"Criticism" - читать интересную книгу автора (Poe Edgar Allan)

A glowing description of the queen's beauty follows: and as the form
of an earthly Fay had never been seen before in the bowers of light,
she is represented as falling desperately in love at first sight
with our adventurous Ouphe. He returns the compliment in some measure,
of course; but, although "his heart bent fitfully," the "earthly
form imprinted there" was a security against a too vivid impression.
He declines, consequently, the invitation of the queen to remain
with her and amuse himself by "lying within the fleecy drift,"
"hanging upon the rainbow's rim," having his "brow adorned with all
the jewels of the sky," "sitting within the Pleiad ring," "resting
upon Orion's belt" "riding upon the lightning's gleam," "dancing
upon the orbed moon," and "swimming within the milky way."

Lady, he cries, I have sworn to-night
On the word of a fairy knight
To do my sentence task aright

The queen, therefore, contents herself with bidding the Fay an
affectionate farewell- having first directed him carefully to that
particular portion of the sky where a star is about to fall. He
reaches this point in safety, and in despite of the "fiends of the
cloud," who "bellow very loud," succeeds finally in catching a
"glimmering spark" with which he returns triumphantly to Fairy-land.
The poem closes with an Io Paean chaunted by the elves in honor of
these glorious adventures.
It is more than probable that from ten readers of the Culprit Fay,
nine would immediately pronounce it a poem betokening the most
extraordinary powers of imagination, and of these nine, perhaps five
or six, poets themselves, and fully impressed with the truth of what
we have already assumed, that Ideality is indeed the soul of the
Poetic Sentiment, would feel embarrassed between a
half-consciousness that they ought to admire the production, and a
wonder that they do not. This embarrassment would then arise from an
indistinct conception of the results in which Ideality is rendered
manifest. Of these results some few are seen in the Culprit Fay, but
the greater part of it is utterly destitute of any evidence of
imagination whatever. The general character of the poem will, we
think, be sufficiently understood by any one who may have taken the
trouble to read our foregoing compendium of the narrative. It will
be there seen that what is so frequently termed the imaginative
power of this story, lies especially- we should have rather said is
thought to lie- in the passages we have quoted, or in others of a
precisely similar nature. These passages embody, principally, mere
specifications of qualities, of habiliments, of punishments, of
occupations, of circumstances, &c., which the poet has believed in
unison with the size, firstly, and secondly with the nature of his
Fairies. To all which may be added specifications of other animal
existences (such as the toad, the beetle, the lance-fly, the
fire-fly and the like) supposed also to be in accordance. An example
will best illustrate our meaning upon this point-