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SERENADE

This was printed as “by E. A. Poe” in the Baltimore Saturday Visiter of April 20, 1833, after its receipt from “E. A. P.” had been acknowledged in the issue of April 13. It was completely forgotten until in 1917 Professor John C. French located a file of the paper for 1833 in the hands of Miss Elizabeth Cloud Seip. He reprinted “Serenade” in the Dial for January 31, 1918 (64:121), and again in Modern Language Notes, May 1918 (33:257-258). Killis Campbell inserted a text in the second issue of his Poems at p. 137. In line 12, I change the sure misprint “mountains,” to “mountain's” but otherwise follow the original printing.

[page 223, continued:]

NOTES

5  The spelling “dies” for “dyes” was tolerated in 1833.

7  Here Poe seems to know that all seven Pleiades are visible. See notes on “Israfel,” line 14.

9  See the notes on “An Acrostic” (“Elizabeth it is in vain”), above, for Poe's use of a different story about the beloved of the Moon. Athenaeus (XIII, xvii), citing a lost work of Licymnius of Chios, says that Endymion sleeps with open eyes.

11f.  Compare Poe's motto for his tale, “Silence — a Fable,” which he takes from Alcman and freely translates, “The mountain pinnacles slumber; valleys, crags and caves are silent.” The original fragment may be seen in any collection of the Greek lyric poets.

12  Compare to this “Tamerlane,” line 139, in the versions of 1829 and 1845: “We walk’d together on the crown / Of a high mountain,” and “Fairy-Land” [I] (1829) lines 16-17: “... on the crown / Of a mountain's eminence.”

14f.  Compare Poe's tale “The Sphinx”: “The very air from the South seemed to me redolent of death.”

17  No lady of Poe's acquaintance named Adeline has been found; the word means “of noble birth.”