Page:Edgar Allan Poe - how to know him.djvu/353

Rh which had no form—for that which had no thought—for that which had no sentience—for that which was soulless, yet of which matter formed no portion—for all this nothingness, yet for all this immortality, the grave was still a home, and the corrosive hours, co-mates.

[Again two angelic intelligences, children of the fair earth that lately perished, meet and talk of supramundane things. Agathos is inducting Oinos, the spirit newly arrived, into the method of creation. The thought follows closely the lines later developed in Eureka, but the conclusion is a leap of fantasy over the walls of analytic reason. Spoken words—so runs the main thread of the exposition—create endless vibrations in the ether and these vibrations modify all exist- ent forms or, to put it differently, create new forms. Now comes the startling terminal thought that the spirit in which words are uttered is also communicated to the resultant new worlds. A turbulent thought, expressed in turbulent words, becomes immundane in a turbulent world. in a turbulent world. "The Power of Words" says a critic in The London Times Literary Supplement, of June 22, 1916, "is worth all Poe's famous stories, including even The Gold-Bug or The Mystery of Marie Roget. It is, in fact, one of the most wonderful pieces of prose in the English language, both for manner and for matter." One sentence of it at least is unsurpassed in ancient or modern English prose. For sheer lift, for sudden overflow into the infinite, I know nothing comparable with this from Agathos: "Come! we will leave to the left the loud harmony of the Pleiades, and