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Text: Edgar Allan Poe, "To Helen" (D), Saturday Museum (Philadelphia), March 4, 1843, p. 1, col. 5






[page 1, column 5, continued:]

[[. . . .]] Some of his best pieces, among others the subjoined lines to Helen, which were composed two years previously.

TO HELEN.

Helen, thy beauty is to me
    Like those Nicéan barks of yore
That gently, o'er a perfumed sea,
    The weary, wayworn wanderer bore
    To his own native shore.

On desperate seas long wont to roam,
    Thy hyacinth hair, thy classic face,
Thy Naiad airs have brought me home
    To the glory that was Greece
    And the grandeur that was Rome.

Lo! in that brilliant window-niche
    How statue-like I see thee stand!
The agate lamp within thy hand,
    Ah! Psyche, from the regions which
Are Holy-Land!

    These lines, by a boy of fourteen, will compare favorably with any written, at any age, by any poet whatsoever.

[[. . . .]]









Notes:

This poem is quoted as part of a biographical article on Poe by his friend, Henry Beck Hirst. The article is full of factual errors, likely attributable to Poe himself.







 
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