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Text: Edgar Allan Poe, "To Margaret" (A), undated manuscript, about 1827




TO MARGARET.

Who hath seduced thee to this foul revolt
From the pure well of Beauty undefiled?
So banish from true wisdom to prefer                    
Such squalid wit to honourable rhyme?
To write? To scribble? Nonsense and no more?       
I will not write upon this argument
To write is human -- not to write divine.
  

} Milton Par. Lost Bk. I
} Somebody
} Cowper's Task, Book I

} Shakespeare
} do. Trolius & Cressida
} Pope Essay on Man








Notes:

To the right of each line, Poe gives the source from which it was adapted. Here, we have been forced to give multiple small gull brackets, while Poe draws one large gull bracket to divide this column from the text. The reference of Cowper applies to the line marked and the following one.





 
[S:1 -MS, 1827] - Edgar Allan Poe Society of Baltimore - Works - Poems - To Margaret (A)