happiest minds; and yet Poe in his earlier efforts, such as “Tamerlane” and “Al Aaraaf,” was obviously the disciple of Shelley! As we read these wonderful poems we are alternately repelled and attracted; still, strive as we may, we cannot escape the spell of those weird, mystic measures. When once we begin a poem, whether it be “The Raven,” “The City in the Sea,” or even “The Conqueror Worm,” we are compelled, in spite of ourselves, to read on to the end; and when the end is reached, it is not seldom with a sigh of regret that we close the book. Poe confined himself almost entirely to simple ballad forms—which is the case even in poems like “Ulalume” and “The Bells,” where the measures certainly seem at first sight to be somewhat intricate—and relied for his effect upon the melody. With him everything was subordinate to sound. Here and there, as in “Ulalume,” it must be admitted that, in striving to please the ear, he approaches perilously near the point where “sense swoons into nonsense”; but, on the whole, as a melodist he achieved wonders, and no poet has used the refrain and the repetend in quite the same way or so effectively. What, for instance, in “The Bells” could possibly be more telling than the constant repetition of the word which gives its name to the poem? The repetend, his free use of which did so much for the success of “The Raven,” he employed even more lavishly in some of his later poems, such as “Lenore,” “Annabel Lee,” “Ulalume,” and “For Annie,” and with the happiest results. Thus: “An anthem for the queenliest dead that ever died so young— A dirge for her the doubly dead in that she died so young.” And again: “It was hard by the dim lake of Auber, In the misty mid region of Weir— It was down by the dank tarn of Auber, In the ghoul-haunted woodland of Weir.” In the management of his metres, too, Poe stands almost without a rival. Unlike the majority of poets, who, in determining the length of a poem, are guided by the sense rather than by the sound, he regarded the melody as of equal if not of primary importance, and one famous critic has declared that “it would be impossible to omit a line or stanza without injuring the metrical as well as the intelligible effect.”