The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Raven, by Edgar Allan Poe. (2024)

The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Raven, by Edgar Allan PoeThis eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and withalmost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away orre-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License includedwith this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.orgTitle: The RavenAuthor: Edgar Allan PoeCommentator: Edmund C. StedmanIllustrator: Gustave DoréRelease Date: November 30, 2005 [EBook #17192][Last updated: October 6, 2012]Language: EnglishCharacter set encoding: ISO-8859-1*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE RAVEN ***Produced by Jason Isbell, Melissa Er-Raqabi and the OnlineDistributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net.

WITH COMMENT BY EDMUND C. STEDMAN

NEW YORK

HARPER & BROTHERS, PUBLISHERS, FRANKLIN SQUARE
1884

Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1883, by
HARPER & BROTHERS,
In the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington.

All rights reserved.

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

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With Names of Engravers

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COMMENT ON THE POEM.

The secret of a poem, no less than a jest'sprosperity, lies in the ear of him that hearsit. Yield to its spell, accept the poet'smood: this, after all, is what the sages answerwhen you ask them of its value. Even thoughthe poet himself, in his other mood, tell you thathis art is but sleight of hand, his food enchanter'sfood, and offer to show you the trick of it,—believehim not. Wait for his prophetic hour; then giveyourself to his passion, his joy or pain. "We arein Love's hand to-day!" sings Gautier, in Swinburne'sbuoyant paraphrase,—and from morn tosunset we are wafted on the violent sea: there isbut one love, one May, one flowery strand. Loveis eternal, all else unreal and put aside. The visionhas an end, the scene changes; but we have gainedsomething, the memory of a charm. As many poets,so many charms. There is the charm of Evanescence,that which lends to supreme beauty andgrace an aureole of Pathos. Share with Landorhis one "night of memories and of sighs" for RoseAylmer, and you have this to the full.

And now take the hand of a new-world minstrel,strayed from some proper habitat to that rudeand dissonant America which, as Baudelaire saw,"was for Poe only a vast prison through which heran, hither and thither, with the feverish agitation ofa being created to breathe in a purer world," andwhere "his interior life, spiritual as a poet, spiritualeven as a drunkard, was but one perpetual effort toescape the influence of this antipathetical atmosphere."Clasp the sensitive hand of a troubledsinger dreeing thus his weird, and share with himthe clime in which he found,—never throughoutthe day, always in the night,—if not the Atlantiswhence he had wandered, at least a place of refugefrom the bounds in which by day he was immured.

To one land only he has power to lead you,and for one night only can you share his dream.A tract of neither Earth nor Heaven: "No-man's-land,"out of Space, out of Time. Here are theperturbed ones, through whose eyes, like those ofthe Cenci, the soul finds windows though the mindis dazed; here spirits, groping for the path whichleads to Eternity, are halted and delayed. It isthe limbo of "planetary souls," wherein are allmoonlight uncertainties, all lost loves and illusions.Here some are fixed in trance, the only respiteattainable; others

while everywhere are

Such is the land, and for one night we enterit,—a night of astral phases and recurrent chimes.Its monodies are twelve poems, whose music strivesto change yet ever is the same. One by one theysound, like the chiming of the brazen and ebonyclock, in "The Masque of the Red Death," whichmade the waltzers pause with "disconcert andtremulousness and meditation," as often as the hourcame round.

Of all these mystical cadences, the plaint ofThe Raven, vibrating through the portal, chieflyhas impressed the outer world. What things go tothe making of a poem,—and how true in this, asin most else, that race which named its bards "themakers"? A work is called out of the void. Wherethere was nothing, it remains,—a new creation, partof the treasure of mankind. And a few exceptionallyrics, more than others that are equally creative,compel us to think anew how bravely the poet'spen turns things unknown

Each seems without a prototype, yet all fascinateus with elements wrested from the shadow of theSupernatural. Now the highest imagination is concernedabout the soul of things; it may or may notinspire the Fantasy that peoples with images theinterlunar vague. Still, one of these lyrics, in itssmaller way, affects us with a sense of uniqueness,as surely as the sublimer works of a supernaturalcast,—Marlowe's "Faustus," the "Faust" of Goethe,"Manfred," or even those ethereal masterpieces,"The Tempest" and "A Midsummer Night's Dream."More than one, while otherwise unique, has some[10]burden or refrain which haunts the memory,—onceheard, never forgotten, like the tone of a rarely usedbut distinctive organ-stop. Notable among them isBürger's "Lenore," that ghostly and resonant ballad,the lure and foil of the translators. Few willdeny that Coleridge's wondrous "Rime of the Ancient Mariner"stands at their very head. "LeJuif-Errant" would have claims, had Beranger beena greater poet; and, but for their remoteness frompopular sympathy, "The Lady of Shalott" and"The Blessed Damozel" might be added to thelist. It was given to Edgar Allan Poe to producetwo lyrics, "The Bells" and The Raven, each ofwhich, although perhaps of less beauty than thoseof Tennyson and Rossetti, is a unique. "Ulalume,"while equally strange and imaginative, has not theuniversal quality that is a portion of our test.

The Raven in sheer poetical constituents fallsbelow such pieces as "The Haunted Palace," "TheCity in the Sea," "The Sleeper," and "Israfel."The whole of it would be exchanged, I suspect, byreaders of a fastidious cast, for such passages asthese:

It lacks the aerial melody of the poet whose heart-stringsare a lute:

But The Raven, like "The Bells" and "AnnabelLee," commends itself to the many and the few.I have said elsewhere that Poe's rarer productionsseemed to me "those in which there is the appearance,at least, of spontaneity,—in which he yieldsto his feelings, while dying falls and cadences mostmusical, most melancholy, come from him unawares."This is still my belief; and yet, upon afresh study of this poem, it impresses me morethan at any time since my boyhood. Close acquaintancetells in favor of every true work of art.Induce the man, who neither knows art nor caresfor it, to examine some poem or painting, and howsoon its force takes hold of him! In fact, he willoverrate the relative value of the first good workby which his attention has been fairly caught. TheRaven, also, has consistent qualities which even anexpert must admire. In no other of its author'spoems is the motive more palpably defined. "TheHaunted Palace" is just as definite to the selectreader, but Poe scarcely would have taken thatsubtle allegory for bald analysis. The Raven iswholly occupied with the author's typical theme—theirretrievable loss of an idolized and beautifulwoman; but on other grounds, also, the public instinctis correct in thinking it his representative poem.

A man of genius usually gains a footing withthe success of some one effort, and this is not alwayshis greatest. Recognition is the more instant forhaving been postponed. He does not acquire it,like a miser's fortune, coin after coin, but "not atall or all in all." And thus with other ambitions:the courtier, soldier, actor,—whatever their parts,—eachcounts his triumph from some lucky stroke.Poe's Raven, despite augury, was for him "thebird that made the breeze to blow." The poetsettled in New-York, in the winter of 1844-'45,finding work upon Willis's paper, "The EveningMirror," and eking out his income by contributionselsewhere. For six years he had been an activewriter, and enjoyed a professional reputation; washeld in both respect and misdoubt, and was at no lossfor his share of the ill-paid journalism of that day.He also had done much of his very best work,—suchtales as "Ligeia" and "The Fall of the Houseof Usher," (the latter containing that mysticalcounterpart, in verse, of Elihu Vedder's "A Lost Mind,")such analytic feats as "The Gold Bug" and "TheMystery of Marie Roget." He had made proselytesabroad, and gained a lasting hold upon theFrench mind. He had learned his own power andweakness, and was at his prime, and not without acertain reputation. But he had written nothing thatwas on the tongue of everybody. To rare and delicatework some popular touch must be added tocapture the general audience of one's own time.

Through the industry of Poe's successive biographers,the hit made by The Raven has becomean oft-told tale. The poet's young wife, Virginia,was fading before his eyes, but lingered for anotheryear within death's shadow. The long, low chamberin the house near the Bloomingdale Road is as[11]famous as the room where Rouget de l'Isle composedthe Marseillaise. All have heard that thepoem, signed "Quarles," appeared in the "AmericanReview," with a pseudo-editorial comment on itsform; that Poe received ten dollars for it; thatWillis, the kindest and least envious of fashionablearbiters, reprinted it with a eulogy that instantlymade it town-talk. All doubt of its authorshipwas dispelled when Poe recited it himself at aliterary gathering, and for a time he was the mostmarked of American authors. The hit stimulatedand encouraged him. Like another and proudersatirist, he too found "something of summer" even"in the hum of insects." Sorrowfully enough, butthree years elapsed,—a period of influence, pride,anguish, yet always of imaginative or critical labor,—beforethe final defeat, before the curtain droppedon a life that for him was in truth a tragedy, andhe yielded to "the Conqueror Worm."

"The American Review: A Whig Journal"was a creditable magazine for the time, double-columned,printed on good paper with clear type,and illustrated by mezzotint portraits. Amid muchmatter below the present standard, it contained somethat any editor would be glad to receive. Theinitial volume, for 1845, has articles by HoraceGreeley, Donald Mitchell, Walter Whitman, Marsh,Tuckerman, and Whipple. Ralph Hoyt's quaintpoem, "Old," appeared in this volume. And hereare three lyrics by Poe: "The City in the Sea,""The Valley of Unrest," and The Raven. Two ofthese were built up,—such was his way,—fromearlier studies, but the last-named came out as iffreshly composed, and almost as we have it now.The statement that it was not afterward revised iserroneous. Eleven trifling changes from the magazine-textappear in The Raven and Other Poems,1845, a book which the poet shortly felt encouragedto offer the public. These are mostly changes ofpunctuation, or of single words, the latter kindmade to heighten the effect of alliteration. In Mr.Lang's pretty edition of Poe's verse, brought outin the "Parchment Library," he has shown theinstinct of a scholar, and has done wisely, in goingback to the text in the volume just mentioned, asgiven in the London issue of 1846. The "standard"Griswold collection of the poet's works aboundswith errors. These have been repeated by latereditors, who also have made errors of theirown. But the text of The Raven, owing to therequests made to the author for manuscript copies,was still farther revised by him; in fact, he printedit in Richmond, just before his death, with thepoetic substitution of "seraphim whose foot-falls"for "angels whose faint foot-falls," in the fourteenthstanza. Our present text, therefore, while substantiallythat of 1845, is somewhat modified by thepoet's later reading, and is, I think, the most correctand effective version of this single poem. Themost radical change from the earliest version appeared,however, in the volume in 1845; the eleventhstanza originally having contained these lines, faultyin rhyme and otherwise a blemish on the poem:

It would be well if other, and famous, poets couldbe as sure of making their changes always improvements.Poe constantly rehandled his scanty showof verse, and usually bettered it. The Raven wasthe first of the few poems which he nearly broughtto completion before printing. It may be that thosewho care for poetry lost little by his death. Fluentin prose, he never wrote verse for the sake of makinga poem. When a refrain of image haunted him,the lyric that resulted was the inspiration, as hehimself said, of a passion, not of a purpose. Thiswas at intervals so rare as almost to justify theFairfield theory that each was the product of anervous crisis.

What, then, gave the poet his clue to TheRaven? From what misty foundation did it riseslowly to a music slowly breathed? As usual, morethan one thing went to the building of so notablea poem. Considering the longer sermons oftenpreached on brief and less suggestive texts, I hopenot to be blamed for this discussion of a singlelyric,—especially one which an artist like Doré hasmade the subject of prodigal illustration. Until recentlyI had supposed that this piece, and a fewwhich its author composed after its appearance, wereexceptional in not having grown from germs in hisboyish verse. But Mr. Fearing Gill has shown mesome unpublished stanzas by Poe, written in hiseighteenth year, and entitled, "The Demon of theFire." The manuscript appears to be in the poet'searly handwriting, and its genuineness is vouched forby the family in whose possession it has remainedfor half a century. Besides the plainest germs of"The Bells" and "The Haunted Palace" it containsa few lines somewhat suggestive of the openingand close of The Raven. As to the rhythm ofour poem, a comparison of dates indicates that thiswas influenced by the rhythm of "Lady Geraldine'sCourtship." Poe was one of the first to honor MissBarrett's genius; he inscribed his collected poemsto her as "the noblest of her sex," and was in[12]sympathy with her lyrical method. The lines fromher love-poem,

found an echo in these:

Here Poe assumed a privilege for which he roughlycensured Longfellow, and which no one ever soughton his own premises without swift detection andchastisem*nt. In melody and stanzaic form, we shallsee that the two poems are not unlike, but in motivethey are totally distinct. The generous poetessfelt nothing but the true originality of the poet."This vivid writing!" she exclaimed,—"this powerwhich is felt!... Our great poet, Mr. Browning,author of 'Paracelsus,' &c., is enthusiastic inhis admiration of the rhythm." Mr. Ingram, afterreferring to "Lady Geraldine," cleverly points outanother source from which Poe may have caughtan impulse. In 1843, Albert Pike, the half-Greek,half-frontiersman, poet of Arkansas, had printed in"The New Mirror," for which Poe then was writing,some verses entitled "Isadore," but since revisedby the author and called "The Widowed Heart."I select from Mr. Pike's revision the followingstanza, of which the main features correspond withthe original version:

Here we have a prolonged measure, a similarity ofrefrain, and the introduction of a bird whose songenhances sorrow. There are other trails which maybe followed by the curious; notably, a passagewhich Mr. Ingram selects from Poe's final reviewof "Barnaby Rudge":

"The raven, too, * * * might have been made, morethan we now see it, a portion of the conception of the fantasticBarnaby. * * * Its character might have performed,in regard to that of the idiot, much the same part as does,in music, the accompaniment in respect to the air."

Nevertheless, after pointing out these germsand resemblances, the value of this poem still isfound in its originality. The progressive music, thescenic detail and contrasted light and shade,—aboveall, the spiritual passion of the nocturn, make it thework of an informing genius. As for the gruesomebird, he is unlike all the other ravens of his clan, fromthe "twa corbies" and "three ravens" of the balladiststo Barnaby's rumpled "Grip." Here is nosemblance of the cawing rook that haunts ancestralturrets and treads the field of heraldry; no bodingphantom of which Tickell sang that, when,

Poe's raven is a distinct conception; the incarnationof a mourner's agony and hopelessness; a sableembodied Memory, the abiding chronicler of doom, atype of the Irreparable. Escaped across the Styx, from"the Night's Plutonian shore," he seems the imagedsoul of the questioner himself,—of him who can not,will not, quaff the kind nepenthe, because the memoryof Lenore is all that is left him, and with thesurcease of his sorrow even that would be put aside.

The Raven also may be taken as a representativepoem of its author, for its exemplification of allhis notions of what a poem should be. These arefound in his essays on "The Poetic Principle," "TheRationale of Verse," and "The Philosophy of Composition."Poe declared that "in Music, perhaps,the soul most nearly attains the great end for which,when inspired by the Poetic Sentiment, it struggles—thecreation of supernal Beauty.... Versecannot be better designated than as an inferior orless capable music"; but again, verse which is reallythe "Poetry of Words" is "The Rhythmical Creationof Beauty,"—this and nothing more. The toneof the highest Beauty is one of Sadness. The mostmelancholy of topics is Death. This must be alliedto Beauty. "The death, then, of a beautiful womanis, unquestionably, the most poetical topic in theworld,—and equally is it beyond doubt that the lipsbest suited for such a topic are those of a bereavedlover." These last expressions are quoted fromPoe's whimsical analysis of this very poem, butthey indicate precisely the general range of hisverse. The climax of "The Bells" is the muffledmonotone of ghouls, who glory in weighing downthe human heart. "Lenore," The Raven, "TheSleeper," "To One in Paradise," and "Ulalume"form a tenebrose symphony,—and "Annabel Lee,"written last of all, shows that one theme possessedhim to the end. Again, these are all nothingif not musical, and some are touched with thatquality of the Fantastic which awakes the sense ofawe, and adds a new fear to agony itself. Throughall is dimly outlined, beneath a shadowy pall, thepoet's ideal love,—so often half-portrayed elsewhere,—theentombed wife of Usher, the Lady Ligeia, in[13]truth the counterpart of his own nature. I supposethat an artist's love for one "in the form" nevercan wholly rival his devotion to some ideal. Thewoman near him must exercise her spells, be all byturns and nothing long, charm him with infinite variety,or be content to forego a share of his allegiance.He must be lured by the Unattainable,and this is ever just beyond him in his passion forcreative art.

Poe, like Hawthorne, came in with the declineof the Romantic school, and none delighted morethan he to laugh at its calamity. Yet his heart waswith the romancers and their Oriental or Gothiceffects. His invention, so rich in the prose tales,seemed to desert him when he wrote verse; and hisjudgment told him that long romantic poems dependmore upon incident than inspiration,—and that,to utter the poetry of romance, lyrics would suffice.Hence his theory, clearly fitted to his own limitations,that "a 'long poem' is a flat contradiction interms." The components of The Raven are few andsimple: a man, a bird, and the phantasmal memoryat a woman. But the piece affords a fine displayof romantic material. What have we? The midnight;the shadowy chamber with its tomes of forgottenlore; the student,—a modern Hieronymus;the raven's tap on the casem*nt; the wintry nightand dying fire; the silken wind-swept hangings;the dreams and vague mistrust of the echoing darkness;the black, uncanny bird upon the pallid bust;the accessories of violet velvet and the gloatinglamp. All this stage effect of situation, light, color,sound, is purely romantic, and even melodramatic,but of a poetic quality that melodrama rarely exhibits,and thoroughly reflective of the poet's "eternalpassion, eternal pain."

The rhythmical structure of The Raven wassure to make an impression. Rhyme, alliteration,the burden, the stanzaic form, were devised withsingular adroitness. Doubtless the poet was struckwith the aptness of Miss Barrett's musical trochaics,in "eights," and especially by the arrangementadopted near the close of "Lady Geraldine":

His artistic introduction of a third rhyme in boththe second and fourth lines, and the addition of afifth line and a final refrain, made the stanza of TheRaven. The persistent alliteration seems to comewithout effort, and often the rhymes within linesare seductive; while the refrain or burden dominatesthe whole work. Here also he had profited by MissBarrett's study of ballads and romaunts in her ownand other tongues. A "refrain" is the lure wherewitha poet or a musician holds the wandering ear,—therecurrent longing of Nature for the initialstrain. I have always admired the beautiful refrainsof the English songstress,—"The Nightingales,the Nightingales," "Margret, Margret," "My Heartand I," "Toll slowly," "The River floweth on,""Pan, Pan is dead," etc. She also employed whatI term the Repetend, in the use of which Poe hasexcelled all poets since Coleridge thus revived it:

Poe created the fifth line of his stanza for the magicof the repetend. He relied upon it to the uttermostin a few later poems,—"Lenore," "Annabel Lee,""Ulalume," and "For Annie." It gained a wild andmelancholy music, I have thought, from the "sweetinfluences," of the Afric burdens and repetends thatwere sung to him in childhood, attuning with theirnative melody the voice of our Southern poet.

"The Philosophy of Composition," his analysisof The Raven, is a technical dissection of its methodand structure. Neither his avowal of cold-bloodedartifice, nor his subsequent avowal to friends that anexposure of this artifice was only another of his intellectualhoaxes, need be wholly credited. If hehad designed the complete work in advance, hescarcely would have made so harsh a prelude ofrattle-pan rhymes to the delicious melody of thesecond stanza,—not even upon his theory of thefantastic. Of course an artist, having perfected awork, sees, like the first Artist, that it is good, andsees why it is good. A subsequent analysis, coupledwith a disavowal of any sacred fire, readily enoughmay be made. My belief is that the first conceptionand rough draft of this poem came as inspirationalways comes; that its author then saw howit might be perfected, giving it the final touchesdescribed in his chapter on Composition, and thatthe latter, therefore, is neither wholly false nor whollytrue. The harm of such analysis is that it temptsa novice to fancy that artificial processes can supersedeimagination. The impulse of genius is to guardthe secrets of its creative hour. Glimpses obtainedof the toil, the baffled experiments, which precede atriumph, as in the sketch-work of Hawthorne recentlybrought to light, afford priceless instructionand encouragement to the sincere artist. But one[14]who voluntarily exposes his Muse to the gaze ofall comers should recall the fate of King Candaules.

The world still thinks of Poe as a "lucklessman of genius." I recently heard him mentioned as"one whom everybody seems chartered to misrepresent,decry or slander." But it seems to me thathis ill-luck ended with his pitiable death, and thatsince then his defence has been persistent, and hisfame of as steadfast growth as a suffering and giftedauthor could pray for in his hopeful hour. Griswold'sdecrial and slander turned the current in hisfavor. Critics and biographers have come forwardwith successive refutations, with tributes to hischaracter, with new editions of his works. His ownletters and the minute incidents of his career arebefore us; the record, good and bad, is widelyknown. No appellor has received more tender andforgiving judgement. His mishaps in life belongedto his region and period, perchance still more to hisown infirmity of will. Doubtless his environmentwas not one to guard a fine-grained, ill-balancednature from perils without and within. His strongestwill, to be lord of himself, gained for him "thatheritage of woe." He confessed himself the bird'sunhappy master, the stricken sufferer of this poem.But his was a full share of that dramatic temperwhich exults in the presage of its own doom. Thereis a delight in playing one's high part: we are allgladiators, crying Ave Imperator! To quote Burke'smatter of fact: "In grief the pleasure is still uppermost,and the affliction we suffer has no resemblanceto absolute pain, which is always odious, and whichwe endeavor to shake off as soon as possible." Poewent farther, and was an artist even in the tragedyof his career. If, according to his own belief, sadnessand the vanishing of beauty are the highestpoetic themes, and poetic feeling the keenest earthlypleasure, then the sorrow and darkness of his brokenlife were not without their frequent compensation.

In the following pages, we have a fresh exampleof an artist's genius characterizing his interpretationof a famous poem. Gustave Doré, the last workof whose pencil is before us, was not the painter,or even the draughtsman, for realists demandingtruth of tone, figure, and perfection. Such mattersconcerned him less than to make shape and distance,light and shade, assist his purpose,—whichwas to excite the soul, the imagination, of the lookeron. This he did by arousing our sense of awe,through marvellous and often sublime conceptionsof things unutterable and full of gloom or glory. Itis well said that if his works were not great paintings,as pictures they are great indeed. As a "literaryartist," and such he was, his force was in directratio with the dramatic invention of his author, withthe brave audacities of the spirit that kindled hisown. Hence his success with Rabelais, with "LeJuif-Errant," "Les Contes Drolatiques," and "DonQuixote," and hence, conversely, his failure to expressthe beauty of Tennyson's Idyls, of "Il Paradiso,"of the Hebrew pastorals, and other texts requiringexaltation, or sweetness and repose. He was a bornmaster of the grotesque, and by a special insightcould portray the spectres of a haunted brain. Wesee objects as his personages saw them, and with thevery eyes of the Wandering Jew, the bewilderedDon, or the goldsmith's daughter whose fancy somagnifies the King in the shop on the Pont-au-Change.It was in the nature of things that heshould be attracted to each masterpiece of verse orprose that I have termed unique. The lower kingdomswere called into his service; his rocks, treesand mountains, the sky itself, are animate with motiveand diablerie. Had he lived to illustrate Shakespeare,we should have seen a remarkable treatmentof Caliban, the Witches, the storm in "Lear"; butdoubtless should have questioned his ideals of Imogenor Miranda. Beauty pure and simple, and the perfectexcellence thereof, he rarely seemed to comprehend.

Yet there is beauty in his designs for the "AncientMariner," unreal as they are, and a consecutivenessrare in a series by Doré. The Rimeafforded him a prolonged story, with many shiftingsof the scene. In The Raven sound and colorpreserve their monotone and we have no changeof place or occasion. What is the result? Doréproffers a series of variations upon the theme ashe conceived it, "the enigma of death and the hallucinationof an inconsolable soul." In some of thesedrawings his faults are evident; others reveal hispowerful originality, and the best qualities in which,as a draughtsman, he stood alone. Plainly therewas something in common between the workingmoods of Poe and Doré. This would appear moreclearly had the latter tried his hand upon the "Talesof the Grotesque and Arabesque." Both resortedoften to the elf-land of fantasy and romance. Inmelodramatic feats they both, through their commandof the supernatural, avoided the danger-line betweenthe ideal and the absurd. Poe was the truer worshipperof the Beautiful; his love for it was a consecratingpassion, and herein he parts company withhis illustrator. Poet or artist, Death at last transfiguresall: within the shadow of his sable harbinger,Vedder's symbolic crayon aptly sets them face toface, but enfolds them with the mantle of immortalwisdom and power. An American woman has wroughtthe image of a star-eyed Genius with the final torch,the exquisite semblance of one whose vision beholds,but whose lips may not utter, the mysteries of a landbeyond "the door of a legended tomb."

Edmund C. Stedman.

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