ton mills do not lend themselves readily to conventional poetic treatment. Theoretically, free verse permits the writer to use all the resources of both prose and poetry in his effort to say what has never been effectively said before. Free verse is least suited to lyric poetry; it is nearer the prose level and farther from the song than any other type of poetry. It is, however, excellent in realistic narrative and descriptive poetry.

CHAPTER XI

POEMS STUDIED BY THEME

Cynics have said since the first outpourings of men's hearts, "There is nothing new in art; there are no new subjects." But the very reverse is true. There are no old subjects; every subject is new as soon as it has been transformed by the imagination of the poet.-Joel Elias Spingarn: "Creative Criticism"

Up to this point we have studied poems either according to metrical form, as in the sonnet, or according to type, as in the song. There are, of course, many other ways of studying poetry, and each of them has its special merits. The method employed in this chapter, though seldom used, has decided advantages. A very illuminating comparison can be made of what poets in various countries and epochs have found to say of such perennially interesting subjects as nature, patriotism, love, war, death, and immortality. The comparative test is also an excellent test to apply to the work of a poet whose rank we wish to determine. After reading the poems contained in this chapter, the reader should decide whether, in his estimation, the American poets come up to the level of the British, and whether the present-day poets of either country measure up to older writers like Wordsworth and Poe. We shall consider four widely dif

fering general themes: Death, Abraham Lincoln, Nature, and the City.

"Our sweetest songs," wrote Shelley, "are those that tell of saddest thought." Melancholy, said Poe, is “the most legitimate of all the poetical tones." Death seemed to Poe most poetical when it "most closely allies itself to Beauty; the death, then," reasoned Poe, "of a beautiful woman is, unquestionably, the most poetical topic in the world; and equally is it beyond doubt that the lips best suited for such topic are those of a bereaved lover." Here, in reality, Poe has combined two themes, love and death. The death of a lovely woman is the theme of nearly all of Poe's best poems, "The Raven," "Annabel Lee," "Ulalume," "Lenore," and "The Sleeper." Although "The Raven" is the best known of these, "The Sleeper" was, in Poe's estimation, a greater poem. "In the higher qualities of poetry," said he, "it is better than "The Raven'; but there is not one man in a million who could be brought to agree with me in this opinion."

THE SLEEPER

At midnight, in the month of June,
I stand beneath the mystic moon.

An opiate vapor, dewy, dim,

Exhales from out her golden rim,
And, softly dripping, drop by drop,
Upon the quiet mountain top,
Steals drowsily and musically
Into the universal valley.

The rosemary nods upon the grave;
The lily lolls upon the wave;
Wrapping the fog about its breast,

The ruin moulders into rest;

Looking like Lethe, see! the lake
A conscious slumber seems to take,
And would not, for the world, awake.
All Beauty sleeps!-and lo! where lies
Irene, with her Destinies!

Oh, lady bright! can it be right-
This window open to the night?
The wanton airs, from the tree-top,
Laughingly through the lattice drop-
The bodiless airs, a wizard rout,

Flit through thy chamber in and out,

And wave the curtain canopy

So fitfully-so fearfully

Above the closed and fringèd lid

'Neath which thy slumb'ring soul lies hid,
That, o'er the floor and down the wall,
Like ghosts the shadows rise and fall!
Oh, lady dear, hast thou no fear?
Why and what art thou dreaming here?
Sure thou art come o'er far-off seas,
A wonder to these garden trees!
Strange is thy pallor! strange thy dress!
Strange, above all, thy length of tress,
And this all solemn silentness!

The lady sleeps! Oh, may her sleep Which is enduring, so be deep!

Heaven have her in its sacred keep!
This chamber changed for one more holy,
This bed for one more melancholy,

I

pray to God that she may lie

Forever with unopened eye,

While the pale sheeted ghosts go by!

My love, she sleeps! Oh, may her sleep,
As it is lasting, so be deep!

Soft may the worms about her creep!
Far in the forest, dim and old,

For her may some tall vault unfold-
Some vault that oft hath flung its black
And winged panels fluttering back,
Triumphant, o'er the crested palls,
Of her grand family funerals—
Some sepulchre, remote, alone,
Against whose portal she hath thrown,
In childhood, many an idle stone—
Some tomb from out whose sounding door
She ne'er shall force an echo more,
Thrilling to think, poor child of sin!
It was the dead who groaned within.

Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849)

The death of a beautiful woman is a theme which, like most others, may be treated in narrative and dramatic as well as in lyric poetry. It may also be employed in prose fiction or in sculpture and painting, as every one who has seen Millais's "Ophelia" will recall. In fiction one thinks of the beautiful Amy Robsart in Scott's Kenilworth, of Eustacia Vye in Hardy's Return of the Native, of Maggie Tulliver in George Eliot's Mill on the Floss, and of Zenobia in Hawthorne's Blithedale Romance. In Shakespeare's plays one recalls the deaths of Juliet, Desdemona, Cleopatra, and Ophelia. The student should compare the following poems as to sincerity of feeling, beauty of expression, and point of view. He will find it worth while also to look up other notable poems on the same general theme, such as Lamb's