Dear Griswold--I enclose perfect copies of the lines "For Annie" and "Annabel Lee"--in hope that you may make room for them. As regards "Lenore" (which you were kind enough to say you would insert) I would prefer the concluding stanza to run thus:--
Avaunt! avaunt! to friends from fiends the indignant ghost is riven--
From Hell unto a high estate far up within the Heaven--
From grief and moan to a golden throne beside the King of Heaven:--
Let no bell toll, then, lest her soul, amid its hallowed mirth,
Should catch the note, as it cloth float up from the damned Earth;
And I!--to-night my heart is light!--no dirge will I upraise
But waft the angel on her flight with a Paean of old days.It is a point of no great importance--but, in one of your editions, you have given my sister's age instead of mine. I was born Dec. 1813 --my sister Jan 1811.
Willis (whose opinion I highly value & of whose good word I have a right to be proud) has done me the honor to speak very pointedly in praise of "The Raven"--I enclose what he said--& if you could contrive to introduce it, you would render me an essential favor & greatly further my literary interests at a point where I am most anxious they should be advanced:--but I fear I am asking too much.
Truly Yours
E A Poe.
[S:0]