Tag: Poetry

I just opened an 1842 issue of Graham’s Magazine. On one page are two poems, and the editor cannot restrain his enthusiasm for one of the poets.

It is with high gratification that we present our readers, this month, with this elegant original poem from the pen of Sergeant NOON TALFOURD, of England, the author of “Ion,” and, perhaps, the first living poet of his age. In the letter accompanying the verses he speaks of them as “my last effusion on an occasion very dear to me—composed in view of Eton College after leaving my eldest son there for the first time.”

The other poem is by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.

It is possible—now that I think of it, probable—that the editor who wrote this little footnote was Edgar Allan Poe. He was one of the editors at Graham’s at the time, and we know what he thought of Longfellow. I suspect that I may know what he thought of Talfourd, too: namely, that the most insulting thing he could do was praise a trivial little sonnet by Talfourd and not even mention the much more substantial poem by Longfellow that appeared on the same page. It’s the sort of thing that would amuse Poe.