Text: Edgar Allan Poe, “To Mary [To Frances]” (Text-02), Southern Literary Messenger, July 1835, 1:636, col. 2


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[page 636, column 2, continued:]

For the Southern Literary Messenger.

TO MARY.

[column 1:]

Mary, amid the cares — the woes

Crowding around my earthly path,

(Sad path, alas! where grows

Not ev’n one lonely rose,)

My soul at least a solace hath

In dreams of thee, and therein knows

An Eden of sweet repose.

And thus thy memory is to me

Like some enchanted far-off isle,

In some tumultuous sea —

Some lake beset as lake can be

With storms — but where, meanwhile,

Serenest skies continually

Just o'er that one bright island smile.

E. A. P.


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Notes:

Mary is likely Mary Winfree, an acquaintance of Poe's of an old Richmond family.


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[S:1 - SLM, 1835] - Edgar Allan Poe Society of Baltimore - Works - Poems - To Mary [To Frances] (Text-02)