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I Dedicate This Volume

With the most Enthusiastic Admiration

And with the most Sincere Esteem.

E. A. P.

66

PREFACE TO THE POEMS.

(EDITION OF 1845.)

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THESE trifles are collected and republished chiefly with a view to their redemption from the many improvements to which they have been subjected while going the rounds of the press. 'I am naturally anxious that if what I have written is to circulate at all, it should circulate as I wrote it. In defence of my own taste, nevertheless, it is incumbent on me to say that I think nothing in this volume of much value to the public, or very creditable to myself. Events not to be controlled have prevented me from making, at any time, any serious effort in what, under happier circumstances, would have been the field of my choice. With me poetry has been not a purpose, but a passion; and the passions should be held in reverence; they must they cannot at will be excited with an eye to the paltry compensations, or the more paltry commendations, of mankind.

not

E. A. P.

'Poe first printed: "If what I have written is to circulate at all, I am naturally anxious that it should circulate as I wrote it," and then changed it, in the J. Lorimer Graham copy, to the form above. - - ED.

(xlvii)

NOTE BY POE.

PREFIXED TO "POEMS OF YOUTH" IN THE EDITION OF 1845.

PRIVATE reasons some of which have reference to the sin of plagiarism, and others to the date of Tennyson's first poems have induced me, after some hesitation, to re-publish these, the crude compositions of my earliest boyhood. They are printed verbatim without alteration from the original edition — the date of which is too remote to be judiciously acknowledged. E. A. P.

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