[[What is likely the initial part of this manuscript is a fragment
with
some stanzas from Hirst's "The Owl."]]
[[This portion of the MS is from a fragment once owned by Oliver Barrett about 1927. It is currently in the Berg Collection of the New York Public Library:]]
In a late number of [["]]The Philadelphia Saturday Courier" Mr. Hirst has taken it into his head, anonymously, to accuse me of pilfering from him. He says :
"We have spoken of the mystical appearance of Astarte as a fine touch of art. This is borrowed, and from the first canto of Hirst's 'Endymion', published years since in 'The Southern Literary Messenger' —[[This portion of the MS is missing, but included here from the printed form in Works (1850) since it is specifically referred to in the "Koester" fragment:]]
[[This portion of the MS is from a fragment once owned by William Koester:]]Slowly Endymion bent, the light ElysianAstarte is another name for Venus; and when we remember that Diana is about to descend to Endymion — that the scene which is about to follow is one of love — that Venus is the star of love — and that Hirst, by introducing it as he does, shadows out his story exactly as Mr. Poe introduces his Astarte — the plagiarism of idea becomes evident.
Flooding his figure. Kneeling on one knee,
He loosed his sandals, lea
And lake and woodland glittering on his vision —
A fairy landscape, bright and beautiful,
With Venus at her full.
All this is about a poem published anonymously in "The American Review", and of which I am by no means sure (although Mr Hirst is) that I am the author. It is called "Ulalume." The passage about Astarte, which Mr H. says I purloined from the already quoted passage from Endymion, runs thus:
And now, as the night was senescentThe resemblance between the two passages can now be satisfactorily determined by any reader, for himself, without >>any<< assistance from me; and at this point the topic may stand. <X> Let me add, however, one suggestion to the multitude of literary hints which I have already given Mr Hirst, privately, and of which he has so plentifully availed himself that I sometimes fancy his poems to be merely our conversations done into verse — let me just suggest to him that, in the concluding two lines of his own passage as quoted, there is an identical rhyme — no doubt an oversight — but one which may as well be remedied in a second edition.
And star-dials pointed to morn —
As the star-dials hinted of morn —
At the end of our path a liquescent
And nebulous lustre was born,
Out of which a miraculous crescent
Arose with a duplicate horn —
Astarte's bediamonded crescent,
Distinct with its duplicate horn.
In the meantime, here is a passage from a little poem which I really did write — "Lenore":
"How shall the ritual, then, be read? — the requiem how be sungAnd here, again, is a passage from a poem by Mr Hirst, published in the last January number of "Graham's Magazine":
By you — by yours, the evil eye — by yours, the slanderous tongue
That did to death the innocence that died and died so young?"
"Mine the tongue that wrought this evil — mine the false and slanderous tongueNow my objection, in this case, is not to the larceny per se. I have always told Mr Hirst that, provided he stole my poetry in a reputable manner, he might steal just as much of it as he thought proper — and, so far, he has behaved very well, in largely availing himself of the privilege. But what I do object to, is the being robbed in bad grammar. It is not that Mr Hirst did this thing — but that he has went and done did it.
That done to death the Lady Gwineth — O, my soul is sadly wrung !
'Demon! devil!' groaned the warrior — 'devil of the evil eye !
Look upon the awful horror wrought by thy atrocious lie!' "
[It is assumed that Poe prepared this item as part of his "Marginalia" series. At one time, the Koester portion of the manuscript was owned by Edmund C. Stedman, who reproduced the beginning of the manuscript in the 1895 Woodberry/Stedman edition of Poe's works.]
[Poe wrote to Hirst on May 3, 1849, "I am glad to hear that you are getting out 'Endymion', of which you must know that I think highly — very highly — if I did fall asleep while hearing it read."]
[Poe's poem "Ulalume" was reprinted in the Saturday Courier for January 22, 1848. The text was taken from the Home Journal, itself a reprint from the American Whig Review. The text quoted from "Ulalume" is identical to that first printed in the American Review for December 1847.]
[Mabbott dates the Koester MS as 1849 (Mabbott, Poems, 1969, p. 415), although a date of 1848 seems more likely. The earlier dating is partially suggested by Poe's playful comments about being or not being the author of "Ulalume." Poe was generally known as the author of "Ulalume" by November of 1848, when the poem appeared in the Providence Journal, with an introductory notice which specifically named him. The earlier date is also suggested by the second of Hirst's poems quote by Poe, "The Penance of Roland," published in "Graham's Magazine" for January, 1848. (The excerpt quoted is the third stanza of part IV, on page 29, col. 1.) J. H. Whitty, in the introduction to his edition of Poe's poems, mentions this notice of Hirst and says, "It had been sent to Graham's Magazine, but was not published (Whitty, Poems, 1911, p. lvi). Five installments of "Marginalia" appeared in Graham's, two in 1846 (before the publication of "Ulalume") and three in the first quarter of 1848. Whitty's remark is probably based on the letter by Samuel D. Patterson, Jr. to E. C. Stedman, November 26, 1881. Patterson's father assumed the role of publisher of Graham's Magazine in August 1848. This manuscript was apparently one of several Poe items kept by the Patterson, of which two are now in the Koester collection at the University of Texas and the others in the Huntington Library. All but the last few lines of this portion of the MS are reproduced in the sale catalogue for Rare Books . . . Collected by the Late A. Edward Newton, New York: Parke-Bernet Galleries, Inc., 1941, p. 25.]
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[S:0 - MS, @1848]