∞∞∞∞∞∞∞
[page 360, col. 2, continued:]
LITERARIANA.
——
[[...]]
[column 3, continued:]
The first volumes of men who have afterward become famous have always possessed an interest in the eyes of book-collectors, and frequently a greater one than the volumes themselves justify. It is curious to trace in them, as one often can, the germs of future greatness, or what is admitted to be such, after the greatness has declared itself. Shakespeare's commentators see, or fancy they see, unmistaken evidences of the dramatic faculty in his first crude poems, “Venus and Adonis” and “The Rape of Lucrece,” a peculiarity of mental vision which, we venture to say, is not shared by the majority of his readers. There were excellences in Tennyson's first little volume, but few of his then critics could discover them; Christopher North could not, poet though he was himself, and in the main an admirable judge of poetry. There were good things in Poe's first volume, which was one of promise, though it is doubtful if anybody saw it at the time. It is a rare book, so rare, indeed, that we never met with but one copy of it, which, by the way, was picked up a year or two ago at a book-stall in Pans. Poe pretended to reprint it, when he collected his Poetical Works in one volume, but he did not, his statement that the poems which he did reprint were “verbatim, without alteration from the original edition,” being a deliberate falsehood. He changed many of the pieces, enlarging some and shortening others, and made verbal alterations throughout. The last three lines of the sonnet “To Science,” for instance, which now stand,
“Hast thou not torn the Naiad from her flood.
The Elfin from the green grass, and from me
The summer dream beneath tamarind tree?”
ran originally,
“The gentle Naiad from her fountain-flood?
The elfin from the green grass and from me
The summer dream beneath the shrubbery?”
The fourth line of the second stanza of “Romance,” which now reads,
“I have no time for idle cares,”
stands in the original edition,
“I hardly have had time for cares.”
The second stanza, of “The Lake” now reads,
“But when the Night had thrown her pall
Upon that spot, as upon all,
And the mystic wind went by
Murmuring in melody —
Then — ah then I would awake
To the terror of the lone lake.”
It was originally written thus:
“But when the night had thrown her pall
Upon that spot — as upon all —
And the black wind murmur’d by
In a dirge of melody —
My infant spirit would awake
To the terror of the lone lake.” [page 361:]
The poem “A Dream within a Dream,” which stands in the blue-and-gold edition among the poems of Poe's manhood, and consists of twenty-four of the dreariest lines he ever wrote, is in reality one of his boyish poems re-written, shortened, and vastly improved. It consisted originally of forty lines, which were divided into four stanzas. But let us copy it here:
TO —— ——
I
Should my early life seem,
[As well it might,] a dream —
Yet I build no faith upon
The king Napoleon —
I look not up afar
For my destiny in a star:
II
In parting from you now
Thus much I will avow —
There are beings, and have been
Whom my spirit had not seen
Had I let them pass me by
With a dreaming eye —
If my peace hath fled away
In a night — or in a day —
In a vision — or in none —
Is it therefore the less gone? —
III
I am standing ‘mid the roar
Of a weather-beaten shore,
And I hold within my hand
Some particles of sand —
How few! and how they creep
Thro' my fingers to the deep!
My early hopes? no — they
Went gloriously away,
Like lightning from the sky
At once — and so will I.
IV
So young? ah! no — not now —
Thou hast not seen my brow,
But they tell thee I am proud —
They lie — they lie aloud —
My bosom beats with shame
At the paltriness of name
With which they dare combine
A feeling such as mine —
Nor Stoic? I am not:
In the terror of my lot
I laugh to think how poor
That pleasure “to endure!”
What! shade of Zeno! — I!
Endure! — no — no — defy.
This is reprinting “verbatim” with a vengeance! Enough however, for to-day concerning this curious volume, which was printed in Baltimore in 1829, Poe's eighteenth year.
∞∞∞∞∞∞∞
Notes:
None.
∞∞∞∞∞∞∞
[S:0 - RT, 1864] - Edgar Allan Poe Society of Baltimore - A Poe Bookshelf - Literariana (R. H. Stoddard, 1864)