"On desperate seas long wont to roam,
Thy hyacinth hair, thy classic face,
Thy Naiad airs have brought me home
To the glory that was Greece,
And the grandeur that was Rome."

This was not published, however, until the author was two-and-twenty,
and it may have been touched up. Here is a fragment of a suppressed
poem, "Visit of the Dead," which Poe certainly printed in his eighteenth
year:--

"The breeze, the breath of God, is still,
And the mist upon the hill,
Shadowy, shadowy, yet unbroken,
Is a symbol and a token;
How it hangs upon the trees,
A mystery of mysteries!"

This is not so perfect, but it is even more than "To Helen" symptomatic
of Poe's peculiar relation to the poetic faculty as fostering a state of
indefinite and indeed indefinable delight. And from these faint
breathings how direct is the advance to such incomparable specimens of
symbolic fancy as "The City in the Sea," "The Sleeper," and finally
"Ulalume"!

The determination to celebrate, in a minor key, indefinite and
melancholy symbols of fancy, is a snare than which none more dangerous
can be placed in the path of a feeble foot. But Poe was not feeble, and
he was protected, and permanent value was secured for his poetry, by the