Poem - "Elizabeth" by Edgar Allan Poe

"Elizabeth" 
by Edgar Allan Poe


Elizabeth, it surely is most fit


[Logic and common usage so commanding]

In thy own book that first thy name be writ,

Zeno 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 anything, its meaning is the same]

"Always write first things uppermost in the heart."