Notes:

Elizabeth was Elizabeth Rebecca Herring, Poe's cousin. This poem was written in her album by Poe, probably about 1833. When J. H. Whitty first printed this version of the poem in 1918, he gave the first line of the second stanza as “So with the world thy gentle way,” omitting the “s” from “ways.” This error remains in the subsequent edition, but has been corrected here. The singular form of the word is not only ungrammatical but ruins the rhyme with “praise.” Whitty also prints the title in all capital letters, but this has been assumed here as a convention for that edition and not likely to be a reflection of what Poe actually wrote.