SONNET- TO SCIENCE
Science! true daughter of Old Time thou art! Who alterest all things with thy peering eyes. Why preyest thou thus upon the poet's heart, Vulture, whose wings are dull realities? How should he love thee? or how deem thee wise, Who wouldst not leave him in his wandering To seek for treasure in the jewelled skies, Albeit he soared with an undaunted wing? Hast thou not dragged Diana from her car? And driven the Hamadryad from the wood To seek a shelter in some happier star? Hast thou not torn the Naiad from her flood, The Elfin from the green grass, and from me The summer dream beneath the tamarind tree?
VI. Reputation
• Nowadays, most of the critics all over the world have recognized the unique importance of Poe as a great writer of short stories, a poet of the first rank, and a critic of sharp insight. 1. He was the first to develop the short story as a distinctive art form and to elaborate criteria by which it can be judged. Therefore, he has often been regarded as the father of the modern short story. (Wu, 1998: 43) 2. He was widely recognized as father of detective story. 3. He was a great master of horror fiction and science fiction. 4. His writing and his literary theory has influenced the French symbolists and the devotees of “art for art’s sis one of Poe’s earliest poems, first published in 1831. Poe once acknowledged that the poem was inspired by his youthful admiration for Mrs. Jane Stith Stanard, mother of one of his classmates. However, the poem does not seem to depict a real woman but rather an ideal or classic beauty. Poe later identified Mrs. Stanard as “the first purely ideal love of my soul.”