“In Youth I Have Known One”: Edgar Allan Poe was an American writer, poet, editor, and literary critic who is best known for his poetry and short stories. In youth I have known one with whom the Earth In secret communing held—as he with it, In daylight, and in beauty, from his birth: Whose fervid, flickering torch of life was lit From the sun and stars, whence he had drawn forth A passionate light such for his spirit was fit And yet that spirit knew—not in the hour Of its own fervor—what had o’er it power.