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In his prose Poe usually avoided rhyme except for comic effect. There are in the tales, however, three examples of rhyming prose of the most serious kind. These are here collected.
1. In all versions of “Morella,” written about 1834 and first published in the Southern Literary Messenger, April 1835, the heroine says to her husband:
The days have never been when thou couldst love me — but her whom in life thou didst abhor, in death thou shalt adore.
2. In all versions of “Eleonora,” written in 1841 and first printed in The Gift for 1842, a rhyme is introduced thus:
I wedded; — nor dreaded the curse I had invoked; and its bitterness was not visited upon me.
3. “The Masque of the Red Death,” written in 1842 and first printed in Graham's Magazine for May of that year, has in all versions a highly wrought metrical and rhymed conclusion:
And the life of the ebony clock went out with that of the last of the gay. And the flames of the tripods expired. And Darkness and Decay and the Red Death held illimitable dominion over all.
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Notes:
None.
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[S:1 - TOM1P, 1969] - Edgar Allan Poe Society of Baltimore - Editions-The Collected Works of Edgar Allan Poe (T. O. Mabbott) (Appendix I-Serious Rhymes in Prose)