Page:Edgar Allan Poe - how to know him.djvu/223

 THE POET 203 ���He is also and equally the artist of repetition in the service of melody and rhythm, but the subject is almost ignored in The Philosophy of Composition ex- cept in the brief references made to the refrain. In the selection that we have called Repetition An Aid to Quaintness Poe at least makes it clear that his own employment of repetition must have been conscious and studied. As early as 1827 he published a Song which begins, �I saw thee on thy bridal day, When a burning blush came o'er thee, �Though happiness around thee lay, The world all love before thee, �and ends, �Who saw thee on that bridal day, �When that deep blush would come o'er thee, Though happiness around thee lay, �The world all love before thee. �But Poe's distinctive employment of repetition, the use of it which he has made peculiarly his own, is exemplified neither in the refrain nor in the recurrence of an initial stanza in the terminal stanza. There are few lyric poets of any time who have not freely em- ployed both of these devices. Nor does Poe's insist- ence on "quaintness" make his own practice any the clearer. No one has ever found quaintness a marked characteristic of Poe's poetry, though repetition is plainly the chief characteristic of the form of his verse. I can detect no quaintness in these wonderful lines : �To the glory that was Greece, �And the grandeur that was Rome, �or in the magic of this stanza: ���J ��� �