A Valentine

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Frances Sargent Osgood

Here is Poe’s only Valentine’s poem, appropriately and simply called “A Valentine” (1846), which was just a mechanism to contain an acrostic in tribute to fellow poet Frances Sargent Osgood, as revealed in the encoded letters:

For her this rhyme is penned, whose luminous eyes, 
Brightly expressive as the twins of Lœda, 
Shall find her own sweet name, that, nestling lies 
Upon the page, enwrapped from every reader. 
Search narrowly the lines! — they hold a treasure 
Divine — a talisman — an amulet 
That must be worn at heart. Search well the measure — 
The words — the syllables! Do not forget 
The trivialest point, or you may lose your labor! 
And yet there is in this no Gordian knot 
Which one might not undo without a sabre, 
If one could merely comprehend the plot. 
Enwritten upon the leaf where now are peering 
Eyes scintillating soul, there lie perdus 
Three eloquent words oft uttered in the hearing 
Of poets, by poets — as the name is a poet’s, too. 
Its letters, although naturally lying 
Like the knight Pinto — Mendez Ferdinando — 
Still form a synonym for Truth. — Cease trying! 
You will not read the riddle, though you do the best you can do.

To unravel the insider-reference, we have to take the first letter of the first line followed by the second letter of the second line, the third letter of the third line, and so forth. The poem was unveiled one hundred and seventy-three years ago at a Valentine’s Day literary gathering on Saturday, February 14, 1846, one week ahead of its publication in the long-since-defunct New York Evening Mirror (which was published from 1844 to 1898).

Although not otherwise poetically noteworthy (Poe justly calls it a mere “rhyme” and a “riddle,” and it serves almost singly as a gimmick to convey the flirty hat-tip during a coquettish repartee between the two poets, which apparently led to nothing), Poe’s “Valentine” is notable for us as a flagrant example of how poetry could be a vehicle for Poe to write directly and openly (albeit in coded language) about the subject matter of his life.  If you know the code, you can read the content explicitly. 


 Granted, we won’t always have such a facile answer key (Poe would encore the embedded acrostic trick in his 1848 offering, “An Enigma”), and almost never such a two-dimensional exposition in the verse, but if you “do the best you can do,” you can unlock many a “Gordian knot” in the poems of Edgar Allan Poe.  (We will try to do that, in this blog.)

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