"Forty-eight long years I've pondered, forty-eight long years I've wondered,
How a poet ever blundered into a mistake so sore.
How could lamp-light from your table ever in the world be able,
From below, to throw my sable shadow 'streaming on the floor,'
When I perched up here on Pallas, high above your chamber-door?
Tell me that—if nothing more!"
Then, like some wan, weeping willow, Poe would bend above his pillow,
Seeking surcease in the billow where mad recollections drown,
And in tearful tones replying, he would groan "There's no denying
Either I was blindly lying, or the world was upside down—