To Helen

"To Helen" is a poem written by Edgar Allan Poe. The poem was first published in 1831 in "Poems of Edgar Allan Poe". It was republished in 1836 in the "Southern Literary Messenger". Poe's inspiration was Jane Stith Stanard, the mother of his childhood friend Robert Stanard.
The poem consists of three stanzas of five lines each. The rhyme scheme is irregular: the first stanza is ABABB, the second is ABABA, and the third is ABBAB. The poem includes the well known lines, "... the glory that was Greece / And the grandeur that was Rome".