The esteemed Reverend Rufus Griswold is everything I aspire to be, though I fear I shall never soar so quite as high as he"-from his resignation letter to Graham's Magazine

Then this ebony bird beguiling my sad fancy into smiling,By the grave and stern decorum of the countenance it wore,“Though thy crest be shorn and shaven, thou,” I said, “art sure no craven,Ghastly grim and ancient Raven wandering from the Nightly shore—Tell me what thy lordly name is on the Night’s Plutonian shore!” Quoth the Raven “Nevermore.

But our love was stronger by far than the loveOf those who were older than weOf many far wiser than weAnd neither the angels in heaven above,Nor the demons down under the sea,Can ever dissever my soul from the soulOf the beautiful Annabel Lee.

It is clear that a poem may be improperly brief. Undue brevity degenerates into mere epigrammatism. A very short poem, while now and then producing a brilliant or vivid, never produces a profound or enduring, effect. There must be the steady pressing down of the stamp upon the wax.

Melancholy is ... the most legitimate of all the poetical tones.

The word "Verse" is used here as the term most convenient for expressing, and without pedantry, all that is involved in the consideration of rhythm, rhyme, meter, and versification... the subject is exceedingly simple; one tenth of it, possibly may be called ethical; nine tenths, however, appertains to the mathematics.