Edgar Allan Poe – Elizabeth

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“Elizabeth — it surely is most fit
(Logic and common usage so commanding)
In thy own book that first thy name be writ,
Zeno and other sages notwithstanding:
And I have other reasons for so doing
Besides my innate love of contradiction…”
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“Elizabeth” is a poem written by Edgar Allan Poe. It was first published in a manuscript that was written album of Poe’s cousin Elizabeth Herring. It was sold twice, the second time to a New York book dealer in 1903 after which it was reprinted by popular news outlets several times in that same year, including the Patterson Evening News, New York Herald, Washington Times, and Morning Post.

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Elizabeth – PDF

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Elizabeth – Mobile Friendly

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Elizabeth
by
Edgar Allan Poe

— — —

Elizabeth — it surely is most fit
(Logic and common usage so commanding)
In thy own book that first thy name be writ,
Zeno and other sages notwithstanding:
And I have other reasons for so doing
Besides my innate love of contradiction:
Each poet — if a poet — in pursuing
The muses thro’ their bowers of Truth or Fiction,
Has studied very little of his part,
Read nothing, written less — in short’s a fool
Endued with neither soul, nor sense, nor art,
Being ignorant of one important rule,
Employed in even the theses of the school —
Called —— I forget the heathenish Greek name —
(Called any thing, its meaning is the same)
“Always write first things uppermost in the heart”

Edgar