To Helen - 1848 Comments

Was it not fate (whose name is also sorrow) Understanding as Poe did that today's good fortune comes with a price. To be an island is to miss the romance but to find romance is to raise the stakes for loss. A quandary well understood by a man that was not speaking in speculative fiction but from dreadful first hand knowledge.

.........so beautifully penned and so poignant is this verse ★ They are my ministers- yet I their slave. Their office is to illumine and enkindle- My duty, to be saved by their bright light, And purified in their electric fire, And sanctified in their elysian fire. They fill my soul with Beauty (which is Hope) , And are far up in Heaven- the stars I kneel to In the sad, silent watches of my night; While even in the meridian glare of day I see them still- two sweetly scintillant Venuses, unextinguished by the sun!

A poem depicting great conflict within this master bards mind, and overall life....Love was lost too many times...His vices well indulged to numb his misery...Yet, Edgar Allan Poe stood and to this day stands alone on his very own literary tier of excellence! ~You were & in many ways still the MAN, Dr. Poe! ~Frank James Christopher Ryan, Jr.~

Beautiful.................