Text: Edgar Allan Poe, “[To Helen [‘Thy Beauty is to me ...’]]” (Text-05c), Saturday Museum (Philadelphia), March 4, 1843, p. 1, col. 5


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­[page 1, column 5, continued:]

TO HELEN.

Helen, thy beauty is to me

Like those Nicéan barks of yore,

That gently, o'er a perfumed sea,

The weary, way-worn wanderer bore

To his own native shore.

On desperate seas long wont to roam,

Thy hyacinth hair, thy classic face,

Thy Naiad airs have brought me home

To the glory that was Greece

And the grandeur that was Rome.

Lo! in yon brilliant window-niche

How statue-like I see thee stand!

The agate lamp within thy hand,

Ah! Psyche, from the regions which

Are Holy-Land!” [[sic]]


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Notes:

This poem is quoted as part of a biographical article on Poe. (The present version of the poem differs from the February 25, 1843 text by removing a single comma in the third line, and omitting the indentation of the final line.)

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[S:1 - PSM, 1843 (photocopy)] - Edgar Allan Poe Society of Baltimore - Works - Poems - To Helen ["Thy Beauty is to me . . ."] (Text-05c)