Enigma

by Edgar Allan Poe

Published 1833


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For the Baltimore Visiter

The noblest name in Allegory’s page, 
The hand that traced inexorable rage; 
A pleasing moralist whose page refined, 
Displays the deepest knowledge of the mind; 
A tender poet of a foreign tongue, 
(Indited in the language that he sung.)
A bard of brilliant but unlicensed page 
At once the shame and glory of our age, 
The prince of harmony and stirling sense, 
The ancient dramatist of eminence, 
The bard that paints imagination’s powers,
And him whose song revives departed hours, 
Once more an ancient tragic bard recall, 
In boldness of design surpassing all. 
These names when rightly read, a name [make] known 
Which gathers all their glories in its own. 


-The End-


[This poem is attributed to Poe by Thomas Ollive Mabbott, who also gives the answers to the puzzles as: 

line – author:
1 – Spenser 
2 – Homer 
3-4 – Aristotle
5-6 – Kallimachos 
7-8 – Shelley 
9 – Alexander Pope.
10 – Euripides 
11 – Mark Akenside 
12 – Samuel Rogers 
13-14 – Euripidies 
15-16 – William Shakespeare]


Enigma,” one of many poems by Edgar Allan Poe, was published in 1833.