted into Poesie pie 
 or Angel cake. 
 
 In this most unique of essays Poe tells the 
 apprentice how to make new poetry out of stale 
 ideas, "keeping originality always in view," says 
 he. To show how he did it himself he selects 
 "The Raven/ as most generally known," which 
 
 Every 
 man his 
 own 
 Poe. 
 
66 
 
 EDGAR ALLAN POE. 
 
 What s 
 in a 
 Word? 
 
 he transfigured into a Bird of Paradise. He 
 smiles away the attribute of spasmodic inspiration. 
 
 First, he decided that a perfect poem must not 
 much exceed a hundred lines. Beauty being the 
 finest theme or impression to be conveyed, he 
 sought for its highest manifestation and found it 
 in sadness. Next he reasoned that for a striking 
 artistic effect there should be a refrain, its force 
 being enhanced if it can be a single word. Every 
 thing depends on this word s sound, and the nature 
 of it must correspond. The word "Nevermore" 
 met these conditions. 
 
 Who shall reiterate this melancholy musical 
 word? If some non-reasoning creature capable 
 of speech could utter it, the effect would be doubly 
 weird. Poe had reviewed the current monthly 
 parts of Dickens s "Barnaby Rudge" three or four 
 years earlier, and had exhibited his marvellous 
 power of insight by foretelling in reasoned detail 
 what the then unwritten continuation and ending 
 of the plot must be. Dickens said on reading this 
 analysis that the writer must either be Poe or the 
 devil. From this book Poe borrowed the Raven, 
 of which tie had said in his review that, "amusing 
 as it is, it might have been made, more than we 
 now see it, a portion of the conception of the 
 fantastic Barnaby. Its croaking might have been 
 prophetically heard in the course of the drama. 
 Its character might have performed .... much the 
 same part as does, in music, the accompaniment 
 in respect to the air." 
 
THE MAKER OF "THE RAVEN." 
 
 Having now worked it out that this weird chant 
 of sadness should point a story of exquisite grief, 
 he naturally employed a lover, bewailing the death 
 of his sweetheart, as the central figure. With his 
 unerring artistic instinct Poe gave a background 
 of splendor to this scene of woe, and the piquant 
 touch of incongruous absurdity and humor by 
 making the uncanny bird enter by the window and 
 behave like a compound of owl and parrot. "It 
 is not until the very last line of the very last stanza, 
 that the intention of making the Raven emble 
 matical of Mournful and Never-ending Remem 
 brance is permitted to be seen." Here ends the 
 true history of a great poem, yet many, very many, 
 perhaps a majority of the writers about Poe and 
 his "Raven" in my earlier reading years believed, 
 or affected to believe, that this essay was no more 
 than a grave hoax. Possibly there are persons 
 interested in poetry as a business who still strive 
 to ridicule it as a jest. In the course of a lively 
 discussion many years ago, in which I contended 
 that a perfect epigram or short poem must be 
 written backwards, from climax to title, I made 
 notes for a someday experiment on these lines. 
 Two decades have passed since the following piece 
 of verse was manufactured as the result, which 
 is now printed for the first time. Without the 
 slightest pretence to be more than the mechanical 
 product it is, put here just for what it may be 
 worth, it may, perhaps, be allowed the humble 
 
 Weaker 
 
 poets 
 
 never 
 
 tell 
 
 how. 
 
68 
 
 EDGAR ALLAN FOE. 
 
 merit of illustrating two whimsical notions which 
 may be erroneous: 
 
 1. That it is the first avowed attempt to fashion 
 a piece on the theory and model (in a general way) 
 set up by Poe, solely as an experiment ; 
 
 2. That, within the writer s recollection, no 
 poet except Adelaide Procter, in "The Lost 
 Chord," seems to have tackled this most alluring 
 subject, the Organ. 
 
THE ORGAN 
 
 A 
 FANTASIE 
 
 in the manner of Poe s "Raven" 
 
 suggested by his avowal 
 
 of method. 
 
 I. 
 
 Lonely in the sordid city, 
 
 where they know no rest nor pity, 
 Where they spare no time for pity 
 
 o er the loss of aught but Gold; 
 Wintry mist and sleet were falling, 
 
 all my bitter woes recalling. 
 Hideous gloom my soul appalling 
 
 griefs that never can be told ; 
 There and thus I paced, scarce knowing 
 
 whitherward my steps were going, 
 Chill blasts through my heart-core blowing, 
 
 till its throb beat faint and cold. 
 
 II. 
 
 From the stroke of Fate still reeling, 
 
 pain of loss still fiercely feeling, 
 Pangs I bore past human healing 
 
 that no anodyne can quell ; 
 Death my life-long Love had taken, 
 
 nevermore from sleep to waken, 
 Till my vacant heart forsaken 
 
 is but Hope s sepulchral cell, 
 For the shadow friends that flattered 
 
 fond youth-dreams are faded, scattered, 
 And a soul s ambition shattered 
 
 Life is death and earth is hell! 
 
THE ORGAN. 
 
 III. 
 
 Dazed with dread, as one demented, 
 
 through the streets by throngs frequented, 
 On I sped, by none prevented 
 
 for I knew not they were there ; 
 Naught recked I of mien or bearing, 
 
 for no flippant mocker caring, 
 Sorrow s mask my face was wearing, 
 
 dial of profound despair, 
 Suddenly, my gaze surprising, 
 
 down a nook the mist disguising, 
 Lo a sombre Abbey, rising 
 
 grandly from its grassy square. 
 
 IV. 
 
 Glamoured by the view before me, 
 
 came a holy impulse o er me, 
 As an angel might implore me 
 
 straightway in the shrine to go. 
 Haven-like the Abbey seeming, 
 
 with its gorgeous windows gleaming, 
 Rainbow rays of glory streaming 
 
 through the mist upon the snow, 
 Shadows with the radiance blending, 
 
 to the fane a weirdness lending, 
 Through my soul a rapture sending 
 
 rapture only martyrs know. 
 
THE ORGAN. 
 
 V. 
 
 Slow I paced within the portal, 
 
 o er the bones of many a mortal, 
 Yearners for the Fame Immortal 
 
 through the aid of famous tomb; 
 Marbled ghosts of worthies saintly 
 
 shadowed neath the archways quaintly, 
 As the distant tapers faintly 
 
 glimmered through the deepening gloom, 
 And my footfalls in the vaulted 
 
 transept echoed, so I halted 
 Mong the lowly and exalted, 
 
 mingled there to bide their doom. 
 
 VI. 
 
 On my knees devoutly sinking, 
 
 whelmed with awe, my spirit shrinking, 
 Lone and strange, I fell a-thinking, 
 
 thinking o er the drift of creeds ; 
 Strange, this monumental glory, 
 
 graced with epitaphic story, 
 Beams on those whose hands were gory, 
 
 warriors boasting ruthless deeds ! 
 Strange that Churches carve no niches 
 
 for God s saints unblest with riches, 
 Who through city dens and ditches 
 
 carry cheer where Lazarus bleeds. 
 
THE ORGAN. 
 
 VII. 
 
 Ah, for victors, not the failing, 
 
 for the strong and not the ailing, 
 For the joyous, not the wailing, 
 
 are the cenotaph and shrine. 
 Victim I of heart s privation, 
 
 weary in my desolation, 
 Fate I face with resignation, 
 
 dark oblivion be mine! 
 Prostrate mid the vanquished lying, 
 
 dead, dear Love, sweet Hope a-dying, 
 Grief my soul is crucifying 
 
 O for endless Rest divine! 
 
 VIII. 
 
 Thus in bitterest agony quaking, 
 
 and my sob the silence breaking, 
 I my course was vaguely taking 
 
 thence my footsteps to retrace, 
 From a ghastly tombstone fluttered 
 
 forth a ghoulish Thing that muttered, 
 Though I caught not what it uttered 
 
 as its flapping froze my face 
 "Back ! thou Vampire ! hellish minion ! 
 
 off me take thy cursed pinion! 
 Loose me from thy dread dominion! 
 
 Spare me in this holy place!" 
 
THE ORGAN. 
 
 73 
 
 IX. 
 
 And I fell in swoon thus shrieking, 
 horrored sweat my forehead reeking, 
 
 Madly sanctuary seeking 
 from the Demon of Despair! 
 
 ****** 
 
 Lo, what strange supernal yearning! 
 
 tortured brain to peace returning, 
 Secrets of the grave discerning 
 
 as I lay entranced there, 
 Dimly hearing songs of sorrow 
 
 heart of grace from daybreak borrow, 
 Till the paeans of the morrow 
 
 woke to joy the midnight air. 
 
 X. 
 
 Like to vague melodious noises 
 
 wafted from far-distant voices 
 Spell that quails us or rejoices 
 
 as we rede its omen plain 
 Now there hurtled round me mystic 
 
 shouts and cries antagonistic, 
 All their meanings cabalistic 
 
 frenzying my fevered brain, 
 Prelude of the human choir, 
 
 strugglers panting as they tire, 
 Madly gasping "Higher! Higher!" 
 
 wild Ambition s discord strain. 
 
74 
 
 THE ORGAN. 
 
 XL 
 
 Soon the hubbub hum subsided, 
 
 sweetly to an anthem glided, 
 Joining voices long divided 
 
 by the severing service-bell. 
 Chords majestic grandly pealing 
 
 thrilled my soul with fervid feeling, 
 And in heart communion kneeling 
 
 holy transports o er them fell, 
 As the teeming nations, bent all 
 
 in devotion sacramental, 
 In one glorious worship blent 
 
 "All people that on earth do dwell." 
 
 XII. 
 
 Hark! the noble Psalm s stupendous 
 
 unison breaks in tremendous 
 Booming salvo sounds that rend us 
 
 with a fearsome thrill of dread ; 
 Roar and crash of mighty thunders 
 
 heralding the dawn of wonders, 
 When the Veil of mystery sunders 
 
 and the flaming sky glows red 
 "Dies tree" direful warning! 
 
 woe to those its terrors scorning! 
 Father! mercy that Last Morning 
 
 when Thou judgest quick and dead! 
 
THE ORGAN. 
 
 75 
 
 XIII. 
 
 Through the long reverberation, 
 
 warning death-knell of creation, 
 When in woe of desolation 
 
 earth and firmament shall parch, 
 Glad I heard a chaunt inspiring, 
 
 with a chivalrous desiring, 
 Buoyant hearts high ardour firing 
 
 Youth for life s laborious march ; 
 "Onward Christian Soldiers!" chorus, 
 
 Duty s clarion call sonorous, 
 Heaven s bright rainbow banner o er us, 
 
 Hope the keystone of the arch. 
 
 XIV. 
 
 Melting strains, of Peace the token, 
 
 dulcet harmonies unbroken, 
 Sighs of yearning love unspoken 
 
 like the sighings of the sea; 
 Soft ^Eolian zephyrs waving 
 
 fill my soul with love enslaving, 
 Rapturous, transcendent craving, 
 
 languishing in ecstacy 
 O thou loved and lost One! treasure 
 
 loved and longed for past all measure, 
 More than worlds of gain and pleasure, 
 
 more than life thy Love to me! 
 
THE ORGAN. 
 
 XV. 
 
 Lo, from out the seraph-singing, 
 
 high aloft its lost way winging, 
 Trilled a wondering linnet, ringing 
 
 loud its luring roundelay. 
 Harbinger of heaven I hear thee! 
 
 echo- voice of love, I hear thee! 
 O my lost One! to be near thee 
 
 now I passionately pray! 
 Bid these beckoning wings to carry 
 
 through yon azure ether starry 
 Me to Thee! why do I tarry 
 
 why thus lonely lingering stay? 
 
 XVI. 
 
 But afar the winged voice floated 
 
 to the darkness, where the bloated 
 Ghoulish gargoyles grinned and gloated 
 
 o er my woe in fiendish glee, 
 And there came a sad intoning, 
 
 a forlorn despondent groaning, 
 Like to dying souls bemoaning 
 
 taunts of gnawing memory, 
 And the "Stabat Mater s" rending 
 
 tones, all mortal grief transcending, 
 Wailed the mourning Mother, bending 
 
 prone at mystic Calvary. 
 
THE ORGAN. 
 
 77 
 
 XVII. 
 
 What is life? a melody, joyous 
 
 while its hopeful harmonies buoy us, 
 Until discords dire destroy us 
 
 and the echoes die in pain, 
 Save the "still small voice" imparted 
 
 to console the breaking-hearted, 
 Whispering, Blest are the departed," 
 
 for the Rest divine they gain. 
 Happy resting after roaming! 
 
 happier calm when waves cease foaming, 
 Sweet the wearied warrior s homing, 
 
 Peace eternal after pain ! 
 
 XVIII. 
 
 Hark ! the piercing call to battle, 
 
 to brave duty in life s battle, 
 Where the wounding weapons rattle 
 
 where the fighters furious rave. 
 Ah! ere the victor s sword is sheathed, 
 
 ere his brow is laurel wreathed, 
 The hero s dying sigh is breathed 
 ^ conquests cannot heroes save, 
 Sound your paeans! flaunt your trophies! 
 
 What in death avail your trophies ? 
 What your proud triumphal strophes 
 
 but Grand Marches to the grave? 
 
THE ORGAN. 
 
 XIX. 
 
 Hush ! tis muted music, guiding 
 
 yon long phantom-phalanx, gliding 
 Through the gloom, their faces hiding 
 
 neath grim Retribution s pall ; 
 Grinning wraiths of Faiths long slighted, 
 
 Loves long lost, loves unrequited, 
 Youthtide Hopes forever blighted 
 
 see them to their limbo crawl ! 
 Chaunting ghastly charnel dirges 
 
 as Remorse their conscience scourges, 
 Loathing death that never merges 
 
 in Nirvana s holy thrall. 
 
 XX. 
 
 Now from out the darkness lowering 
 
 bursts a mighty, overpowering 
 "ALLELUIA!" heavenward towering, 
 leaping like the storm-lashed sea! 
 And a glow of golden glory, 
 
 a resplendent godlike glory, 
 Bathed in bliss the Abbey hoary 
 
 with a dazzling brilliancy 
 \nd I woke! 
 
 and lo, soft gleaming, 
 in the hallowed glamour b earning , 
 Thrilled a lordly ORGAN, dreaming 
 drowsy incense-minstrelsy. 
 * * * 
 
 Its minstrels are our angel loves 
 who waft each throbbing chord; 
 
 And the rolling of its thunders 
 the Voice of God the Lord! 
 
HIS MONUMENT 
 
 Reprinted, slightly changed, from the New York 
 Critic, 1888. 
 
 In New York s Central Park four statues stand, 
 Four Poets, prized in (though not of) our land; 
 First, SHAKESPEARE, bare legs, shaky spear in shape, 
 Chill though his shanks he sports a needless cape. 
 Next, stiff-necked BURNS, with milksop face, sits squat, 
 And, squeamish, squirms in fear of scowling SCOTT. 
 Elsewhere, to soothe Hibernian beholders, 
 Tom MOORE S squeezed in by just his head and 
 shoulders. 
 
 These honours done to bards born t other side, 
 Two sops are flung to patriotic pride 
 Fitz HALLECK fidgets in his painful seat; 
 WASHINGTON IRVING S busted counterfeit 
 Stands where the parrots and the monkeys meet! 
 
 Where stands the monument that tells 
 Of our chief chimer of immortal "BELLS" ? 
 Fate-stricken soul! lover of Annabel Lee, 
 Has cold New York no sculptured pile for thee? 
 To foreigners are her best favours shown 
 Her STARS for them, her STRIPES for thee alone? 
 Give native genius, living, stones for bread, 
 And grudge its deathless fame one stone when dead! 
 
 O Genius rare! O poet without peer 
 Among the native throng, thy craft-kin rear 
 Their ill-wrought columns to their MASTER S name ; 
 No Crown they bring, no place for thee they claim 
 In Gotham s Barnum-Jumbo "HALL OF FAME:" 
 Thrice blest at last ! avenged on every foe, 
 The MARTYR views the Pigmies bust of POE! 
 
JV 
 
 an 56PWQ 
 
 D 
 
 
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