passeth all understanding. Devious had been the paths which the poet had followed, yet all had made toward the goal at which he finally arrived. Nature, History, study, contemplation, reflection, each helped him to gain insight into the ways of God. Sorrow, pain, affliction, loss, each in the long run strengthened his hope, until hope itself was lost in the conviction that, though the body die, the soul persists, mindful of all that made life sweet, forgetful of all that made life bitter. Thus it was that long before Bryant had reached old age, patience had wrought its perfect work within his heart. As we read the noble poem Waiting by the Gate, we plainly see that no shrinking marred the poet's faith when he approached the bounds of life. Though by reason of his strength his years were literally four-score years, yet was his step firm, his eye uplifted, his brow serene. No doubt, no dread dogged his path; he bade good-night with words of cheer, full certain that he should awaken from the sleep of death, refreshed and strong. III EDGAR ALLAN POE It is popular opinion that the most minute research into the poetry of Edgar Allan Poe will not meet with any discovery that can be called even remotely religious-much less Christian. It is readily admitted, of course, that Poe makes frequent mention of cherubim and seraphim, of angels and demons, of soul and spirit, of heaven and hell; yet it is quite likely to be added without delay that these terms are hardly more than mere words in a poet's unusually musical vocabulary, and must therefore be looked upon as not so much as even hinting at any article of faith. To one who attempts to assert that there is any positive religious teaching whatever in the poetry of Poe, it will be pointed out that the poet makes quite as ready use of names drawn from paganism and Islam as from Judaism and Christianity, that he gives no preference to the Eden of the Hebrews over the Aidenn of the Arabians, and that he speaks of the works of Eblis as no less certainly evil than those of Satan. Beyond a doubt, angels and ghouls, fairies and elves, naiads and dryads, are all equally real to Poe. With him Edis, the Tartar divinity presiding over virtuous love takes the place of the Greek Aphrodite; the Phoenician Astarte and the Latin Diana, each the goddess of birth, are presented side by side; and Azrael of the Talmud, the angel who awaits the separation of the soul from the body at the moment of death, is not inferior to Israfel of the Koran, that melodious spirit "whose heart-strings are a lute," and who, possessed of the sweetest voice of all God's creatures, stands ready to sound the trumpet of the resurrection. The contention of those who maintain that no religious thought is discoverable in Poe might perhaps be allowed to stand, were it not that the instances which they almost always adduce in support of their assertions, prove too much. Failing to find anything in Poe that is strongly Christian, they cite his frequent use of non-Christian terms to show that he is not religious at all. It ought not to be necessary to point out that before one speaks in criticism of any work of literature, one should take pains to become acquainted with the author's point of view and method of expression. All the beings whose names are recorded in the poetry of Poe-whether they are Hebrew or Christian, pagan or Moslem - had, to Poe's mind, a very real place in that strange land created by his delicate yet vivid imagination. Insufficiently material to be of the earth, earthy; insufficiently spiritual to be of the heaven, heavenly, they were to the man who created them, as they are still to his appreciative readers, true shadows, albeit inhabiting a world which is hardly more than a shadow. They constitute, indeed, what Poe in another connection has himself denominated a dream within a dream. The vagueness of the realm created by Poe may be safely regarded as the outcome of his theory of just what poetry is. Early in life Poe, writing to a friend, asserted that in his opinion, "A poem is opposed to romance by having for its object, an indefinite instead of a definite pleasure, being a poem only so far as this object is attained; romance presenting perceptible images with definite, poetry with indefinite sensations, to which end music is an essential, since the comprehension of sweet sound is our most indefinite conception." With this point of view in mind, one readily perceives the reason on one hand of the tenuous, the evanescent character of Poe's world of fancy; and on the other of his ready acceptance of proper names which make the inhabitants of his spiritual world an assemblage hardly less mixed-hardly less cosmopolitan, if the word will be allowed than was, let us say, Milton's once happy throng of angels before a part of them were lost and changed through pride. The undeviating use of terms which fall quite readily from the lips of western theologians in discussing their exceedingly accurate ideas of heaven must almost certainly have ended, to Poe's way of thinking, in an image altogether too definite. It is not beyond thought, indeed, that even Saint John's minutely circumstantial description of the heavenly Jerusalem was to Poe most veritable prose. On the other hand, the mythology of the Greeks or the Romans, and the religious conceptions of Mahomet contained for him many names of peculiar value. When they are used, their denotation in the minds of nearly all readers is so slight as to leave but an indefinite impression - nevertheless they are rich in connotation, in suggestiveness. Still further their mere sound is often exceedingly beautiful-frequently all but music itself. To the attuned ear, for an instance, there is an unusual pleasure in such a word as Israfel and its doublet Israfeli. Thus it came about that Poe sought the elements of his spiritual world where he would, and seized upon them wherever he found them. In that vague, indefinite world of Poe's, pictured to the reader through the use of musical words borrowed from many far-separated sources, the personality of God, although seldom mentioned and almost as rarely referred to, is given a peculiar, perhaps a quite convincing, vividness. This impression does not arise from the poet's asserting that his God has or has not lent him "respite and nepenthe from his memories of Lenore," or from his writing in The Sleeper, "I pray to God that she may lie While the dim sheeted ghosts go by! "" Such passages have their value, no doubt, but two others may be cited to prove the existence in Poe of that state of mind which attends the rare experience of every believer when he feels that he stands in the immediate presence of God Himself. The first of these constitutes the great part of the poem |