{
 "id": "edgar-allan-poe/elizabeth",
 "title": "Elizabeth",
 "ordinal": null,
 "subtitle": null,
 "poet": "Edgar Allan Poe",
 "poet_slug": "edgar-allan-poe",
 "language": "en",
 "book": "Poetry",
 "book_slug": null,
 "book_kind": "compilation",
 "sequence": null,
 "container": null,
 "epigraph": null,
 "first_published": {
  "year": 1903,
  "venue": "Patterson Evening News (Patterson, NJ) and New York Herald, both 9 May 1903, reporting the Henkels sale of the manuscript",
  "note": "An acrostic written about 1829 in the album of Poe's cousin Elizabeth Rebecca Herring, and unpublished in his lifetime; the Henkels sale catalogue of 5 May 1903 gave only the first four lines. Its first appearance in a collection of Poe was J. H. Whitty's edition of 1911. The title is editorial — the manuscript carries none.",
  "uncertain": true,
  "sources": [
   "https://www.eapoe.org/works/info/pp023.htm"
  ]
 },
 "source": {
  "kind": "standard-ebooks",
  "repo": "standardebooks/edgar-allan-poe_poetry",
  "file": "poetry.xhtml",
  "upstream": [
   "https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/2151",
   "https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/An_Acrostic",
   "https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Elizabeth_(Poe)",
   "https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Serenade_(Poe)",
   "https://archive.org/details/worksedgarallan00unkngoog",
   "https://archive.org/details/cu31924019520810",
   "https://archive.org/details/jstor-2915307"
  ],
  "rights": "public domain (SE dedication; underlying text pre-1931)"
 },
 "verification": {
  "level": "structural-only",
  "last_checked": "2026-08-12"
 },
 "stats": {
  "n_lines": 16,
  "n_stanzas": 1,
  "n_parts": 0,
  "longest_line_chars": 51,
  "max_indent": 0
 },
 "site_ready": true,
 "parts": [],
 "stanzas": [
  [
   {
    "text": "Elizabeth⁠—it surely is most fit",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "[Logic and common usage so commanding]",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "In thy own book that first thy name be writ,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Zeno and other sages notwithstanding;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And I have other reasons for so doing",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Besides my innate love of contradiction;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Each poet⁠—if a poet⁠—in pursuing",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The muses thro’ their bowers of Truth or Fiction,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Has studied very little of his part,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Read nothing, written less⁠—in short ’s a fool",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Endued with neither soul, nor sense, nor art,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Being ignorant of one important rule,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Employed in even the theses of the school⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Called⁠—I forget the heathenish Greek name",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "[Called anything, its meaning is the same]",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "“Always write first things uppermost in the heart.”",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ]
 ]
}