Page 47 - Four Famous American Writers: Washington Irving, Edgar Allan Poe, James Russell Lowell, Bayard Taylor

From every depth of good and ill The mystery which binds me still: From
the torrent, or the fountain, From the red cliff of the mountain, From the

sun that round me rolled In its autumn tint of gold,-- From the lightning in
the sky As it passed me flying by,-- From the thunder and the storm, And

the cloud that took the form (When the rest of heaven was blue) Of a
demon in my view.

As a poem written in early youth we should not expect this to be as perfect
as "The Raven," for instance. Let us see if we can find some of its faults, as

well as some of its beauties:

First, we notice that it ends rather abruptly, as if it were unfinished. In his

essay on "The Poetic Principle" Poe pointed out that many a poem fails of
its effect by being too short. It must not be so long that one is wearied out

before it can be read through; at the same time it must be long enough to
convey the whole of the idea. This poem of his own is an example of the
fault he himself pointed out. It is too short to give us clear ideas of all he

evidently had in his mind. We notice, also, that it is rhymed in couplets,
that is, every two lines are rhymed together. Now the couplets in the last

half of the poem seem to strike the ear with more satisfaction than those in
the first part. For instance, we are pleased with the sound of these lines:

From the torrent, or the fountain, From the red cliff of the mountain.

But in some of the lines the pauses of punctuation do not come at the right
points to make smooth reading:

From the same source I have not taken My sorrow; I could not awaken My
heart to joy at the same tone; And all I loved, I loved alone.

The semicolon after "sorrow" should have come at the end of the line
instead of in the middle. Poe had not yet learned the secret of the rhythmic

flow which we find in such perfection in "The Bells," for instance.

But in the last part of the poem we find a beauty of image and comparison
that thrills us, and something of that strange, weird suggestiveness which