Before revision: In his essay "The Poetic Principle" (1850) Edgar Allan Poe argues: We have taken it into our heads that to write a poem simply for the poem's sake ... and to acknowledge such to have been our design, would be to confess ourselves radically wanting in the true poetic dignity and force:– but the simple fact is that if we but permit ourselves to look into our own souls we should immediately there discover that under the sun there neither exists nor can exist any work more thoroughly dignified, more supremely noble, than this very poem, this poem per se, this poem which is a poem and nothing more, this poem written solely for the poem's sake.
After revision: In his essay "The Poetic Principle" (1850) Edgar Allan Poe argues: We have taken it into our heads that to write a poem simply for the poem's sake ... and to acknowledge such to have been our design, would be to confess ourselves radically wanting in the true poetic dignity and force:– but the simple fact is that would we but permit ourselves to look into our own souls we should immediately there discover that under the sun there neither exists nor can exist any work more thoroughly dignified, more supremely noble, than this very poem, this poem per se, this poem which is a poem and nothing more, this poem written solely for the poem's sake.