Page:Edgar Allan Poe - how to know him.djvu/231

THE POET 211 ���ISRAFEL (1831) �And the angel Israfel [whose heart-strings are a lute, and] who has the sweetest voice of all God's creatures. KORAN. But the bracketed words are Poe's insertion to make the text fit the poem. �[The sub-title might well be phrased "The Influ- ence of Environment on the Poet." The last stanza is Poe's apologia. Certainly this stanza would make a better epitaph for a Poe monument than that suggested by Longfellow, �And the fever called "Living" Is conquered at last, �from the poem For Annie. Nowhere else in Poe's writings is there so violent an inversion of the normal order of words as in �But the skies that angel trod, for �But that angel trod the skies.] �In Heaven a spirit doth dwell �Whose heart-strings are a lute; None sing so wildly well As the angel Israfel, And the giddy stars (so legends tell) Ceasing their hymns, attend the spell �Of his voice, all mute. �Tottering above �In her highest noon, �The enamoured moon Blushes with love, �While, to listen, the red levin �(With the rapid Pleiads, even, �Which were seven) �Pauses in Heaven. �And they say (the starry choir �And the other listening things) That Israfeli's fire Is owing to that lyre �By which he sits and sings The trembling living wire �Of those unusual strings. ��� �