The poet and short-story writer Edgar Allan Poe was born 200 years ago, on January 19, 1809. He turned 200 the day before Obama's inauguration.
Poe is perhaps best known for The Raven, in which the narrator, mourning for his lost (deceased) love Lenore, grows gradually more and more unhinged as a raven repeats a single word, "Nevermore."
Leave my loneliness unbroken! -- quit the bust above my door!
Take thy beak from out my heart, and take thy form from off my door!"
Quoth the raven, "Nevermore."
Many of us read in school such creepy classics of gothic literature as The Fall of the House of Usher and the Tell-Tale Heart.
Some slightly less well-known poems of Poe also have wonderful language, including Ulalume and Annabel Lee.
Annabel Lee includes the lines
For the moon never beams without bringing me dreams
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;
And the stars never rise but I feel the bright eyes
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;
And so, all the night-tide, I lie down by the side
Of my darling - my darling - my life and my bride,
In the sepulchre there by the sea -
In her tomb by the sounding sea.
and was parodied by C.F. Lummis in his poem Cannibalee.
And all the night-tide she is restless inside,
Is my still indigestible dinner-belle bride,
In her pallid tomb, which is Me,
In her solemn sepulcher, Me.
Traces of Poe remain. If you visit the University of Virginia, you can see his room in a row of old student rooms, still maintained today - number 13. Every January 19, an anonymous person places some cognac on his grave, located in a small churchyard on a busy corner in Baltimore.
Happy 200th birthday to another American original, Mr. Poe!