The poetical works of Edgar Allan Poe, with original memoir. Illustrated by F. R. Pickersgill, R.A., John Tenniel, Birket Foster, Felix Darlay [and others]

THE POETIC PRINCIPLE.
Here still is the smile, that no cloud can o'ercast,
And a heart and a hand all thy own to the last.
Oh! what was love made for, if't is not the same
Through joy and through torment, through glory and shame?
I know not, I ask not, if guilt's in that heart,
I but know that I love thee, whatever thou art.
Thou hast call'd me thy Angel in moments of bliss,
And thy Angel I'll be'mid the horrors of this, -
Through the furnace, unshrinking, thy steps to pursue,
And shield thee, and save thee,-or perish there too!
It has been the fashion, of late days, to deny Aloore Imagination, while
granting him Fancy-a distinction originating with' Coleridge-than whom
no man more fully comprehended the great powers of Moore. The fact is,
that the fancy of this poet so far predominates over all his other faculties, and
over the fancy of all other men, as to have induced, very naturally, the idea
that he is fanciful oly./. But never was there a greater mistake. Never was
a grosser wrong done the fame of a true poet. In the compass of the English
language I can call to mind no poem more profoundly —more weirdly imagincative, in the best sense, than the lines commencing-" I would I were by'
that dim lake"-which are the composition of Thomas Moore. I regret that
I am unable to remember them.
One of the noblest-and, speaking of Fancy, one of the most singularly
fanciful of modern poets, was Thomas Hood. His " Fair Ines" had always,
for me, an inexpressible charm:
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