The Complete Tales & Poems of Edgar Allan Poe (Timeless Classics)

by Edgar Allan Poe

And so, being young and dipt in folly I fell in love with melancholy, And used to throw my earthly rest And quiet all away in jest— I could not love except where Death Was mingling his with Beauty’s breath— Or Hymen, Time, and Destiny Were stalking between her and me.

“I am not more certain that I breathe, than that the assurance of the wrong or error of any action is often the one unconquerable force which impels us.”

“I became insane,” he would write. “I drank—God only knows how often or how much. As a matter of course, my enemies referred the insanity to the drink, rather than the drink to the insanity. I had, indeed, nearly abandoned all hope of a permanent cure, when I found one in the death of my wife. This I can and do endure as becomes a man. It was the horrible, never-ending oscillation between hope and despair which I could not longer have endured, without total loss of reason. In the death of what was my life, then, I received a new but—Oh God!—how melancholy existence.”

“I have perseveringly struggled, against a thousand difficulties, and have succeeded, although not in making money, still in attaining a position in the world of Letters.” He added: “I have no reason to be ashamed.”