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[page 183, column 2, continued:]
Another Poem Claimed for Poe.
TO THE EDITORS OF THE CRITIC:
Mr. H. W. Austin's championship of Edgar Poe as the author of ‘Lilitha, Princess of Ghouls,’ in the April number of The Southern Bivouac, calls to mind a poem published some years ago by the Kokomo (Ind.) Dispatch, which has not received the recognition it deserves, as being almost conclusively from the pen of Poe. It is entitled ‘Leonainie,’ and is as follows:
Leonainie — angels named her,
And they took the light
Of the laughing stars, and framed her
In a smile of white;
And they made her hair of gloomy
Midnight, and her eyes of bloomy
Moonshine, and they brought her to me
In a solemn night.
In a solemn night of summer,
When my heart of gloom
Blossomed up to greet the comer
Like a rose in bloom;
All forebodings that distressed me
I forgot as joy caressed me,
(Lying joy that caught and pressed me
In the arms of doom!)
Only spake the little lisper
In the angel tongue;
Yet I, listening, heard her whisper:
Songs are only sung
Here below that they may grieve you —
Tales are told you to deceive you —
So must Leonainie leave you
While her love is young.
Then God smiled and it was morning,
Matchless and supreme;
Heaven's glory seemed adorning
Earth with its esteem;
Every heart but mine seemed gifted
With the voice of prayer, and lifted
Where my Leonainie drifted
From me like a dream.
The poem is — or was — in the possession of an inhabitant of Kokomo whose grandfather kept an inn in Chesterfield, [page 184:] little village near Richmond, Va. One night a young man, who showed plainly the marks of dissipation, appeared at the door and requested a room, if one could be given him. He retired, and the inn people saw no more of him; for the following morning when they went to call him to breakfast he had disappeared, leaving only a book on the fly-leaf of which was the above poem, ‘written in Roman characters and almost as legible as print itself.’ The manuscript contains not an erasure or a single interlineated word, and is signed ‘E. A. P.’ The peculiarity of the writing, the description of the young man, and the characteristics of the poem point to Poe as the author. The evidence — external and internal — seems to be more than probable, — almost certain.
EDGAR BRENNER.
NEW HAVEN, CONN.
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Notes:
Neither “Lilitha” nor “Leonaine” are by Poe. Both were hoaxes, written to fool the unwary, with varying degrees of success.
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[S:0 - CNY, 1886] - Edgar Allan Poe Society of Baltimore - A Poe Bookshelf - Another Poem Claimed for Poe (Edgar Brenner, 1886)