THE RAVEN. ONCE upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary, Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore; While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping, Ah, distinctly I remember, it was in the bleak December, And the silken, sad, uncertain rustling of each purple curtain Filled me with fantastic terrors never felt before; So that now, to still the beating of my heart, I stood repeating, ""Tis some visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door; Some late visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door; This it is, and nothing more." Presently my soul grew stronger; hesitating then no longer, "Sir," said I, "or Madam, truly your forgiveness I implore; But the fact is, I was napping, and so gently came your rapping, And so faintly you came tapping, tapping at my chamber door, That I scarce was sure I heard you"-here I opened wide the door : Darkness there and nothing more! Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there, wondering, fearing, Doubting, dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared to dream before; But the silence was unbroken, and the stillness gave no token, And the only word there spoken was the whispered word "Lenore!" This I whispered, and an echo murmured back the word "Lenore!" Merely this, and nothing more. CHAPTER IX. EDGAR ALLEN POE. AFTER more than fifty years, Poe is still something of a riddle; he was unfortunate in his biographers, who were either eulogists or enemies. He was more unfortunate in himself; he had not the capacity of truth, and mystified the events of his career. The son of actors, his inherited histrionic instinct prompted him to act many parts, until he lost the sense of his own individuality. He applied the great force of his imagination not only to the production of stories, but to the facts of real life; and his morbid vanity accented the distortion thus produced. In him a small and selfish nature was ever at war with a powerful and curious intellect; his character was a medley, fickle, weak and inconsistent. His career is a story of petty vicissitudes and ignoble misfortunes; of brilliant successes counteracted by perverse and unworthy follies. He was unfaithful to his friends and rancorous against his enemies; an unhappy man, driven to and fro by storms largely of his own raising. A congenital tendency to intemperance, ever confirming its hold upon him, darkened his life and hastened his death, which occurred in 1849, in his forty-first year. His wife, "Annabel Lee," had died two years before. So far as his personal acts and passions are concerned, Poe might be pronounced insane; but in the domain of intellect as applied to literature he was a unique and towering genius, author of some of the most exquisite and fascinating poetry, and of many of the most original and ingenious tales ever written in this country. His fame traveled far beyond his own country, and he is to-day more read in France than any other American author. He was born in Boston in 1809; his parents both died in Richmond, Va., in 1815. He was then adopted by Mr. Allan, a rich Virginian. From the age of six to twelve he was at school in England; he attended the University of Virginia for a year, lost money by gambling, and then disappeared for a year. According to his own story, he went to aid Greece, but he probably never got further than London. In 1827 he published, at Boston, his first volume of poems, "Tamerlane." He enlisted as a private in the army, then was for nine months a cadet at West Point, but was dismissed for bad conduct. Mr. Allan had hitherto supported Poe; but they now quarreled, and the young man of twenty-one set out to make a living by literature. A prize story, "A Manuscript Found in a Bottle," gained him the friendship of J. P. Kennedy, who made him editor of a Southern literary paper at a salary of $10 a week. The circulation of the magazine increased under his care, and he married his young cousin, Virginia Clemm. He soon after resigned his position and went to Philadelphia. He had already written "Hans Pfaal" and "Arthur Gordon Pym," and he now published the "Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque," which confirmed his fame. He was also fitfully connected with two or three other periodicals. He wrote the "Murders in the Rue Morgue" in 1841, and two years later his "Gold Bug" won another prize of $100. At the age of five and thirty he was back in New York, writing for N. P. Willis's Mirror and other magazines; and in 1845 he wrote his famous poem "The Raven." He also lectured and wrote critiques, generally of a scathing character, but many of which posterity has justified. After his wife's death, his only work of importance was “Eureka," a speculative analysis of the universe. Poe's stories fall into two classes, the analytical, of which the "Gold Bug" is an example, and the supernatural, such as "Ligeia." In many of his tales, however, these qualities are commingled. He was neither a humorist nor a characterpainter, and none of his stories touch the heart; the man was deficient in human sympathies. They are to a high degree strange, impressive and ingenious, faultless in workmanship and structure, and masterpieces of art. They are finished, like gems, and of permanent literary worth; yet they can hardly be called works of inspiration; they are gems, not flowers. Poe's style is clear, succinct and polished, but self-conscious and artificial. The stories are by no means all of equal merit; Poe lacked good taste, and frequently overstepped the boundaries between the terrible and the revolting, the commonplace and the simple, fun and buffoonery. All his humorous tales are dismal failures. But when he is at his best, no writer can surpass him; we may say that he is unrivalled. In poetry, Poe is if possible more original and solitary than in his prose. The eerie and elfin beauty of some of his verses is magical; one is enchanted one knows not how. He had theories in poetry, as in prose; but it is probable that he squared his theories with his compositions, more often than the opposite. But there is more of art than of heart even in Poe's poetry; and we find that we go to him to be entertained and stimulated, but not for the needs of the deeper soul. His career was pathetic; but his genius is triumphant. THE BELLS. 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 heavens, seem to twinkle Keeping time, time, time, In a sort of Runic rhyme To the tintinnabulation that so musically wells From the bells, bells, bells, bells, Bells, bells, bells, From the jingling and the tinkling of the bells. Hear the mellow wedding bells Golden bells! What a world of happiness their harmony foretells! Through the balmy air of night How they ring out their delight! From the molten-golden notes, And all in tune, What a liquid ditty floats To the turtle-dove that listens while she gloats On the moon! Oh, from out the sounding cells, What a gush of euphony voluminously wells! How it swells! How it dwells! On the future! How it tells Of the rapture that impels To the swinging and the ringing IT cannot be denied that the poet, though born and not made, must be strongly influenced by his early surroundings. John Greenleaf Whittier was but little indebted to scholarly culture or to art or to literary companionship; he was self-made and largely self-taught. Born near Haverhill, Mass., on December 17th, 1807, he worked on his father's farm and received the rudiments of education at home. After he was seventeen years old, he attended the Haverhill Academy for two terms, and at nineteen he began to contribute anonymous poems to the Free Press, edited by Wm. Lloyd Garrison. Then began a friendship between the editor and the young poet which was cemented by their joint activity in the great Abolition Contest. Whittier wrote fervid anti-slavery lyrics, edited newspapers in Boston, Haverhill and Hartford, and was for a year a member of the Massachusetts legislature. In 1831, he published his first collection of poems, "Legends of New England," a number of Indian traditions, and shortly afterwards a poetical tale, "Mogg Megone." In 1836 he was appointed secretary of the American Anti-Slavery Society, and later became editor of the Pennsylvania Freeman, in Philadelphia. But the abolition cause was intensely unpopular; the printing office was at one time sacked and burned, and the editor was forced many times to face enraged mobs. In the Freeman appeared some of Whittier's best anti-slavery lyrics. There was crude force in these scornfully indignant lyrics, for though Whittier inherited Quaker blood, and adhered to the Quaker practice, he was a fiery apostle of human brotherhood. His health was always delicate, which he attributed to the "toughening" process, common when he was a boy. In 1840, he settled down at |