his work. He had his idea perfected, but his mind stumbled over the right words. Thus the first draft is as follows: And His lips had caught the clear of day serene And from the deep-sky, faint and far fell A voice dropped like a falling star, Excelsior! He did not know it then, but he had really finished his poem, for when he came later to write his second draft, he made his correction over again: serene And from the deep-sky, faint and far At the bottom of the first draft are the words, "September 28, 1841. Half-past three o'clock, morning. Now to bed." He wrote first September 27, and then remembered that he had reached the next day and changed the 7 to 8. If any one is curious to know the day of the week, it was Monday night that the poet sat up to write this poem. Sumner's letter to him is dated merely Thursday, so one can imagine that he had answered it and now had it lying by him as waste paper. The study of the growth of a poem is an interesting and curious business, yet after all how little one really sees of the poet at work. Somehow or other, as Lowell says regarding Hawthorne, apropos of his note-books, you look through the key-hole and think you will catch the secret of the alchemist, but at the critical moment his back is turned toward you. It is rare, however, that one has so good an opportunity as this of seeing the shaping of a poetic idea. EDGAR ALLAN POE [The best edition of Poe's works, edited by Clarence E. Stedman and George E. Woodberry, is published in ten volumes by Duffield & Co. New York. In the "American Men of Letters' series published by Houghton, Mifflin & Co., Boston, is Edgar Allan Poe, by George E. Woodberry, himself an eminent poet and critic. From his judgment of Poe is taken: "On the roll of our literature Poe's name is inscribed with the few foremost, and in the world at large his genius is established as valid among all men. Much as he derived nurture from other sources he was the son of Coleridge by the weird touch in his imagination, by the principles of his analytical criticism, and the speculative bent of his mind. An artist primarily, whose skill, helped by the finest sensitive and perceptive powers in himself, was developed by thought, patience, and endless self-correction into a subtle deftness of hand unsurpassed in its own work, he belonged to the men of culture instead of those of originally perfect power; but being gifted with the dreaming instinct, the myth-making faculty, the allegorizing power, and with no other poetic element of high genius, he exercised his art in a region of vague feeling, symbolic ideas, and fantastic imagery, and wrought his spell largely through sensuous effects of colour, sound, and gloom, heightened by lurking but unshaped suggestion of mysterious meanings. Now and then gleams of light and scratches of lovely landscape shine out, but for the most part his mastery was over dismal, superstitious, and waste places."] YOUTHFUL ASPIRATIONS 66 FROM A LETTER QUOTED IN THE YANKEE AND BOSTON LITERARY GAZETTE," DECEMBER, 1829 I AM young not yet twenty- am a poet if deep worship of all beauty can make me one and wish to be so in the more common meaning of the word. I would give the world to embody one-half the ideas afloat in my imagination. (By the way, do you remember or did you ever read the exclamation of Shelley about Shakespeare? "What a number of ideas must have been afloat before such an author could arise!") I appeal to you as a man that loves the same beauty that I adore the beauty of the natural blue sky and the sunshiny earth – there can be no tie more strong than that of brother for brother it is not so much that they love one another, as that they both love the same parent - their affections are always running in the same direction the same channel and cannot help mingling. I am, and have been from my childhood, an idler. It cannot therefore be said that I left a calling for this idle trade, for I have no father nor mother. I am, about to publish a volume of poems, the greater part written before I was fifteen. Speaking about heaven, the editor of the Yankee says, "He might write a beautiful, if not a magnificent poem" (the very first words of encouragement I ever remember to have heard). I am very certain that as yet I have not written either but that I can, I will take oath, if they will give me time. The poems to be published are "Al Aaraaf” and "Tamerlane," one about four, the other about three hundred lines. "Al Aaraaf" has some good poetry, and much extravagance which I have not had time to throw away. WHAT POETRY IS [FROM A LETTER TO MR. B WEST POINT, -] -, 1831. A poem, in my opinion, is opposed to a work of science by having, for its immediate object, pleasure, not truth; to romance, by having, for its object, an indefinite instead of a definite pleasure, being a poem only so far as this object is attained; romance presenting perceptible images with definite, poetry with indefinite sensations, to which end music is an essential, since the comprehension of sweet sound is our most indefinite conception. Music, when combined with a pleasurable idea, is poetry; music, without the idea, is simply music; the idea, without the music, is prose, from its very definiteness. ON HIS TALES [TO PHILIP P. COOKE] NEW YORK, August 9, 1846. Never think of excusing yourself (to me) for dilatoriness in answering letters - I know too well the unconquerable procrastination which besets the poet. I will place it all to the |