The Bridgeport times and evening farmer., 1919-10-07
POE, MASTER OF VERSE COULD NOT GET RECOGNITION France First Recognized His As Great
 Man. FOUGHT POVERT,
 ALI HIS LIFE From His Stripped Exist ence Rang Cry of His
 Soul.

as Leader of Men, as a torch in let l ters," as the great composer, has had 1 to die to be recognized; or, his great powers have been first acclaimed in a distant land from his own. It was this with Edgar Allan Poe. France was the first to say definitely, 'This
 man is a master!" Baudelaire and Lemaitre opened the eyes of Poe's 1 cOuntrymen to his genius.
 Today, Oct. ', commentaries the | death, in 1849, of Edgar Allan Poe 1 He died at the Marine Hospital in 1 Baltimore, at the age of 37. In the l first balloting on names for admission l to the Hall of Fame in America, the | Sewing-nachine man-HoWe got
 many more votes than Poe
 One can almost hear the howl Of l laughter among the spirits Of the 1 Golden Age of Letters. Could not the 1 blazing eye have told his contempor-
 aries: could not the pile of brow like 1 a marble ascension of Parnassus 1 have declared that in this man dwelt | the Sacred Fire. The bulb of the forehead was like a dome. No. They were too blind | to see 1t. For nearly 25 years after his death Poe was not a very im- portant figure in the eyes of his countrymen.
 For the "Raven'---that classic---Poe received the sum of $10., and it was rejected five times. But the Western Hemisphere has wakened up to him now that his eyeIids are closed in the eternal sleep.
 Edgar Allan Poe, poet, romancer and critic, was born in 1909, in Bos- ton, Mass. His father was an actor and his mother, the leading lady in a theatrical company at the time that Poe was born. The writer main
 tains that tremendous prenatal in f1uence helped to shape the peculiar trend of Poe's genius. In his work he paints the picture-the missing
 scene-with such vtvidness that the
 reader seems to be in the pretense
 of the drama being enacted. and can
 hear the tragic voices. To explain the especial direction that his gifts chose-or were impe1Ied to-the Grotesque, the Terrible, the Tragic,
 the Fatal? It cannot be "explatned." He stands alone, with a halo of
 mystery, gloom and terror about him"
 When he was only three years old.
 he was adopted by MT. John Allan,
 a wealthy merchant of Richmond,
 Va. The family went to England.
 Poe went to school at Stoke New ington. When the family returned to
 America he was sent to school in Richmond. And then to the Univer-
 sity of Virginia. He seems to have
 been removed from the University by
 his patron for gambling debts. In 1927 he parted from his patron,
 and went to Boston. The succeeding
 facts of his bitter years are soon
 told: the wanderings; quarrels. ex-
 treme poverty, creditable service in
 patron, brief life at West Point,
 thrown on his own resources, the near starvation, indulgence in wine,
 love, passion, iso1ation-and within it all, and out of 1t all came the too small sheaf of imm ortal poems, a
 few volumes of amazing short stories,
 and trenchant criticism. Follow the
 bitter, blighted years; the cruel, hun
 gry days within which blazed the
 enormous genius of the poems: 'To
 Helen,'' and "Israfe1," and "The Ra-
 ven,' and "Annabal Lee," and the
 grim masterpiece, "The Fall of the
 House of Ushur.''
 Staff contributor on different mag
 azines; struggling on, as editor; and
 putting forth some of the finest (and
 truest) criticism in the language while the grewsome, tragic and intel
 lectua1 Tales were appearing from
 time to time.
 In 1847 he removed to the tiny
 cottage at Fordham in the suburbs
 poverty, the overwhelment came to
 the poet, the death of his girl
 bride, Virginia Clemm who claimed
 all his soul-and such a soul!
 He removed to Richmond. The fatal mistake-but let us be lenient,
 the mistake was made from the
 hfdeous pressure of poverty which
 all men of letters seem to have ex-
 perienced - was in Poe's plan to
 marry a rich widow of Richmond.
 While on a visit to Baltimore to
 make preparations for marriage in
 which, doubtless, his heart was not
 Poe succumbed. All was over. Par
 tially intoxicated, he was recognized
 in a rum-shop, but he was in state
 of stupor Removed to the Marine
 Hospital, he remained in de1irium
 till the end came. All was over-the
 years of the lapses, the indulgence
 in wine, the fatal grasp on opium to sustain the vision of the poet; the bit ter rush against poverty; the repent ance and the falling again; the suc-
 cesses so short-lived, and the proud stiffening of his mental spine against
 dull digs at him from petty men whose Pegasus" was an ass, and
 whose Flights the arnblings of a rockinghorse. There is now a S1o0,- 900 park around Poe's humble cot
 tage at Fordham where Poe and his
 wife were destitute. 70 Jerusalem Jerusalem, that stonest the prophetsI' R11% "a ho Iyf,, to the gods for the bitter, pinched life of Edgar Allan Poe. From the stripped life rang the cry of his soul that has forced the cold world to it's knees to his genius. Poe could never have written the "Ra- ven" amidst a pretty landscape garden laid out in formal Hamburg edging embroidery of flower beds.