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

Here stood her opium, here she nursed her owls,
And here she planned the imperial seat of fools.

Here to her chosen all her works she shows;
Prose swell'd to verse, verse loitering into prose.

Rome in her Capitol saw Querno sit
Throned on seven hills, the Antichrist of wit.

And his this drum whose hoarse heroic bass
Drowns the loud clarion of the braying ass.

But such a bulk as no twelve bards could raise
Twelve starveling bards of these degenerate days.

These are all taken at random from the first book of the Dunciad. In
the last example it will be seen that the two additional syllables are
employed with a view of equalizing the time with that of the verse,

But such a bulk as no twelve bards could raise,

a verse which will be perceived to labor in its progress- and which
Pope, in accordance with his favorite theory of making sound accord
with sense, evidently intended so to labor. It is useless to say
that the words should be written with elision-starv'ling and
degen'rate. Their pronunciation is not thereby materially affected-
and, besides, granting it to be so, it may be as well to make the
elision also in the case of Mr. Willis. But Pope had no such
intention, nor, we presume, had Mr. W. It is somewhat singular, we may
remark, en passant, that the American Monthly, in a subsequent portion
of the critique alluded to, quotes from Pope as a line of "sonorous
grandeur" and one beyond the ability of our American poet, the well
known

Luke's iron crown and Damien's bed of steel.

Now this is indeed a line of "sonorous grandeur"- but it is rendered
so principally if not altogether by that very excess of metre (in
the word Damien) which the reviewer has condemned in Mr. Willis. The
lines which we quote below from Mr. Bryant's poem of The Ages will
suffice to show that the author we are now reviewing fully appreciates
the force of such occasional excess, and that he has only neglected it
through oversight in the verse which suggested these observations.

Peace to the just man's memory- let it grow
Greener with years, and blossom through the flight
Of ages- let the mimic canvass show
His calm benevolent features.