Page:Edgar Allan Poe - how to know him.djvu/113

Rh The winds are whist, and the owl is still, The bat in the shelvy rock is hid And naught is heard on the lonely hill But the cricket's chirp and the answer shrill Of the gauze-winged katydid; And the plaint of the wailing whippoorwill Who mourns unseen, and ceaseless sings Ever a note of wail and wo—

Up to the vaulted firmament His path the fire-fly courser bent, And at every gallop on the wind He flung a glittering spark behind.

He blessed the force of the charmed line And he banned the water-goblins' spite, For he saw around in the sweet moonshine, Their little wee faces above the brine, Giggling and laughing with all their might At the piteous hap of the Fairy wight.

[Notices of the War of 1812, by John Armstrong, reviewed in The Southern Literary Messenger, June, 1836. The extract is a good example of Poe's method of criticizing a mere word but a word that embodies the spirit of an entire book. The review is as timely now as when it was written.]

These "Notices," by the former Secretary of War, are a valuable addition to our history, and to our historical literature—embracing a variety of details which should not have been so long kept from the cognizance of the public. We are grieved, however, to see, even in the opening passages of the work, a piquancy and freedom of expression, in regard to the unhappy sources of animosity between America and the parent land, which can neither to-day nor hereafter answer any possible good end, and may prove an individual