To Margaret

Summary

Edgar Allan Poe’s “To Margaret” is a playful collage of borrowed lines from Milton, Shakespeare, Cowper, and Pope, mocking the vanity of “scribbling” in witty parody.


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Who hath seduced thee to this foul revolt } Milton Par. Lost. Bk. I
From the pure well of Beauty undefiled? } Somebody
So banished from true wisdom to prefer } Cowper’s Task, Book I
Such squalid wit to honourable rhyme?
To write? To scribble? Nonsense and no more? } Shakespeare
I will not write upon this argument } do.Troilus & Cressida
To write is human — not to write divine. } Pope Essay on Man


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