Notes:

In the manuscript, two lines are longer than would fit on the actual page. For line 12, the word “curl —” is squeezed in at the at the end of the previous line; and for line 13, the words “and careless curl.” are squeezed in at the end of the subsequent line. These anomalies have not been reproduced in the texts above.

This manuscript was once owned by Poe's friend, Henry Beck Hirst. It is now in the Humanities Research Center, University of Texas at Austin. (In the auction by Hirst's descendants, it is listed as item 563, and sold for $375.) Mabbott (Poems, 1:348) appears to assign the date of 1844 based on several facts. The text suggests an earlier form than that published in the American Review of July 1845. Poe left Philadelphia early in 1844, and Mabbott therefore presumes that it was given to Hirst before Poe and his family moved to New York. Hirst published a poem called “Eulalie Vere” in The Coming of the Mammoth, a copy of which was inscribed to Poe as “June 1845.” The same poem had been printed in Snowden's Ladies’ Companion for  June 1843, but with the title “Elenor Long.” The publication in 1845 of Hirst's poem suggests that he had seen Poe's poem prior to publication in the American Review, but after his own poem was published in June 1843.

Because it was probably a compositional draft of the poem, from which Poe would have made the fair copy for publication, the manuscript does not have a byline. A note written in brown ink at the top of the page, in an unknown hand but possibly by Hirst, reads “Original MS of Edgar Allan Poe.”