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

He put his acorn helmet on;
It was plumed of the silk of the thistle down:
The corslet plate that guarded his breast
Was once the wild bee's golden vest;
His cloak of a thousand mingled dyes,
Was formed of the wings of butterflies;
His shield was the shell of a lady-bug queen,
Studs of gold on a ground of green;*
And the quivering lance which he brandished bright
Was the sting of a wasp he had slain in fight.

* Chestnut color, or more slack,
Gold upon a ground of black.
Ben Jonson.

We shall now be understood. Were any of the admirers of the
Culprit Fay asked their opinion of these lines, they would most
probably speak in high terms of the imagination they display. Yet
let the most stolid and the most confessedly unpoetical of these
admirers only try the experiment, and he will find, possibly to his
extreme surprise, that he himself will have no difficulty whatever
in substituting for the equipments of the Fairy, as assigned by the
poet, other equipments equally comfortable, no doubt, and equally in
unison with the preconceived size, character, and other qualities of
the equipped. Why we could accoutre him as well ourselves- let us see.

His blue-bell helmet, we have heard
Was plumed with the down of the hummingbird,
The corslet on his bosom bold
Was once the locust's coat of gold,
His cloak, of a thousand mingled hues,
Was the velvet violet, wet with dews,
His target was, the crescent shell
Of the small sea Sidrophel,
And a glittering beam from a maiden's eye
Was the lance which he proudly wav'd on high.

The truth is, that the only requisite for writing verses of this
nature, ad libitum is a tolerable acquaintance with the qualities of
the objects to be detailed, and a very moderate endowment of the
faculty of Comparison- which is the chief constituent of Fancy or
the powers of combination. A thousand such lines may be composed
without exercising in the least degree the Poetic Sentiment, which
is Ideality, Imagination, or the creative ability. And, as we have
before said, the greater portion of the Culprit Fay is occupied with
these, or similiar things, and upon such, depends very nearly, if
not altogether, its reputation. We select another example-

But oh! how fair the shape that lay