It was given to Edgar Allan
Poe to produce two lyrics, "The Bells" and _The Raven_, each of which,
although perhaps of less beauty than those of Tennyson and Rossetti, is a
unique. "Ulalume," while equally strange and imaginative, has not the
universal quality that is a portion of our test.
_The Raven_ in sheer poetical constituents falls below such pieces as "The
Haunted Palace," "The City in the Sea," "The Sleeper," and "Israfel." The
whole of it would be exchanged, I suspect, by readers of a fastidious cast,
for such passages as these:
"Around, by lifting winds forgot,
Resignedly beneath the sky
The melancholy waters lie.
No rays from the holy heaven come down
On the long night-time of that town;
But light from out the lurid sea
Streams up the turrets silently--
* * *
Up many and many a marvellous shrine
Whose wreathed friezes intertwine
The viol, the violet, and the vine.
* * *
No swellings tell that winds may be
Upon some far-off happier sea--
No heavings hint that winds have been
On seas less hideously serene."
It lacks the aerial melody of the poet whose heart-strings are a lute:
"And they say (the starry choir
And the other listening things)
That Israfeli's fire
Is owing to that lyre
By which he sits and sings--
The trembling living wire
Of those unusual strings.
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