30 BRONX SOCIETY OF ARTS AND SCIENCES. 



" Of all who on despair's unhallowed bed 

 Lying down to die, have suddenly arisen 

 At thy soft-spoken words ' Let there be light.' ' 



Another of these poems, now lost, since the lady did not 

 wish it to he published, was composed from the chatter of 

 Poe's fevered fancy taken down by Mrs. Shew. It repre- 

 sented, as Mr. Ingram tells us in The Bookman for January, 

 1909, the kind nurse, " so tired, so weary," watching until the 

 pulse shall sink to eighty beats and the sedative be admin- 

 istered. At last the time comes, and the fragment goes on, 



' The soft head hows, the sweet eyes close. 

 The faithful heart yields to repose. 

 The pulse beats ten, and intermits. 

 God nerve the soul that ne'er forget-. 

 In calm or storm, by night or day, 

 Its steady toil, its loyalty." 



The remainder of this year was devoted to recovery and 

 revery. By the middle of March, Poe was out of bed. 

 Sometimes he walked over to West Farms, the nearest post- 

 office for his letters, sometimes as had been his wont, he 

 "vagabonded" through the woods; more often he took his 

 favorite walk over the aqueduct right of way and across High 

 Bridge. In Poe's time the aqueduct walk had been builded 

 only three or four years. It has hardly changed in three 

 score vears. Xo more delightful path can be imagined than 

 the grassy turf above the aqueduct in spring. Oxford has 

 her Addison's Walk; let New York commemorate Poe's Walk. 



Indefinite as Poe's descriptions of scenes generally are, I 

 think it likely that it was the view of the Harlem valley 

 from the lofty bridge, that suggested to Poe the account of 

 the river journey at the opening of The Domain of Arnheim. 

 This was published in March, T847. None of the river scene 

 was in the earlier versions of this sketch. The Landscape 

 Garden, written before Poe came to Fordham. The rocky 

 and precipitous sides of the river, the rich dense foliage of 



