A bicentenary: Happy Birthday, Edgar!

Today in Boston in 1809 was born a boy named Edgar Poe. His parents died of tuberculosis, and he was taken in by John Allan, acquiring his middle name - which he used when he began writing, though by then he had been cast off by his foster family for acquiring habits of life of which they didn't approve (moral: if you're a puritan in 19th century Boston, send your son to Harvard, not UVa!). Poe made his name writing slashing, savage reviews of other people's books, then moved into writing his own. He wrote light and humorous fiction at first, but he married his cousin only to learn that she too had tuberculosis, and as she slowly died his fiction became more and more macabre. His most famous poem, The Raven, was written as he watched her dying.

But you can find that one everywhere, so here's one less macabre: Eldorado

Gaily bedight,
A gallant knight,
In sunshine and in shadow,
Had journeyed long,
Singing a song,
In search of Eldorado.

But he grew old-
This knight so bold-
And o'er his heart a shadow
Fell as he found
No spot of ground
That looked like Eldorado.

And, as his strength
Failed him at length,
He met a pilgrim shadow-
"Shadow," said he,
"Where can it be-
This land of Eldorado?"

"Over the Mountains Of the Moon,
Down the Valley of the Shadow,
Ride, boldly ride,"
The shade replied-
"If you seek for Eldorado!"

(more Poe here)