free-verse16 lines
Elizabeth
by Edgar Allan PoeElizabeth, it surely is most fit
[Logic and common usage so commanding]
In thy own book that first thy name be writ,
Zeno and other sages notwithstanding;
And I have other reasons for so doing
Besides my innate love of contradiction;
Each poet, if a poet, in pursuing
The muses thro' their bowers of Truth or Fiction,
Has studied very little of his part,
Read nothing, written less, in short's a fool
Endued with neither soul, nor sense, nor art,
Being ignorant of one important rule,
Employed in even the theses of the school,
Called, I forget the heathenish Greek name
[Called anything, its meaning is the same]
"Always write first things uppermost in the heart."