To the few who love me and whom I love- to those who feel rather than to those who think- to the dreamers and those who put faith in dreams as in the only realities- I offer this Book of Truths, not in its character of Truth-Teller, but for the Beauty that abounds in its Truth; constituting it true. To these I present the composition as an Art-Product alone:- let us say as a Romance; or, if I be not urging too lofty a claim, as a Poem.
What I here propound is true:- * therefore it cannot die:- or if by any means it be now trodden down so that it die, it will "rise again to the Life Everlasting."
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Nevertheless it is as a Poem only that I wish this work to be judged after I am dead.
E. A. P.
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Chicago: Edgar Allan Poe, "Preface," Eureka: A Prose Poem Original Sources, accessed July 6, 2025, http://originalsources.com/Document.aspx?DocID=MWTCV4AHTV3JBRD.
MLA: Poe, Edgar Allan. "Preface." Eureka: A Prose Poem, Original Sources. 6 Jul. 2025. http://originalsources.com/Document.aspx?DocID=MWTCV4AHTV3JBRD.
Harvard: Poe, EA, 'Preface' in Eureka: A Prose Poem. Original Sources, retrieved 6 July 2025, from http://originalsources.com/Document.aspx?DocID=MWTCV4AHTV3JBRD.