_R.G. Tietze._

The secret of the Sphinx. _R. Staudenbaur._




COMMENT ON THE POEM.


The secret of a poem, no less than a jest's prosperity, lies in the ear of
him that hears it. Yield to its spell, accept the poet's mood: this, after
all, is what the sages answer when you ask them of its value. Even though
the poet himself, in his other mood, tell you that his art is but sleight
of hand, his food enchanter's food, and offer to show you the trick of
it,--believe him not. Wait for his prophetic hour; then give yourself to
his passion, his joy or pain. "We are in Love's hand to-day!" sings
Gautier, in Swinburne's buoyant paraphrase,--and from morn to sunset we are
wafted on the violent sea: there is but one love, one May, one flowery
strand. Love is eternal, all else unreal and put aside. The vision has an
end, the scene changes; but we have gained something, the memory of a
charm. As many poets, so many charms. There is the charm of Evanescence,
that which lends to supreme beauty and grace an aureole of Pathos. Share
with Landor his one "night of memories and of sighs" for Rose Aylmer, and
you have this to the full.

And now take the hand of a new-world minstrel, strayed from some proper
habitat to that rude and dissonant America which, as Baudelaire saw, "was
for Poe only a vast prison through which he ran, hither and thither, with
the feverish agitation of a being created to breathe in a purer world," and