Complete Works of Edgar Allan Poe, page 250
The versification throughout is, generally, of a very remarkable excellence. At times, however, it is rough, to no purpose; as at page 44:
And ever tended to some central point
In some place — nought more could I understand.
And here, at page 81:
The shadow of a stag stoops to the stream
Swift rolling toward the cataract and drinks deeply.
The above is an unintentional and false Alexandrine — including a foot too much, and that a trochee in place of an iambus. But here, at page 106, we have the utterly unjustifiable anomaly of half a foot too little:
And Eos ever rises circling
The varied regions of Mankind, &c.
All these are mere inadvertences, of course; for the general handling of the rhythm shows the profound metrical sense of the poet. He is, perhaps, somewhat too fond of “making the sound an echo to the sense.” “Orion” embodies some of the most remarkable instances of this on record; but if smoothness — if the true rhythm of a verse be sacrificed, the sacrifice is an error. The effect is only a beauty, we think, where no sacrifice is made in its behalf. It will be found possible to reconcile all the objects in view. Nothing can justify such lines as this, at page 69:
As snake-songs midst stone hollows thus has taught me.
We might urge, as another minor objection, that all the giants are made to speak in the same manner — with the same phraseology. Their characters are broadly distinctive, while their words are identical in spirit. There is sufficient individuality of sentiment, but little, or none, of language.
We must object, too, to the personal and political allusions — to the Corn-Law question, for example — to Wellington’s statue, &c. These things, of course, have no business in a poem.
We will conclude our fault-finding with the remark that, as a consequence of the one radical error of conception upon which we have commented at length, the reader’s attention, throughout, is painfully diverted. He is always pausing, amid poetical beauties, in the expectation of detecting among them some philosophical, allegorical moral. Of course, he does not fully, because he cannot uniquely, appreciate the beauties. The absolute necessity of re-perusing the poem, in order thoroughly to comprehend it, is also, most surely, to be regretted, and arises, likewise, from the one radical sin.
But of the beauties of this most remarkable poem, what shall we say? And here we find it a difficult task to be calm. And yet we have never been accused of enthusiastic encomium. It is our deliberate opinion that, in all that regards the loftiest and holiest attributes of the true Poetry, “Orion” has never been excelled. Indeed we feel strongly inclined to say that it has never been equaled. Its imagination — that quality which is all in all — is of the most refined — the most elevating — the most august character. And here we deeply regret that the necessary limits of this review will prevent us from entering, at length, into specification. In reading the poem, we marked passage after passage for extract — but, in the end, we found that we had marked nearly every passage in the book. We can now do nothing more than select a few. This, from page 3, introduces Orion himself, and we quote it, not only as an instance of refined and picturesque imagination, but as evincing the high artistical skill with which a scholar in spirit can paint an elaborate picture by a few brief touches.
The scene in front two sloping mountains’ sides
Display’d; in shadow one and one in light.
The loftiest on its summit now sustained
The sun-beams, raying like a mighty wheel
Half seen, which left the forward surface dark
In its full breadth of shade; the coming sun
Hidden as yet behind: the other mount,
Slanting transverse, swept with an eastward face
Catching the golden light. Now while the peal
Of the ascending chase told that the rout
Still midway rent the thickets, suddenly
Along the broad and sunny slope appeared
The shadow of a stag that fled across
Followed by a giant’s shadow with a spear.
These shadows are those of the coming Orion and his game. But who can fail to appreciate the intense beauty of the heralding shadows? Nor is this all. This “Hunter of shadows, he himself a shade,” is made symbolical, or suggestive, throughout the poem, of the speculative character of Orion; and occasionally, of his pursuit of visionary happiness. For example, at page 81, Orion, possessed of Merope, dwells with her in a remote and dense grove of cedars. Instead of directly describing his attained happiness — his perfected bliss — the poet, with an exalted sense of Art, for which we look utterly in vain in any other poem, merely introduces the image of the tamed or subdued shadow-stag, quietly browsing and drinking beneath the cedars.
There, underneath the boughs, mark where the gleam
Of sun-rise thro’ the roofing’s chasm is thrown
Upon a grassy plot below, whereon
The shadow of a stag stoops to the stream,
Swift rolling toward the cataract, and drinks.
Throughout the day unceasingly it drinks,
While ever and anon the nightingale,
Not waiting for the evening, swells his hymn —
His one sustained and heaven aspiring tone —
And when the sun hath vanished utterly,
Arm over arm the cedars spread their shade,
With arching wrist and long extended hands,
And grave-ward fingers lengthening in the moon,
Above that shadowy stag whose antlers still
Hung o’er the stream.
There is nothing more richly — more weirdly — more chastely — more sublimely imaginative — in the wide realm of poetical literature. It will be seen that we have enthusiasm but we reserve it for pictures such as this.
At page 62, Orion, his brethren dead, is engaged alone in extirpating the beasts from Chios. In the passages we quote, observe, in the beginning, the singular lucidness of detail; the arrangement of the barriers, &c., by which the hunter accomplishes his purpose, is given in a dozen lines of verse, with far more perspicuity than ordinary writers could give it in as many pages of prose. In this species of narration Mr. Horne is approached only by Moore in his “Alciphron.” In the latter portions of our extract, observe the vivid picturesqueness of the description.
Four days remain. Fresh trees he felled and wove
More barriers and fences; inaccessible
To fiercest charge of droves, and to o’erleap
Impossible. These walls he so arranged
That to a common centre each should force
The flight of those pursued; and from that centre
Diverged three outlets. One, the wide expanse
Which from the rocks and inland forests led;
One was the clear-skied windy gap above
A precipice; the third, a long ravine
Which through steep slopes, down to the seashore ran
Winding, and then direct into the sea.
Two days remain. Orion, in each hand
Waving a torch, his course at night began,
Through wildest haunts and lairs of savage beasts.
With long-drawn howl, before him trooped the wolves —
The panthers, terror-stricken, and the bears
With wonder and gruff rage; from desolate crags,
Leering hyenas, griffin, hippogrif,
Skulked, or sprang madly, as the tossing brands
Flashed through the midnight nooks and hollows cold,
Sudden as fire from flint; o’er crashing thickets,
With crouched head and curled fangs dashed the wild boar,
Gnashing forth on with reckless impulses,
While the clear-purposed fox crept closely down
Into the underwood, to let the storm,
Whate’er its cause, pass over. Through dark fens,
Marshes, green rushy swamps, and margins reedy,
Orion held his way — and rolling shapes
Of serpent and of dragon moved before him
With high-reared crests, swan-like yet terrible,
And often looking back with gem-like eyes.
All night Orion urged his rapid course
In the vex’d rear of the swift-droving din,
And when the dawn had peered, the monsters all
Were hemmed in barriers. These he now o’erheaped
With fuel through the day, and when again
Night darkened, and the sea a gulf-like voice
Sent forth, the barriers at all points he fired,
Mid prayers to HephÆstos and his Ocean-Sire.
Soon as the flames had eaten out a gap
In the great barrier fronting the ravine
That ran down to the sea, Orion grasped
Two blazing boughs; one high in air he raised,
The other, with its roaring foliage trailed
Behind him as he sped. Onward the droves
Of frantic creatures with one impulse rolled
Before this night-devouring thing of flames,
With multitudinous voice and downward sweep
Into the sea, which now first knew a tide,
And, ere they made one effort to regain
The shore, had caught them in its flowing arms,
And bore them past all hope. The living mass,
Dark heaving o’er the waves resistlessly,
At length, in distance, seemed a circle small,
Midst which one creature in the centre rose,
Conspicuous in the long, red quivering gleams
That from the dying brands streamed o’er the waves.
It was the oldest dragon of the fens,
Whose forky flag-wings and horn-crested head
O’er crags and marshes regal sway had held;
And now he rose up like an embodied curse,
From all the doomed, fast sinking — some just sunk —
Looked landward o’er the sea, and flapped his vans,
Until Poseidon drew them swirling down.
Poseidon (Neptune) is Orion’s father, and lends him his aid. The first line italized is an example of sound made echo to sense. The rest we have merely emphasized as peculiarly imaginative.
At page 9, Orion thus describes a palace built by him for Hephæstos (Vulcan.)
But, ere a shadow-hunter I became —
A dreamer of strange dreams by day and night —
For him I built a palace underground,
Of iron, black and rough as his own hands.
Deep in the groaning disemboweled earth,
The tower-broad pillars and huge stanchions,
And slant supporting wedges I set up,
Aided by the Cyclops who obeyed my voice,
Which through the metal fabric rang and pealed
In orders echoing far, like thunder-dreams.
With arches, galleries and domes all carved —
So that great figures started from the roof
And lofty coignes, or sat and downward gazed
On those who strode below and gazed above —
I filled it; in the centre framed a hall:
Central in that, a throne; and for the light,
Forged mighty hammers that should rise and fall
On slanted rocks of granite and of flint,
Worked by a torrent, for whose passage down
A chasm I hewed. And here the god could take,
Midst showery sparks and swathes of broad gold fire
His lone repose, lulled by the sounds he loved;
Or, casting back the hammer-heads till they choked
The water’s course, enjoy, if so he wished,
Midnight tremendous, silence, and iron sleep.
The description of the Hell in “Paradise Lost” is altogether inferior in graphic effect, in originality, in expression, in the true imagination — to these magnificent — to these unparalleled passages. For this assertion there are tens of thousands who will condemn us as heretical; but there are a “chosen few” who will feel, in their inmost souls, the simple truth of the assertion. The former class would at least be silent, could they form even a remote conception of that contempt with which we hearken to their conventional jargon.
We have room for no farther extracts of length; but we refer the reader who shall be so fortunate as to procure a copy of “Orion,” to a passage at page 22, commencing
One day at noontide, when the chase was done.
It is descriptive of a group of lolling hounds, intermingled with sylvans, fawns, nymphs and oceanides. We refer him also to page 25, where Orion, enamored of the naked beauty of Artemis, is repulsed and frozen by her dignity. These lines end thus:
And ere the last collected shape he saw
Of Artemis, dispersing fast amid
Dense vapory clouds, the aching wintriness
Had risen to his teeth, and fixed his eyes,
Like glistening stones in the congealing air.
We refer, especially, too, to the description of Love, at page 29; to that of a Bacchanalian orgie, at page 34; to that of drought succeeded by rain, at page 70; and to that of the palace of Eos, at page 104.
Mr. Horne has a very peculiar and very delightful faculty of enforcing, or giving vitality to a picture, by some one vivid and intensely characteristic point or touch. He seizes the most salient feature of his theme, and makes this feature convey the whole. The combined n;auaiveté and picturesqueness of some of the passages thus enforced, cannot be sufficiently admired. For example:
The arches soon
With bow-arm forward thrust, on all sides twanged
Around, above, below.
Now, it is this thrusting forward of the bow-arm which is the idiosyncrasy of the action of a mass of archers. Again: Rhexergon and his friends endeavor to persuade Akinetos to be king. Observe the silent refusal of Akinetos — the pecu-liar passiveness of his action — if we may be permitted the paradox.
“Rise, therefore, Akinetos, thou art king.”
So saying, in his hand he placed a spear.
As though against a wall’ [[t ]]were set aslant,
Flatly the long spear fell upon the ground.
Here again: Merope departs from Chios in a ship.
And, as it sped along, she closely pressed
The rich globes of her bosom on the side
O’er which she bent with those black eyes, and gazed
Into the sea that fled beneath her face.
The fleeing of the sea beneath the face of one who gazes into it from a ship’s side, is the idiosyncrasy of the action of the subject. It is that which chiefly impresses the gazer.
We conclude with some brief quotations at random, which we shall not pause to classify. Their merits need no demonstration. They gleam with the purest imagination. They abound in picturesqueness — force — happily chosen epithets, each in itself a picture. They are redolent of all for which a poet will value a poem.
— her silver sandals glanced i’ the rays,
As doth a lizard playing on a hill,
And on the spot where she that instant stood
Naught but the bent and quivering grass was seen.
Above the Isle of Chios, night by night,
The clear moon lingered ever on her course,
Covering the forest foliage, where it swept
In its unbroken breadth along the slopes,
With placid silver; edging leaf and trunk
Where gloom clung deep around; but chiefly sought
With melancholy splendor to illume
The dark-mouthed caverns where Orion lay,
Dreaming among his kinsmen.
The ocean realm below, and all its caves
And bristling vegetation, plant and flower,
And forests in their dense petrific shade
Where the tides moan for sleep that never comes.
A fawn, who on a quiet green knoll sat
Somewhat apart, sang a melodious ode,
Made rich by harmonies of hidden strings.
Autarces seized a satyr, with intent,
Despite his writhing freaks and furious face,
To dash him on a gong, but that amidst
The struggling mass Encolyon thrust a pine,
Heavy and black as Charon’s ferrying pole,
O’er which they, like a bursting billow, fell.
— — then round the blaze,
Their shadows brandishing afar and athwart,
Over the level space and up the hills,
Six giants held portentous dance.
— — his safe return
To corporal sense, by shaking off these nets
Of moonbeams from his soul.
— — old memories
Slumbrously hung above the purple line
Of distance, to the East, while odorously
Glistened the tear-drops of a new-fall’n shower.
Sing on!
Sing on, great tempest! in the darkness sing!
Thy madness is a music that brings calm
Into my central soul; and from its waves,
That now with joy begin to heave and gush,
The burning image of all life’s desire,
Like an absorbing, fire-breathed, phantom god,
Rises and floats! here touching on the foam,
There hovering over it; ascending swift
Starward, then swooping down the hemisphere
Upon the lengthening javelins of the blast!
Now a sound we heard,
Like to some well-known voice in prayer; and next
An iron clang that seemed to break great bonds
Beneath the earth, shook us to conscious life.
It is Oblivion! In his hand — though naught
Knows he of this — a dusky purple flower
Droops over its tall stem. Again! ah see!
He wanders into mist and now is lost! —
Within his brain what lovely realms of death
Are pictured, and what knowledge through the doors
Of his forgetfulness of all the earth
A path may gain?
But we are positively forced to conclude. It was our design to give “Orion” a careful and methodical analysis — thus to bring clearly forth its multitudinous beauties to the eye of the American public. Our limits have constrained us to treat it in an imperfect and cursory manner. We have had to content ourselves chiefly with assertion, where our original purpose was to demonstrate. We have left unsaid a hundred things which a well-grounded enthusiasm would have prompted us to say. One thing, however, we must and will say, in conclusion. “Orion” will be admitted, by every man of genius, to be one of the noblest, if not the very noblest poetical work of the age. Its defects are trivial and conventional — its beauties intrinsic and supreme.
