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

These verses are exceedingly forcible, yet, upon scanning the latter
we find a syllable too many. We shall be told possibly that there
should be an elision of the e in the at the commencement. But no- this
was not intended. Both the and emulous demand a perfect
accentuation. The verse commencing Lo!

Lo! to the smiling Arno's classic side,

has, it will be observed, a Trochee in its first foot. As is usually
the case, the whole line partakes, in consequence, of a stately and
emphatic enunciation, and to equalize the time in the verse
succeeding, something more is necessary than the succession of
Iambuses which constitute the ordinary English Pentameter. The
equalization is therefore judiciously effected by the introduction
of an additional syllable. But in the lines

Stream, as the eyes of those that love us close,
We think on what they were with many fears,

lines to which the preceding observations will equally apply, this
additional syllable is wanting. Did the rhyme admit of the alteration,
everything necessary could be accomplished by writing

We think on what they were with many a fear,
Lest goodness die with them and leave the coming year.

These remarks may be considered hypercritical- yet it is undeniable
that upon a rigid attention to minutiae such as we have pointed out,
any great degree of metrical success must altogether depend. We are
more disposed, too, to dwell upon the particular point mentioned
above, since, with regard to it, the American Monthly, in a late
critique upon the poems of Mr. Willis, has evidently done that
gentleman injustice. The reviewer has fallen into what we conceive the
error of citing, by themselves, (that is to say insulated from the
context) such verses as

The night-wind with a desolate moan swept by.

With difficult energy and when the rod.

Fell through, and with the tremulous hand of age.

With supernatural whiteness loosely fell.

for the purpose of animadversion. "The license" he says "of turning
such words as 'passionate' and 'desolate' into two syllables could
only have been taken by a pupil of the Fantastic School." We are quite
sure that Mr. Willis had no purpose of turning them into words of
two syllables- nor even, as may be supposed upon a careless
examination, of pronouncing them in the same time which would be