Page 61 - Four Famous American Writers: Washington Irving, Edgar Allan Poe, James Russell Lowell, Bayard Taylor
P. 61
We see this still further illustrated in a poem of Tennyson’s, where a foot
consists of but one long syllable, thus:
[Illustration: (music) Break, break, break, On thy cold grey stones, O sea!]
One of Poe’s greatest poems, "The Bells," was written for the express
purpose of imitating music in verse. The story of how it was first written is
as follows:
Poe went one Sunday morning to call on a lady friend of his, Mrs. Shaw,
who was something of a physician and had been very kind to his wife. It
was a bright morning, and the church bells were ringing. For all that, Poe
felt moody, and the church bells seemed to jangle.
"I must write a poem," said he, "and I haven’t an idea in my head. For some
reason the bells seem frightfully out of tune this morning, and nearly drive
me distracted."
After he had been chatting with Mrs. Shaw for some time, he evidently felt
in better mood, and the sound of the bells grew more musical; or perhaps
their actual sound had stopped and his imagination suggested bells that
were indeed musical.
As he kept on complaining about his inability to write a poem, Mrs. Shaw
placed pen and ink and paper before him, first writing at the top of a sheet
the title, "The Bells, by E. A. Poe." Underneath she wrote, "The bells, the
little silver bells." Poe caught the idea, and immediately wrote the first draft
of the following stanza. According to his habit he rewrote this poem many,
many times. The original stanza began with the words Mrs. Shaw had
written. Here are the verses as they may now be read in Poe’s works:
Hear the sledges with the bells-- Silver bells! What a world of merriment
their melody foretells! How they tinkle, tinkle, tinkle, In the icy air of
night! While the stars that oversprinkle All the heaven, seem to twinkle
With a crystalline delight; Keeping time, time, time, In a sort of Runic
rhyme To the tintinnabulation that so musically wells From the bells, bells,
