Day: September 6, 2022

To Margaret

Who hath seduced thee to this foul revolt } Milton Par. Lost. Bk. I
From the pure well of Beauty undefiled? } Somebody
So banished from true wisdom to prefer } Cowper’s Task, Book I  
Such squalid wit to honourable rhyme?
To write? To scribble? Nonsense and no more?   } Shakespeare
 I will not write upon this argument } do.Troilus & Cressida
To write is human — not to write divine. } Pope Essay on Man

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Edgar Allan Poe

This poem was never published during Poe’s lifetime

The text on the right refers to the source from which the line is derived from

To M. L. S.

Of all who hail thy presence as the morning —
Of all to whom thy absence is the night —
The blotting utterly from out high heaven
The sacred sun — of all who, weeping, bless thee
Hourly for hope — for life — ah! above all,
For the resurrection of deep-buried faith
In Truth — in Virtue — in Humanity —
Of all who, on Despair’s unhallowed bed
Laying them down to die, have suddenly risen
At thy soft-murmured words, “Let there be light!”
At the soft-murmured words that were fulfilled
In the seraphic glancing of thine eyes —
Of all who owe thee most — whose gratitude
Nearest approaches worship — oh, remember
The truest — the most fervently devoted,
And think that these weak lines are written by him —
By him who, as he pens them, thrills to think
His spirit is communing with an angel’s.

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Edgar Allan Poe

Originally Published in 1847