Text: Charles W. Kent (notes) Robert A. Stewart (variants) (ed. J. A. Harrison), “Notes to To M. L. S——,” The Complete Works of Edgar Allan Poe — Vol. VII: Poems (1902), 7:212

[page 212, continued:]

EDITOR’S NOTE.

This blank verse lyric is without real poetic merit.

N. P. Willis, editor of the Home Journal, introduced this poem in the following words:

“The following seems said over a hand clasped in the speaker's two. It is by Edgar A. Poe, and is evidently the pouring out of a very deep feeling of gratitude.”

See Vol. I. for the circumstances surrounding this poem to Mrs. Marie Louise Shew whose nursing probably saved Poe from death. Cf. “To Marie Louise.”