"Criticism" - читать интересную книгу автора (Poe Edgar Allan)the earth in a "midnight black with clouds," and giving ideal voices
to the varied sounds of the coming tempest. The following passages remind us of some of the more beautiful portions of Young. On the breast of Earth I lie and listen to her mighty voice; A voice of many tones-sent up from streams That wander through the gloom, from woods unseen Swayed by the sweeping of the tides of air, From rocky chasm where darkness dwells all day, And hollows of the great invisible hills, And sands that edge the ocean stretching far Into the night- a melancholy sound! Ha! how the murmur deepens! I perceive And tremble at its dreadful import. Earth Uplifts a general cry for guilt and wrong And Heaven is listening. The forgotten graves Of the heart broken utter forth their plaint. The dust of her who loved and was betrayed, And him who died neglected in his age, The sepulchres of those who for mankind Labored, and earned the recompense of scorn, Ashes of martyrs for the truth, and bones Of those who in the strife for liberty Their names to infamy, all find a voice! In this poem and elsewhere occasionally throughout the volume, we meet with a species of grammatical construction, which, although it is to be found in writing of high merit, is a mere affectation, and, of course, objectionable. We mean the abrupt employment of a direct pronoun in place of the customary relative. For example- Or haply dost thou grieve for those that die- For living things that trod awhile thy face, The love of thee and heaven, and how they sleep, Mixed with the shapeless dust on which thy herds Trample and graze? The note of interrogation here, renders the affectation more perceptible. The poem To the Apenines resembles, in meter, that entitled The Old Man's Funeral, except that the former has a Pentameter in place of the Alexandrine. This piece is chiefly remarkable for the force, metrical and moral, of its concluding stanza. In you the heart that sighs for Freedom seeks Her image; there the winds no barrier know, Clouds come and rest and leave your fairy peaks; |
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