"Seldom we find," says Solomon Don Dunce,
"Half an idea in the profoundest sonnet.
Through all the flimsy things we see at once
As easily as through a Naples bonnet -
Trash of all trash! - how can a lady don it?
Yet heavier far than your Petrarchan stuff -
Owl-downy nonsense that the faintest puff
Twirls into trunk-paper the while you con it."
And, veritably, Sol is right enough.
The general tuckermanities are arrant
Bubbles - ephemeral and so transparent -
But this is, now - you may depend upon it -
Stable, opaque, immortal - all by dint
Of the dear names that he concealed within 't.
Did you like this poem? Why not receive free classic poems by email? SUBSCRIBE
More Poems by Edgar Allan Poe
• A Dream
• A Dream Within A Dream
• A Valentine
• Alone
• An Enigma
• Annabel Lee
• Bridal Ballad
• Dreamland
• Poe Dreams
• Eldorado
• Elizabeth Poe
• Eulalie
• Evening Star
• Fairy-Land
• Hymn
• Imitation
• Israfel
• Lenore
• Romance
• Serenade
• Song
• Spirits Of The Dead
• The Bells
• The City In The Sea Poe
• The Coliseum
• The Conqueror Worm
• The Happiest Day, The Happiest Hour
• The Haunted Palace
• The Raven
• The Sleeper
• The Valley Of Unrest
• To Helen
• To My Mother
• To One In Paradise
Also read poems by
• Alfred, Lord Tennyson
• Edgar Allan Poe
• Elizabeth Barrett Browning
• Emily Dickinson
• George Gordon, Lord Byron
• Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
• Hilaire Belloc
• John Donne
• John Keats
• Lewis Carroll
• Robert Browning
• Robert Burns
• Robert Herrick
• Robert Louis Stevenson
• Rudyard Kipling
• Samuel Taylor Coleridge
• Sarah Teasdale
• Thomas Hardy
• Walt Whitman
• William Blake
• William Butler Yeats
• William Wordsworth
Edgar Allan Poe An Enigma - Poem Lyrics - Edgar Allan Poe - An Enigma
