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ELIZABETH — it surely is most fit
[Logic and common usage so commanding]
In thy own book that first thy name be writ,
Zeno(1) and other sages notwithstanding:
And I have other reasons for so doing
Besides my innate love of contradiction:
Each poet — if a poet — in pursuing
The muses thro’ their bowers of Truth or Fiction,
Has studied very little of his part,
Read nothing, written less — in short's a fool
Endued with neither soul, nor sense, nor art,
Being ignorant of one important rule,
Employed in even the theses of the school —
Called —— I forget the heathenish Greek name —
[Called any thing, its meaning is the same]
“Always write first things uppermost in the heart.”
[The following footnote appears at the bottom of page 140:]
1 It was a saying of this philosopher “that one's own name should never appear in one's own book.”
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Notes:
None.
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[S:0 - JHW11, 1911] - Edgar Allan Poe Society of Baltimore - Works - Elizabeth (ed. J. H. Whitty, 1911)