8i 



But such demonstrations of the " Americanism " of the 

 poem seem to leave something' out of account. Nothing 

 American can be literature that does not first have in it some- 

 thing a good deal greater than America. The question is not 

 at bottom one of the local realism of the poem. Are the Elf 

 Monarch and his company really dancing still in the woodlands 

 of the Hudson by the light of the mid-summer moon? Are 

 they of the same fibre with the crew that Rip Van Winkle 

 knew? The question goes deeply into the nature of Drake's 

 poem. Any attentive reader of The Culprit Fay can feel the 

 daintiness, the lightness, and the melody with which the ma- 

 terials of the story are compounded. This for example is the 

 portrayal of Fay accoutred for his second quest : — 



He put his acorn helmet on: 



It was plumed of the silk of the thistle down : 



The corslet plate that guarded his hreast 



Was once the wild bee's golden vest; 



His cloak, of a thousand mingled dyes, 



Was formed of the wings of butterflies; 



His shield was the shell of a lady-bug queen, 



Studs of gold on a ground of green 



And the quivering lance which he brandished bright, 



Was the sting of a wasp he had slain in flight. 



Swift he bestrode his fire-fly steed; 

 He bared his blade of the bent grass blue; 



He drove his spurs of the cockle seed, 

 And away like a glance of thought he flew, 

 To skim the heavens, and follow far 

 The fiery trail of the rocket-star. 



Poe in an early review of Drake's poems 7 invites attention to 

 the curiously mechanical way in which the details of this 

 picture are selected and combined. To prove that it is me- 

 chanical he wrote a parody of the stanza substituting other 

 details of accoutrement for those presented : 



" His blue-bell helmet, we have heard 

 Was plumed with the down of the humming-bird, 

 The corslet on his bosom bold 



7 Southern Literary Messenger, April, 1836. 



