108 EEYIEW — TALES OF MYSTEBT AND POEMS. 



Valentine. Some of the rhymes, here as elsewhere, read strangely 

 to unfamiliar ears, e. g. Lceda and reader. But such are not with- 

 out precedent on the American Parnassus. Whittier constantly 

 rhymes such words as law and loar, as in the followiug couplet : 



" Still shall the glory and the pomp of war 

 Along their train the shouting millions draw." 



No one, however, can have read Poe's " Raven" without recog- 

 nising his complete mastery of the varied cadences of alliteration, 

 resonance, and the ample musical compass of English rhymes ; 

 though in the following bagatelle he had other accomplishments in 

 view ; 



For her this rhyme is penned, whose luminous eyes, 



Brightly expressive as the twins of Lceda, 

 Shall find her own sweet name, that nestling lies 



Upon the page, enwrapped from every reader. 

 Search narrowly the lines! — they hold a treasure 



Divine — a talisman — an amulet 

 That must be worn at heart. Search well the measure — 



The words — the syllables ! Do not forget 

 The trivialest point, or you may lose your labour ! 



And yet there is in this no Gordian knot 

 Which one might not undo without a sabre, 



If one could merely comprehend the plot. 

 Enwritten upon the leaf where now are peering 



Eyes scyntillating soul, there lie perdus 

 Three eloquent words oft uttered in the hearing 



Of poets, by poets — as the name is a poet's too. 

 Its letters, although naturally lying 



Like the knight Pinto — Mendez Ferdinando — 

 Still form a synonym for Truth. — Cease trying ! 



You will not read the riddle, though you do the best you can do. 



This the reader perchance pronounces no great poetic feat ; 

 but he has not yet solved the poet's riddle. In the days of old 

 George Wither, poets were wont to invent for themselves new 

 shackles, and to write rhomboidal dirges, triaagular odes, and 

 lozenge-shaped lyrics or canzonets. The acrostic is an old fashion 

 not yet altogether obsolete ; and the ordinary restraints of the 

 sonnet, Spenserian stanza, or the ottava rima, still furnish pleasant 

 " poetic paius," as in elder centuries. But the hardest of such 

 poetic labours are trifles compared with that which Poe has here 

 achieved ; as will be seen if the reader undertakes its solution ac- 

 cording to the following directions. Bead the first letter of the 

 first line in connection with the second letter of the second line, the 

 third of the third line, and so on to the end, and the name of the 



