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First love yet so much more than ordinary love a pure passion of the soul, in which there was much of worship and nothing of desire. Surely the most pure and holy passion the world has ever known, for in it there was absolutely nothing of self. Like Dante after his first meeting with Beatrice, this Virginia boy-poet had entered upon a Vita Nuova a new life made all of beauty.
But the poor, ailing, infirm, morbid boy-poet, who looked to her as his saving angel in body, in mind, and soul-to say to him, "Give me back my freedom," would be to abandon him to death and to sin.
It is very much better than most school prize poems: it shows the critical and scholarly character of the writer with very fair foreshadowing; but it does not fore-shadow his poetry in the very least. And some of the tricks which the boy-poet has caught are interesting and abode with him, such as the anadiplosis
The dumfounded Rob read the verses aloud, but before he could express his amazement Edgar had taken the slate from him and, with one swipe of the damp spunge, obliterated the rhymes. "Write them on paper for me, please," plead Robert. The brilliant smile of the boy-poet flashed upon him. "Oh, they were not worth keeping," said he, indifferently. "They were merely an exercise."
And the waiters choked up the doorway, listening and laughing, and prepared to call cabs and coaches; and suddenly some one turned off the gaslight, and all was dark as pitch, howls and laughter, as of the damned, ringing through the Pandemonium. Out from the black atmosphere stepped the boy-poet; and the still stars rushed on his sight, as they looked over the grimy roof-tops.
But the most sincere poem if sincerity be marked by unstudied phrase and neglected rhyme the most genuine "lyrical cry" of this period, is that song in which our boy-poet poured forth his longing for the "blue hills" he had loved as a baby, and for those Coniston crags over which, when he became old and sorely stricken, he was still to see the morning break.
It would have been strange, indeed, if he had at once made a free use of a rhythm which every boy-poet now thinks he can do what he pleases with, but of which only a few ever learn the real scope and capabilities.
But his art constantly increases with his sense of its necessity; so that the Cenci, which is the last work of any pretension that he wrote, is decidedly the most artistic of all. There are beautiful passages in Queen Mab, but it is the work of a boy-poet; and as it was all but repudiated by himself, it is not necessary to remark further upon it.
Her features were daintily modelled, and like slender lilies were the hands holding the deep blue plate from which the pigeons white, grey and bronze, fed fluttering about her with soft cooings. The picture was so much more like a poet's dream than a reality, that the boy-poet stepped back, with an exclamation of surprise. "It is only my mother," explained Rob. "She'll be glad to see you."
In a poem named "Ligeia," under which title he intended to personify the music of nature, our boy-poet gives us the following exquisite picture: John Neal, himself a man of genius, and whose lyre has been too long capriciously silent, appreciated the high merit of these and similar passages, and drew a proud horoscope for their author. Mr.
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