Moons of marches from our eyes
Bornou land behind us lies;
Stranger round us day by day
Bends the desert circle gray;
Wild the waves of sand are flowing,
Hot the winds above them blowing,—
Lord of all things!-where are we going?
Where are we going, Rubee?

We are weak, but Thou art strong;
Short our lives, but Thine is long;
We are blind, but Thou hast eyes;
We are fools, but Thou art wise!
Thou, our morrow's pathway knowing
Through the strange world round us growing,
Hear us, tell us where are we going,
Where are we going, Rubee?

Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849)

Poe is thought by many critics of discernment the most original genius among American poets. He and Walt Whitman are certainly the best known of our poets in Europe. Poe's works, both poetry and prose, have repeatedly been translated into many foreign languages. His parents were actors. He was orphaned when two years old and became the ward of Mr. and Mrs. Allan of Richmond, Virginia. He had been born in Boston. At the age of six the Allans took him with them abroad and put him in school near London. When Poe was eleven, they returned to Richmond. He was precociously bright at his studies and notably athletic as a boy.

In 1826 he entered the University of Virginia. He became dissipated. His guardian tried to start him in business but he ran away to Boston and enlisted in the army in 1827. In that summer he published a pamphlet entitled "Tamerlane and Other Poems: by a Bostonian." In 1829, "Al Aaraaf, Tamerlane, and Minor Poems" appeared with his own name. He entered West Point in 1830, was expelled the next year, and at the same time brought out a volume of "Poems." He then went to live with his aunt, Mrs. Clemm, in Baltimore. In 1833 he won the Saturday Visitor prize of $100 for his story "MS. Found in a Bottle." Two years later, at the age of twenty-six he received employment on The Southern Literary Messenger. In 1836 he married his cousin, Virginia Clemm, then thirteen years old. The next year he went to New York and published the “Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym." In Philadelphia, after that, he contributed to a number of periodicals, and, in New York once more, was associated with Burton's Gentleman's Magazine. This connection was severed in 1840, when Poe was thirty-one, and in the same year he collected his stories as Tales of the Arabesque and Grotesque. Three years later The Prose Romances of Edgar A. Poe appeared. He began to write criticism of contemporary American writing. At the age of thirty

six The Raven and Other Poems appeared, and "The Raven" became widely known. Poe was famous, but the next year he had to move to Fordham, as his wife was dangerously ill of tuberculosis. They lived almost in destitution, and the year following she died.

Poe published a prose poem in 1848 and revisited Richmond the next year, lecturing there successfully. Starting north again in September he got only as far as Baltimore. He was taken to the Washington Hospital and died after long delirium. Tales, Poems, and Essays were brought out in three volumes, by his executor, in 1850. Another volume was added in 1856, Arthur Gordon Pym and Miscellanies. A definitive edition in ten volumes appeared in 1894-95.

Poe's failing was drink. His genius is indisputable. His originality was dazzling. He has left us some of the most strangely beautiful poems in the English language. "The Raven," so widely popular still does not possess the crystalline beauty of “Israfel" or "To Helen," nor the foreboding grandeur of "The Haunted Palace." Poe wove with words as a magician might weave spells. It is impossible to analyze the subtle necromancy of his technique, though it has often been attempted. The fascination of his verse was implicit in his whole being, faults and virtues. If Poe had not been Poe complete we might have had other poetry of great beauty, but not this particular kind. His was a wild spirit of rebellious brilliance. His life alternated between overtowering hopes and ecstasies and the blackest bitterness and sorrow. Many turned aside from him during his life who might and could have done much for him. As it is, he stands apart from all other American poets in a sort of midnight magnificence, jewelled with strange stars.

Poe did not choose his way of life as one adopts a fashion; his own weakness brought him tragedy, his own spiritual power brought him intermittent happiness of the highest kind. He was disoriented in life but his inner ear heard marvelous music.

ISRAFEL

And the angel Israfel, whose heart-strings are sweetest voice of all God's creatures.-KORAN.

a lute, and who has the

IN Heaven a spirit doth dwell
Whose heart-strings are a lute;
None sing so wildly well
As the angel Israfel,

And the giddy stars (so legends tell),
Ceasing their hymns, attend the spell
Of his voice, all mute.

Tottering above

In her highest noon

The enamoured moon
Blushes with love,

While, to listen, the red levin

(With the rapid Pleiads, even,
Which were seven)

Pauses in Heaven.

And they say (the starry choir
And the other listening things)
That Israfeli's fire

Is owing to that lyre

By which he sits and sings,
The trembling living wire
Of those unusual strings.

But the skies that angel trod,

Where deep thoughts are a duty,
Where Love's a grown-up God,

Where the Houri glances are

Imbued with all the beauty

Which we worship in a star.

Therefore, thou art not wrong,
Israfeli, who despisest
An unimpassioned song;

To thee the laurels belong,

Best bard, because the wisest:

Merrily live, and long!

The ecstasies above

With thy burning measures suit:
Thy grief, thy joy, thy hate, thy love,
With the fervor of thy lute:
Well may the stars be mute!

Yes, Heaven is thine; but this
Is a world of sweets and sours;
Our flowers are merely-flowers,
And the shadow of thy perfect bliss
Is the sunshine of ours.

If I could dwell

Where Israfel

Hath dwelt, and he where I,

He might not sing so wildly well

A mortal melody,

While a bolder note than this might swell

From my lyre within the sky.