The Works of Edgar Allan Poe — Volume 4Poe, Edgar Allan
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The Works of Edgar Allan Poe — Volume 4
Poe, Edgar Allan
American fiction -- 19th century; Fantasy fiction; Horror tales, American; Short stories
Mr. Ellison became neither musician nor poet; although no man
lived more profoundly enamored both of Music and the Muse. Under
other circumstances than those which invested him, it is not
impossible that he would have become a painter. The field of
sculpture, although in its nature rigidly poetical, was too
limited in its extent and in its consequences, to have occupied,
at any time, much of his attention. And I have now mentioned all
the provinces in which even the most liberal understanding of the
poetic sentiment has declared this sentiment capable of
expatiating. I mean the most liberal public or recognized
conception of the idea involved in the phrase “poetic sentiment.”
But Mr. Ellison imagined that the richest, and altogether the
most natural and most suitable province, had been blindly
neglected. No definition had spoken of the Landscape-Gardener, as
of the poet; yet my friend could not fail to perceive that the
creation of the Landscape-Garden offered to the true muse the
most magnificent of opportunities. Here was, indeed, the fairest
field for the display of invention, or imagination, in the
endless combining of forms of novel Beauty; the elements which
should enter into combination being, at all times, and by a vast
superiority, the most glorious which the earth could afford. In
the multiform of the tree, and in the multicolor of the flower,
he recognized the most direct and the most energetic efforts of
Nature at physical loveliness. And in the direction or
concentration of this effort, or, still more properly, in its
adaption to the eyes which were to behold it upon earth, he
perceived that he should be employing the best means—laboring to
the greatest advantage—in the fulfilment of his destiny as Poet.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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