The Kenosha telegraph. [volume] (Kenosha, Wis.) 1860-1888, 1880-06-04
hell than with the inhabitants of the

nell IMAM With the inhabitants OF the
earth.
The many conflicting tendencies found
in Poe would seem to almost Justify a
belief in the duality of mind. He was a
strange compound of opposites, curl
3ous blending of harmonies and discords.
In him fire and frost embrace. At
times he was mild, gentle and afable !;
again fierce, passionate and moody. Now
he would be charming or electrifying a
circle of friends by his wonderful elo-
quence and now, sitting apart in some
secluded retreat, muttering to himself in
dismal monologues. One moment hold
ing you enraptured by his visions of
wondrous beauty the next, claiming
you, petrifed with terror, among his
dismal phantoms, built up in forms of
" gloomiest and ghastliest grandeur. +"
To-day, soaring away into the far-off
realms of imagination tomorrow,
wandering in che gloomy labyrinths of
his own soul. cat night, the hero of a
drunken debauch in the morning, a
wizard of song, whose weird and ftful
music was like that of sirens.
Poe has often been called the Byron
of America. In many respects they are
similar. Both are egotistical, passionate,
arrogant both have morbid love of
melancholy, gloom and death; both
are the victims of passion and dis
eased self contemplation. Poe resem-
bles Byron in his ethical, but not
his mental qualities. Byron is powerful,
vigorous, synthetic Poe is subtle,
acute, analytic. Byron has broader com
prehension; Poe has keener perception.
Byron treats of individuals Poe only
of principles. Byron is more objective;
Poe more subjective. Byron was driven
into his own consciousness by forces
from without; Poe entered his more
from innate necessity. Byron is not
only conscious of self-he feels the gaze
of the whole world. Poe forgets the
outward, in his intense concentration
on the inward. Byron broods over his
wrongs; Poe analyses his emotions.
Byron dwells upon his sorrows with
morbid self-pity Poe dissects his with
frenzied pleasure. In other points they
stand in closer relations, but still remain
apart. Byron is cynical, sullen, morose !;
Poe is gloomy, sorrowful, respondent.
Byron is q misanthrope; Poe is hypo-
chondriac. Byron wages war with all
mankind Poe is ever contending with
the elements of his own nature. Byron
has but little of idealism Poe has moth
ing of sensualism. Byron has more of
human sympathy; yet Poe has less Of
scorn and sarcasm. Byron's passions
come hot and seething from the heart :;
Poe's are cold as intellect itself. Byron
brushes all sentiment and feeling Poe
reverses them Byron seems like a
hooking devil, laughing at the world
in rhyme" Poe Like a soothing demon,
exulting III his own fendishness.
This, then, is Poe, the saddest, lone
Hest figure in all literature who gave
the cypress to love and the myrtle to
death who sounded the lowest depths
of wretchedness and laughed at his own
misery; who made of life living death
and chanted the requiems of despair
over the dead hopes of his own soul.
The melancholy and gloom in which he
inshrouded himself has tinged with sad
ness all that he has written or said. No
ode to the nightingale or skylark from
Poe-his was to the sable-winged raven,
the type of his sorrow. He was ever
pursued across life's stage by the pas
sions of his nature, like Orestes fleeing
the furies, and he will ever hold place
in the memory of men rather for what
he might have been than for what he
was. Goethe has been called the poet
of the universe ; Byron the poet of the
individual, but Poe is the poet of the
soul.