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her fickle, so after all it might be well that Lucy had only a few lovers who never praised her. Wordsworth sees her relation to the whole world, but does not see or feel the effect of this relation upon Lucy. In other words he thinks of Lucy as she might be and not as she is. The entire second stanza tells us that Lucy is beautiful as well as isolated.
A violet by a mossy stone Half hidden from the eye! Fair as a star,when only one Is shining in the sky!
The figure in the last two lines is purely intellectual. Aside from a star being fair we can see no resemblance to Lucy, and, being a single star, it is so conspicuous that it does not agree with the idea of being "half hidden from the eye." And now the last stanza :
She lived unknown, and few could know When Lucy ceased to be! But she is in her grave and O The difference to me.
"She lived unknown"—a thought implied in the two preceding stanzas. She died without renown and was buried. So far all is fact well stated. Now in the last line and for the first time we find primary feeling.
"and O
The difference to me."
Quite a surprise. Why did he not say this before? We thought he was talking about Lucy, but evidently it was about his own feelings Here Wordsworth sings of the death of a beautiful woman, a theme which Poe declares to be the most beautiful and most poetic of all.
Compare this poem with Annabel Lee. Poe's maiden lived in the "Kingdom by the sea"—a place probably as lonely as "the springs of Dove." But the very first stanza tells us that she lived with no other thought "than to love and be loved by me." The thought of her lack of praise or lovers is swallowed up in the fact that she feels love regardless of her surroundings. Here in the start we have the theme of the poem: the love between the poet and Annabel Lee. Nothing is mentioned that has no direct relation to the theme. When we reach the line,
"My beautiful Annabel Lee,"
it seems quite as effective in convincing us of her beauty as a comparison to a violet or to a star. When the stars rise Poe feels the bright eyes of his Annabel Lee. A star suggests a bright eye before it suggests an individual, but when Wordsworth thinks of Lucy, when he sees the star Poe feels the brightness of Annabel's eyes. One is an intellectual figure, the other is emotional. Wordsworth tells us about Lucy until he reaches the last line. But the spirit of the line "O the difference to me," breathes throughout Poe's entire poem. He tells us nothing about his maiden save that she is beautiful. His theme from first to last is
"O the difference to me."
Even when Wordsworth selects a theme from nature his reflective habits soon carry him from his subject to some suggested events in the past or future. In his poem "To the Cuckoo," after he has stated his subject he begins to tell of feelings which the cuckoo aroused in his boyhood and this relation to his present mood. He closes a poem "To the Skylark" with these words:
"Type of the wise, who soar, but never roam—
True to the kindred points of Heaven and Home." This figure can appeal only to the intellect. The concrete idea of the soaring bird is compared with the abstract idea of wisdom. Moreover it illustrates Wordsworth's belief that a poem should point to something beyond itself and that every natural object should carry with it some moral.
Turning to Poe's poems we find them quite free from the reflective and the intellectual element. On the other hand they have a quality that is almost lacking in Wordsworth. This quality is tone color. The beauty of Annabel Lee depends largely on the alternating refrain,
In the kingdom by the sea, My beautiful Annabel Lee.
If this refrain were struck out the thought would suffer very little, but the poem would then be a song without its musical accompaniment. Effect and not thought, beauty and not truth are Poe's aim. Wordsworth calls his maiden Lucy because it is a name familiar to common peo-