But his
Scotch foster-father disapproved of his conduct and withdrew him
from the University. A period of wandering followed. He enlisted
in the army and was stationed in Boston in 1827, when his first
volume, "Tamerlane," was published. In 1829 he was in Fortress
Monroe, and published "Al Aaraf" at Baltimore. He entered West
Point in 1830, and was surely, except Whistler, the strangest of
all possible cadets. When he was dismissed in 1831, he had
written the marvellous lines "To Helen," "Israfel," and "The City
in the Sea." That is enough to have in one's knapsack at the age
of twenty-two.
In the eighteen years from 1831 to 1849, when Poe's unhappy life
came to an end in a Baltimore hospital, his literary activity was
chiefly that of a journalist, critic, and short story writer. He
lived in Baltimore, Richmond, Philadelphia, and New York. Authors
who now exploit their fat bargains with their publishers may have
forgotten that letter which Poe wrote back to Philadelphia the
morning after he arrived with his child-wife in New York: "We are
both in excellent spirits .
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