Poetry must be
purely a matter of feeling. "Its sole arbiter is Taste. With the
Intellect or with the Conscience it has only collateral relations."
This explanation is necessary, because the stock criticism of Poe's
poetry condemns it as vague, indefinite, and devoid of thought or
ethical content. These are precisely its limitations, but hardly its
faults, since the poet attained with marvelous art the very effects he
desired. The themes of nearly all the poems are death, ruin, regret,
or failure; the verse is original in form, and among the most musical
in the language, full of a haunting, almost magical melody. Mystery,
symbolism, shadowy suggestion, fugitive thought, elusive beauty,
beings that are mere insubstantial abstractions--these are the
characteristics, but designedly so, of Poe's poetry. A poem to him was
simply a crystallized mood, and it is futile for his readers to apply
any other test. Yet the influence of this verse has been wide and
important, extending to most lyric poets of the last half-century,
including such masters as Rossetti and Swinburne.
"To Helen," a poem of three brief stanzas, is Poe's first really
notable production; it is an exquisite tribute of his reverent
devotion to his boyhood friend, Mrs. Stannard, portraying her as a
classic embodiment of beauty. "Israfel" is a lyric of aspiration of
rare power and rapture, worthy of Shelley, and is withal the most
spontaneous, simple, and genuinely human poem Poe ever wrote.
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