The Poe Museum Blog

To My Mother Because I feel that, in the heavens above,The angels, whispering to one another,Can find, among their burning terms of love,None so devotional as that of ‘mother’ —Therefore by that sweet name I long have called you —You, who are more than mother unto me,And fill my heart of hearts, where Death installed you,In setting my Virginia's spirit free.My mother — my own mother — who died early —Was but the mother of myself; but youAre mother to the one I loved so dearly,And thus are dearer than the mother I knew;By that infinity with which my wifeWas dearer to my soul than its ...

To Marie Louise Not long ago, the writer of these lines,In the mad pride of intellectuality,Maintained the “Power of Words” — denied that everA thought arose within the human brainBeyond the utterance of the human tongue:And now, as if in mockery of that boast,Two words — two foreign, soft dissyllables —Two gentle sounds made only to be murmuredBy angels dreaming in the moon-lit “dewThat hangs like chains of pearl on Hermon hill”Have stirred from out the abysses of his heartUnthought-like thoughts — scarcely the shades of thought —Bewildering fantasies — far richer visionsThan even the ...

To Mary Mary, amid the cares — the woesCrowding around my earthly path,(Sad path, alas! where growsNot ev’n one lonely rose,)My soul at least a solace hathIn dreams of thee, and therein knowsAn Eden of sweet repose.  And thus thy memory is to meLike some enchanted far-off isle,In some tumultuous sea —Some lake beset as lake can beWith storms — but where, meanwhile,Serenest skies continuallyJust o’er that one bright island smile. Edgar Allan Poe Originally Published in 1835 ...

To Margaret Who hath seduced thee to this foul revolt } Milton Par. Lost. Bk. IFrom the pure well of Beauty undefiled? } SomebodySo 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 & CressidaTo write is human — not to write divine. } Pope Essay on Man Edgar Allan Poe This poem was never ...