Edgar Allan Poe Poetry Quotes

#1. 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

Edgar Allan Poe

#2. The object, Truth, or the satisfaction of the intellect, and the object, Passion, or the excitement of the heart, are, although attainable, to a certain extent, in poetry, far more readily attainable in prose.

Edgar Allan Poe

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

Edgar Allan Poe

#4. With me poetry has not been a purpose, but a passion.

Edgar Allan Poe

#5. I have been happy, though in a dream.
I have been happy-and I love the theme:
Dreams! in their vivid colouring of life
As in that fleeting, shadowy, misty strife

Edgar Allan Poe

#6. Dreams! in their vivid coloring of life,
As in that fleeting, shadowy, misty strife
Of semblance with reality, which brings
To the delirious eye, more lovely things
Of Paradise and Love- and all our own!
Than young Hope in his sunniest hour hath known.

Edgar Allan Poe

#7. All religion, my friend, is simply evolved out of fraud, fear, greed, imagination, and poetry.

Edgar Allan Poe

#8. To elevate the soul, poetry is necessary.

Edgar Allan Poe

#9. All that we see and seem is but a dream within a dream.

Edgar Allan Poe

#10. I have not always been as now:
The fever'd diadem on my brow
I claim'd and won unsurprisingly-
Hath not the same fierce heirdom given
Rome to the Caeser-this is me?
The heritage of a kindly mind,
And a proud spirit which hath striven
Triumphantly with human kind.

Edgar Allan Poe

#11. Boston: Their hotels are bad. Their pumpkin pies are delicious. Their poetry is not so good.

Edgar Allan Poe

#12. I would define, in brief, the poetry of words as the rhythmical creation of beauty.

Edgar Allan Poe

#13. A mystery, and a dream, should my early life seem.

Edgar Allan Poe

#14. And here, in thought, to thee-
In thought that can alone,
Ascend thy empire and so be
A partner of thy throne,
By winged Fantasy,
My embassy is given,
Till secrecy shall knowledge be
In the environs of Heaven.

Edgar Allan Poe

#15. He must be theory-mad beyond redemption who ... shall ... persist in attempting to reconcile the obstinate oils and waters of Poetry and Truth.

Edgar Allan Poe

#16. The Bostonians are very well in their way. Their hotels are bad. Their pumpkin pies are delicious. Their poetry is not so good. Their Common is no common thing - and the duck pond might answer - if its answer could be heard for the frogs.

Edgar Allan Poe

#17. I have no words - alas! - to tell
The loveliness of loving well!

Edgar Allan Poe

#18. Ah, distinctly I remember it was in the bleak December
And each separate dying ember wrought its ghost upon the floor.
Eagerly I wished the morrow; - vainly I had sought to borrow
From my books surcease of sorrow - sorrow for the lost Lenore.

Edgar Allan Poe

#19. And thus thy memory is to me
Like some enchanted far-off isle
In some tumultuous sea
Some ocean throbbing far and free
With storms - but where meanwhile
Serenest skies continually
Just o'er that one bright island smile.

Edgar Allan Poe

#20. Every poem should remind the reader that they are going to die.

Edgar Allan Poe

#21. With me poetry has been not a purpose, but a passion; and the passions should be held in reverence: they must not - they cannot at will be excited, with an eye to the paltry compensations, or the more paltry commendations, of mankind.

Edgar Allan Poe

#22. The death of a beautiful woman is, unquestionably, the most poetical topic in the world.

Edgar Allan Poe

#23. Arms are around me, hands in my hair, lips moving across my cheek, over my neck, and I'm thinking about poetry, about Edgar Allan Poe and words that move like waves, people who move like waves together, and all the non-words we can make with our bodies.

Julie Cross

#24. Ah, dream too bright to last!
Ah, starry Hope! that didst arise
But to be overcast!
A voice from out the Future cries,
"On! on!" - but o'er the Past
(Dim gulf!) my spirit hovering lies
Mute, motionless, aghast.

Edgar Allan Poe

#25. 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.

Edgar Allan Poe

#26. If a poem hasn't ripped apart your soul; you haven't experienced poetry.

Edgar Allan Poe

#27. As a poet and as a mathematician, he would reason well; as a mere mathematician, he could not have reasoned at all.

Edgar Allan Poe

#28. 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.

Edgar Allan Poe

#29. Poetry is the rhythmical creation of beauty in words.

Edgar Allan Poe

#30. Music, when combined with a pleasurable idea, is poetry; music, without the idea, is simply music; the idea, without the music, is prose, from its very definitiveness.

Edgar Allan Poe

#31. Blood was its Avatar and its seal.

Edgar Allan Poe

#32. You call it hope - that fire of fire!
It is but agony of desire.

Edgar Allan Poe

#33. When I first started reading poetry, all the poets I read - Edgar Allan Poe, Oliver Wendell Holmes, John Greenleaf Whittier - were rhyme poets. That's what captured me.

Marv Levy