It must be believed that Poe appropriated, with the finest artistic discernment, the vitalizing power of rhythm and rhyme, and nowhere with more skill than in The Bells. It is the climax of his art on its technical side.
Read the poem and think back over the course of the development of poet's art-instincts.
[HARRISON ROBERTSON]
Thomas Harrison Robertson, erstwhile poet and novelist, and now a well-known journalist, was born at Murfreesboro, Tennessee, January 16, 1856. He was educated at the University of Virginia, after which he settled at Louisville, Kentucky, as a newspaper man, verse-maker, and fictionist. Mr. Robertson has held almost every position on The Courier-Journal, being managing editor at the present time. He won his first fame with a Kentucky racing story, the best one ever written, entitled How the Derby Was Won, which was originally published in Scribner's Magazine for August, 1889. Ten years later his first long novel, If I Were a Man (New York, 1899), "the story of a New-Southerner," appeared, and it was followed by Red Blood and Blue (New York, 1900); The Inlander (New York, 1901); The Opponents (New York, 1902); and his most recent novel, The Pink Typhoon (New York, 1906), an automobile love story of slight merit. In the early eighties "T. H. Robertson" wrote some of the very cleverest verse, so-called society verse for the most part, that has ever been done by a Kentucky hand; but he soon abandoned "Thomas" and the Muse. The writer has always held that our literature lost a charming poet to win a feeble fictionist when Harrison Robertson changed literary steads, although his How the Derby Was Won must not be forgotten. Now, however, he has given up the literary life for the daily grind of a great newspaper; and he may never publish another poem or novel. More's the pity!
Bibliography. The Book Buyer (April, 1900; April, 1901); Scribner's Magazine (October, 1907); The Bookman (December, 1910).
TWO TRIOLETS[14]
[From A Vers de Socíeté Anthology, by Caroline Wells (New York, 1907)]