Page:Edgar Allan Poe - how to know him.djvu/107
THE CRITIC 87 �ies in the vicinity of West Point. We are told, with a grave air, of their camp, of their king, and especially of their sentry, who is a woodtick. We are informed that an Ouphe of about an inch in height has commit- ted a deadly sin in falling in love with a mortal maid- en, who may, very possibly, be six- feet in her stock- ings. The consequence to the Ouphe is what? Why, that he has "dyed his wings," "broken his elfin chain," and "quenched his flame-wood lamp." And he is therefore sentenced to what? To catch a spark from the tail of a falling star, and a drop of water 1 from the belly of a sturgeon. What are his equip- ments for the first adventure? An acorn-helmet, a thistle-down plume, a butterfly cloak, a ladybug shield, cockle-seed spurs, and a fire-fly horse. How does he ride to the second? On the back of a bull- frog. What are his opponents in the one ? "Drizzly- mists," "sulphur and smoke," "shadowy hands and flame-shot tongues." What in the other? "Mailed shrimps," "prickly prongs," "blood-red leeches," "jel- lied quarls," "stony star fishes," "lancing squabs" and "soldier crabs." Is that all? No Although only an inch high he is in imminent danger of seduction from a "sylphid queen," dressed in a mantle of "rolled pur- ple," "tied with threads of dawning gold," "buttoned with a sparkling star," and sitting under a rainbow with "beamlet eyes" and a countenance of "lily roon." In our account of all this matter we have had refer- ence to the book and to the book alone. It will be difficult to prove us guilty in any degree of distortion or exaggeration. Yet such are the puerilities we daily find ourselves called upon to admire, as among the loftiest efforts of the human mind, and which not to ��� �
