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POEMS WRITTEN IN YOUTH.*
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SCIENCE! true daughter of Old Time thou art!
Who alterest all things with thy peering eyes.
Why preyest thou thus upon the poet's heart,
Vulture, whose wings are dull realities?
How should he love thee? or how deem thee wise,
Who wouldst not leave him in his wandering
To seek for treasure in the jewelled skies
Albeit he soared with an undaunted wing?
Hast thou not dragged Diana from her car?
And driven the Hamadryad from the wood
To seek a shelter in some happier star?
Hast thou not torn the Naiad from her flood,
The Elfin from the green grass, and from me
The summer dream beneath the tamarind tree?
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[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 53:]
* Private reasons — some of which have reference to the sin of plagiarism, and others to the date of Tennyson's first poems† — have induced me, after some hesitation, to re-publish these, the crude compositions of my earliest boyhood. They are printed verbatim — without alteration from the original edition — the date of which is too remote to be judiciously acknowledged.
E. A. P.
† This refers to the accusations brought against Poe that he was a copyist of Tennyson. — Ed.
Notes:
None.
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[S:0 - JHI, 1875] - Edgar Allan Poe Society of Baltimore - A Poe Bookshelf - Sonnet -- To Science (J. H. Ingram, 1875)