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Poe, Edgar Allen

"Criticism"

Here are moreover, evidences of fine imagination. For
example-
The great heavens
Seem to stoop down upon the scene in love-
A nearer vault and of a tenderer blue
Than that which bends above the eastern hills.
Till twilight blushed, and lovers walked and wooed
In a forgotten language, and old tunes
From instruments of unremembered form
Gave the soft winds a voice.
The bee
Within the hollow oak. I listen long
To his domestic hum and think I hear
The sound of the advancing multitude
Which soon shall fill these deserts.
Breezes of the south!
Who toss the golden and the flame-like flowers,
And pass the prairie-hawk that poised on high,
Flaps his broad wing yet moves not!
There is an objectionable ellipsis in the expression "I behold
them from the first," meaning "first time;" and either a grammatical
or typographical error of moment in the fine sentence commencing
Fitting floor
For this magnificent temple of the sky-
With flowers whose glory and whose multitude
Rival the constellations!
Earth, a poem of similar length and construction to The Prairies,
embodies a noble conception. The poet represents himself as lying on
the earth in a "midnight black with clouds," and giving ideal voices
to the varied sounds of the coming tempest.


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