Page:Edgar Poe and his critics.djvu/72

 Edgar Poe’s dreams were assuredly often presageful and significant, and while he but dimly apprehended through the higher reason the truths which they foreshadowed, he riveted public attention upon them by the strange fascination of his style, the fine analytical temper of his intellect, and, above all, by the weird splendors of his imagination, compelling men to read and to accredit as possible truths his most marvellous conceptions. He often spoke of the imageries and incidents of his inner life as more vivid and veritable than those of his outer experience. We find in some pencilled notes appended to a manuscript copy of one of his later poems the words, “All that I have here expressed was actually present to me. Remember the mental condition which gave rise to ‘Ligeia’—recall the passage of which I spoke, and observe the coincidence.” With all the fine alchymy of his subtle intellect he sought to analyze the character and conditions of this introverted life. “I regard these visions,” he says, “even as they arise, with an awe which in some measure moderates or