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

Beneath a rainbow bending bright,
She seem'd to the entranced Fay
The loveliest of the forms of light,
Her mantle was the purple rolled
At twilight in the west afar;
T'was tied with threads of dawning gold,
And button'd with a sparkling star.
Her face was like the lily roon
That veils the vestal planet's hue,
Her eyes, two beamlets from the moon
Set floating in the welkin blue.
Her hair is like the sunny beam,
And the diamond gems which round it gleam
Are the pure drops of dewy even,
That neer have left their native heaven.

Here again the faculty of Comparison is alone exercised, and no mind
possessing the faculty in any ordinary degree would find a
difficulty in substituting for the materials employed by the poet
other materials equally as good. But viewed as mere efforts of the
Fancy and without reference to Ideality, the lines just quoted are
much worse than those which were taken earlier. A congruity was
observable in the accoutrements of the Ouphe, and we had no trouble in
forming a distinct conception of his appearance when so accoutred. But
the most vivid powers of Comparison can attach no definitive idea to
even "the loveliest form of light," when habited in a mantle of
"rolled purple tied with threads of dawn and buttoned with a star,"
and sitting at the same time under a rainbow with "beamlet" eyes and a
visage of "lily roon."
But if these things evince no Ideality in their author, do they
not excite it in others?- if so, we must conclude, that without
being himself imbued with the Poetic Sentiment, he has still succeeded
in writing a fine poem- a supposition as we have before endeavored
to show, not altogether paradoxical. Most assuredly we think not. In
the case of a great majority of readers the only sentiment aroused
by compositions of this order is a species of vague wonder at the
writer's ingenuity, and it is this indeterminate sense of wonder which
passes but too frequently current for the proper influence of the
Poetic power. For our own part we plead guilty to a predominant
sense of the ludicrous while occupied in the perusal of the poem
before us- a sense whose promptings we sincerely and honestly
endeavored to quell, perhaps not altogether successfully, while
penning our compend of the narrative. That a feeling of this nature is
utterly at war with the Poetic Sentiment will not be disputed by those
who comprehend the character of the sentiment itself. This character
is finely shadowed out in that popular although vague idea so
prevalent throughout all time, that a species of melancholy is
inseparably connected with the higher manifestations of the beautiful.
But with the numerous and seriously- adduced incongruities of the
Culprit Fay, we find it generally impossible to connect other ideas