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.
He deeply feels it in her winning endearments-in her burning enthusiasms
-in her gentle charities-in her meek and devotional endurances-but
above all-ah, far above all-he kneels to it-he worships it in the faith,
in the purity, in the strength, in the altogether divine majesty —of her love.
Let me conclude-by the recitation of yet another brief poem-one very
different in character from any that I have before quoted. It is by Motherwell,
and is called " The Song of the Cavalier." Writh our modern and altogether
rational ideas of the absurdity and impiety of warfare, we are not precisely
in that frame of mind best adapted to sympathise with the sentiments, and
thus to appreciate the real excellence of the poem. To do this fully, we
must identify ourselves, in fancy, with the soul of the old cavalier.
Then mounte! then mounte, brave gallants, all!
And don your helmes armaine:
Deathe's couriers, Fame and Honour, call
Us to the field againe.
No shrewish teares shall fill our eyes
WVhen the sword-hilt's in our hand, —
Heart-whole we'll part, and no whit sighe
For the fayrest of the land;
Let piping swaine, and craven wight,
Thus weepe and puling crye;
Our business is like men to fight,
And hero-like to die!
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