Edgar Allan Poe

“ THE greater part of the Poems which compose this little volume were written in the year 1821-2, when the author had not completed his fourteenth year. They were of course not intended for publication; why they are now published concerns no one but himself. Of the smaller pieces very little need be said: they perhaps savour too much of egotism; but they were written by one too young to have any knowledge of the world but from his own breast.
In "Tamerlane" he has endeavoured to expose the folly of even risking the best feelings of the heart at the shrine of Ambition. ”

“ With a strange sound, as of a harp-string broken.
To awake us—'Tis a symbol and a token
4.
Of what in other worlds shall be—and given
In beauty by our God, to those alone
Who otherwise would fall from life and Heaven
Drawn by their heart's passion, and that tone,
That high tone of the spirit which hath striven
Tho' not with Faith—with godliness—whose throne
With desperate energy 't hath beaten down ”

“ He is conscious that in this there are many faults (besides that of the general character of the poem) , which he flatters himself he could, with little trouble, have corrected, but unlike many of his predecessors, has been too fond of his early productions to amend them in his old age.
He will not say that he is indifferent as to the success of these Poems—it might stimulate him to other attempts—but he can safely assert that failure will not at all influence him in a resolution already adopted. This is challenging criticism—let it be so. Nos hæc novimus esse nihil. ”

“ He was called Timur Bek as well as Tamerlane.
9.
The Zinghis' yet re-echoing fame.
The conquests of Tamerlane far exceeded those of Zinghis Khan. He boasted to have two-thirds of the world at his command.
10.
The sound of the coming darkness (known
To those whose spirits hearken)
I have often fancied that I could distinctly hear the sound of the darkness, as it steals over the horizon—a foolish fancy, perhaps, but not more unintelligible than to see music—
"The mind the music breathing from her face." ”

“ It blooms beautifully in the daylight, but withers towards evening, and by night its leaves appear totally shrivelled and dead. I have forgotten, however, to mention in the text, that it lives again in the morning. ”

“ Martial, the same motto from, quoted by Edgar Poe and by the Tennyson brothers, 8, 18.
North American Review, announcement of publication of Poe's first volume, 13.
Poe, Edgar Allan, his first volume of Poems, 3, 7.
"Poems by Two Brothers," 7, 8. ”