Page:Edgar Poe and his critics.djvu/32

 the opening stanzas of Ulalume, says, “These to many will appear only words, but what wondrous words! What a spell they wield! What a withered unity there is in them! The instant they are uttered a misty picture with a tarn, dark as a murderer’s eye, below, and the thin yellow leaves of October fluttering above, exponents of a misery which scorns the name of sorrow, is hung up in the chambers of your soul for ever.”

An English writer, now living in Paris, the author of some valuable contributions to our American periodicals, passed several weeks at the little cottage in Fordham, in the early autumn of 1847, and described to us, with a truly English appreciativeness, its unrivalled neatness and the quaint simplicity of its interior and surroundings. It was at the time bordered by a flower garden, whose clumps of rare dahlias and brilliant beds of fall flowers showed, in the careful culture bestowed upon them, the fine floral taste of the inmates.

An American writer, who visited the cottage during the summer of the same year, described it as half