A Valentine

A Valentine - context Summary

Dedicated to Frances Sargent Osgood

Edgar Allan Poe's A Valentine, published in 1846, is a playful, intimate poem written for Frances Sargent Osgood, with whom he had a publicly intense, likely platonic and possibly romantic relationship in the mid-1840s. The poem frames itself as a riddle and asks the reader to search the lines to discover a hidden name nestling on the page. Its tone is teasing and affectionate, offering a public token of attachment while masking the beloved's identity behind a literary puzzle. It was dedicated to Osgood as an expression of love.

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For her this rhyme is penned, whose luminous eyes, brghtly expressive as the twins of Leda, 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.