Nevermore

He only needed a skeleton crew

Birthday of Edgar Allan Poe, born in 1809.

"The play is the tragedy, ‘Man’," Poe wrote, "and its hero the Conqueror Worm."

Poe was born in Boston, where his itinerant actor parents were performing. Three years later he was orphaned.

Edgar married his 13-year-old, tubercular cousin, Virginia Clemm. (They may have been married a year earlier, when she was 12.)

Baudelaire’s translations of Poe’s works made him more popular in France than the U. S. Unable to find or hold work because of his drinking, Poe nearly starved to death. Following the death of Virginia, he attempted suicide.

Poe died at 40, after a violent bout of drinking left him delirious. His last words were "Lord, help my poor soul."

His epitaph reads: "Quoth the Raven nevermore."

Today’s Deathless verse:

Poe, with his outlook macabre,
Could never hold a real job.
His poems, stories and stuff
Never made him enough.
No one wanted to read
Of becoming worm feed.