Page:Library of Southern literature, Volume One (1909).djvu/43

Rh lower world, and called it "Cuffy's Dream." Fascinated, apparently, by the mysterious theme, for years he continued more seriously his efforts to fathom its depths and light its darkness. The result is 'Enscotidion; or, Shadow of Death,' an epic of six hundred and fifty-two Spenserian stanzas and seven lyrics, divided into five cantos of nearly equal length. Self-reliant and intrepid indeed is the spirit that would attempt to wake new music on the mighty harp from which "The Inferno" and "Paradise Lost" were evoked. It is not the orchestral music of the old masters, very truly; for in scope, machinery, and measure 'Enscotidion' differs widely from their great epics. Yet in places there are suggestions of Miltonic sweep and grandeur; elsewhere are approaches to Dantesque realism in the vivid conjunction of things earthly and unearthly; again, in versification and tendency to allegory Spenserian traces are easily discernible. No Satan and Michael, Virgil and Beatrice, or Archimago and Duessa appear in 'Enscotidion.' Time, Death, Disease, Night, Solitude, Reason, Hope, Faith, Fiends, and Furies, and a youth from Earth guided by Despair, are the chief acquaintances to be formed in this realm of phantoms and of horrors. Through all this "strange, wild dream" a serious purpose runs, which is, to show that this side of death, however steeped in sin the soul may be, there is yet hope of heaven.

Applause from high sources was bestowed on the new poet. Dr. Young begins his Introduction with the prediction that "the author of 'Enscotidion' is destined to take a high rank among the poets of America"; and Bishop J. C. Keener is credited with the remark that Dr. Adams ought to have time and means to give a poetical interpretation to the Apocalypse, being the only man he knew able to do this. But, owing to its nature and more perhaps to the unpropitious times in the South for the favorable reception of poetry of the kind, the work did not receive generally the attention that it deserved. A slight revision with a brief prefatory argument to each canto would doubtless have increased the number of its readers. Only one edition of the poem has been published.

Unequal, admittedly, 'Enscotidion' is; but what poem of six thousand lines is not? At times even Homer nods, Milton proses, and Dante is repulsively gruesome or grotesque. The epilogue stanzas addressed to the muse or to the reader, and the touches of morbid humor or satire, which might have been omitted in a revision, are the most serious defects of the poem. That to such amazing depths and agonizing distances, to so good purpose and with so few artistic lapses, the poet in imagination or phantasy carries Azan,