The Star in the West

18 THE STAR IN THE WEST or 'midst the stars in search of the Psyche of events ; dreams almost monstrous in their intensity seize our troubled brain , deep problems of psychology , of sex , of the carnal , of the pathic , and of evil , all inter webbed and woven with the eternal filament of good . And so if we read this strange poet aright , we shall see as we progress onwards , that he has struck a sonorous note from the rim of Time , fulfilled of the knowledge of good and evil , sweet to the ears of those who are born children by the daughters of men to the sons of God , sweet as that mystic fruit was to the lips of Eve , daughter of God , child of the mystic Man . But we must speed on , taking in this chapter swift glances at the magnificent scenery that these volumes offer up to us , plucking the lilies of spring and the roses of summer , and weave them into a laureate wreath with the fiery leaves of the dying year . Poe , in that little masterpiece of his , “ The Poetic Principle , ” lays down that the value of a poem lies in the ratio of its elevating excitement , the excitement being the power it has in elevating the soul . And here we think , were Poe still living , he would have found no small part of his ideal realized . By soul we naturally do not mean a haloed fowl strumming dithy rambs on a harp , or the mere döppelganger of the living ; but that inner power of good and evil which lies latent in self , controlled by that intuitive con sciousness within us , and manifested in our appetites and desires ; this intangible soul aspiring upwards is called Virtue , sinking downwards Vice ; finding in finity in the conceptions of nether and upper , heaven and hell , paradise and gehenna ; and finality on earth , -its sporting ground . Further Poe states : that an