emoirs_ upon which he was
engaged. Naturally, Mrs. Clemm, who seems never to have forgiven Mrs.
Osgood for the troubles of that unfortunate first summer at Fordham,
would express herself freely to Griswold, who was a warm friend and
admirer of Mrs. Osgood. Was it on account of such utterances that
Griswold wrote to Mrs. Whitman:

"Be very careful what you say to Mrs. Clemm. She is not your friend or
anybody's friend, and has no element of goodness or kindness in her
nature, but whose heart is full of wickedness and malice."

Mrs. Osgood was a lovely and estimable woman, and if she did allow her
admiration of Poe and her warm-hearted sympathy with one of a kindred
poetic nature to impulsively carry her beyond the bounds of a strictly
platonic friendship, it was in all innocence on her part, and did not
lose her the good opinion of those who knew her. The blame was all for
Poe and the feeling against him intense.

Undoubtedly the impression which she made on Poe was something beyond
what he ordinarily experienced toward women. In my own acquaintance with
him he several times spoke of her, and always with a sort of grave and
reverential tenderness--as one may speak of the dead, or as he might
have spoken of the lost friend of his boyhood, Mrs. Stanard. Although,
as Mrs. Osgood says, Poe and herself never met in the few remaining
years of their lives, yet several of his poems, without any real attempt
at disguise, express his remembrance of her. It was to her that the
lines "_To F----_" were addressed, after their parting:

"Beloved, amid the earnest woes
That crowd around my earthly path--
(Dear path, alas! where grows
Not e'en one thornless rose)--
My soul at last a solace hath
In dreams of thee--and therein knows
An Eden of calm repose.

"And thus thy memory is to me
Like some enchanted far-off isle
In some tumultuous sea;
Some ocean throbbing far and free
With storms--but where meanwhile
Serenest skies continually
Just o'er that one bright island smile."

In "_A Dream_" he thus again alludes to her:

"That holy dream, that holy dream,
When all the world was chiding,
Hath cheered me like a lovely beam
A lonely spirit guiding.

"What though that light through storm and night
Still trembles from afar?
What could there be more purely bright
Than truth's day-star?"

About the same time he wrote the lines, "_To My Mother_," the on