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PAGE references for the periodicals to which Henry Poe is known to have contributed are given below. A few notes on persons and things alluded to have been added in brief compass. These are indeed less exhaustive than we could wish; perhaps later students may add to our knowledge of these writings. Henry frequently echoed the greater writers of his day — we have referred little to the reminiscences which may strike an observant reader of the Romantic Poets, except in our notes on Edgar's poems. Six of the quotations in Henry's poems remain unlocated still — see pages 40, 44, 47, 61, and 65.
I. Henry Poe's contributions to the Philadelphia Saturday Evening Post for 1827, Volume VI.
JACOB’S DREAM No. 286, p. 1; January 20.
See Genesis xxviii for the subject. The quotation “contrite heart” is however from Psalm li, 17. In the 27th line the Post misprints “your” for “yon” and in the 58th “wakes” for “makes”.
PSALM 139TH No. 288, p. 1; February 3.
II. Henry Poe's contributions to the Baltimore North American for 1827, Volume I.
ON THE DEATH OF MISS E. S. B. No. 11, p. 87; July 28.
No such lady has been identified through the death notices available.
OH, GIVE THAT SMILE No. 12, p. 96; August 4.
An air, I attempt from love's sickness to fly from Henry Purcell's Indian Queen was still popular in the early 19th century (Cummings, Purcell, p. 61) but Henry may name correctly an ephemeral song, not found by us.
IN A POCKET-BOOK, ETC. No. 13, p. 102; August 11.
MONTEVIDEO No. 19, pp. 146-147; September 22. [page 92:]
TO R. No. 19, p. “452” (152); September 22.
R. may stand for Rosa. This is a bit of evidence in favor of the theory Henry's sweetheart, as well as his sister, bore the name of Rose.
[“I’VE LOVED THEE”] No. 20, p. 160; September 29.
This is much in the style of Edgar's early verse.
[“SCENES OF MY LOVE”] No. 21, p. 163; October 6.
A Byronic poem — probably this, and the two poems preceding refer to one affair of Henry Poe's.
THE PIRATE No. 24, p. 189; October 27.
The lines are from Byron's Don Juan, IV, xi, 7-8. That the opening stanzas of this canto were familiar to Edgar Poe is witnessed by his quoting IV, vi, 3 in the twelfth item of his Pinakidia.
A FRAGMENT No. 25, p. 196; November 3.
“And come it slow, etc.” Scott's Marmion, II, xxx, 11-12.
[“DESPAIR”] No. 25, p. 200; November 3.
RECOLLECTIONS No. 26, p. 205; November to.
Le Sage's hero, Gil Blas, dines constantly at Spanish inns — but we do not know just what ragoilts Henry Poe has in mind. See Book IV, Chap. ix, however.
LINES WRITTEN EXTEMPORE ETC. No. 26, p. 208; November 10.
ON SEEING A LADY SLEEPING No. 27, p. 216; November 17.
WATERS OF LIFE No. 28, p. 224; November 24.
Poems by Edgar Allan Poe sent by William Henry Poe to the Baltimore North American, 1827.
1. [“THE HAPPIEST DAY”] No. 8, p. 144; September 15.
This had earlier appeared in the Tamerlane volume at pages 33-34. In the second line Poe seems to echo Byron's Fare Thee Well, xiv, 3: Sear’d in heart, and lone, and blighted which probably influenced Politian, VII (IV) 28, and possibly Tamerlane (1827 version) 1. 28 as well.
In line 23, Prof. Killis Campbell hears an echo of Byron's Manfred, I, i, 233; —
An essence which hath strength to kill.
2. DREAMS No. 23, p. 184; October 20.
This had appeared in the Tamerlane volume at pages 26-27.
Prof. Campbell points out that lines 17-18 echo Byron's The Dream, lines 19f
The mind can make
Substance, and people planets of its own
With beings brighter than have been.
The lines also perhaps affected Poe's A Dream Within a Dream ll. 6-7.
Line 19 recurs in part in the first line of the second To Helen
I saw thee once — once only — years ago. [page 93:]
THE first discovery of William Henry Poe as a contributor to the North American was made when Dr. Mabbott observed one of the two of Edgar Poe's poems over the letters W. H. P. This occurred in the fall of 1924, when he and Capt. F. L. Pleadwell were seated together, examining the Library of Congress file, in a search for periodical publications of Pinkney's works. See the brief notice of this in Notes and Queries, April 3, 1926, (Vol. 150, p. 241). The two poems in the Saturday Evening Post were found later by Dr. Mabbott in searching for Pinkney's poems. Rumors have reached us of other writings of Henry Poe — but on authority of a very doubtful character. The verses Oh Tempora! Oh Mores!, first printed in the Baltimore No Name Magazine of October, 1889, might be considered as possibly Henry's, though the general testimony is that they are ‘prentice work of Edgar's. It is probable that much verse of Henry Poe's, and perhaps some of Edgar's, has perished with the now lost literary weeklies of the late twenties and early thirties. Mr. Allen discovered the date of Henry's death, hitherto incorrectly given, the connection of Merlin with the Poe story, and assembled the biographical data. The writing of the book is the result of collaboration.
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Notes:
William Fearing Gill (1878) quotes two poems, stated as being by Henry, as “some specimens of his verse contributed to the ‘Minerva,’ a weekly paper conducted by Mr. J. H. Hewitt, of Baltimore” (pp. 43-44). Thomas Ollive Mabbott also adds a few more poems in the Appendix V, part I, of his 1969 edition of Edgar Allan Poe's poems, citing but without reproducing the text of either of the poems quoted by Gill.
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[S:0 - WHP26, 1926] - Edgar Allan Poe Society of Baltimore - Bookshelf - Poe's Brother: The Poems of William Henry Leonard Poe (H. Allen and T. O. Mabbott) (Chapter 06)