He is referring to the name of the bride's dead lover, "D'Elormie", which he calls "patently a forced rhyme" for "o'er me" and "before me" in the previous lines. Poe biographer Daniel Hoffman says that "Bridal Ballad" is guilty of "one of the most unfortunate rhymes in American poetry this side of Thomas Holley Chivers". In marrying, she has broken her vow to this previous lover to love him eternally. Despite her reassurances that she is "happy," the poem has a somber tone as it recounts a previous love who has died. The poem is unusual for Poe because it is written in the voice of a woman, specifically a recently married bride. First published simply as "Ballad" in the January 1837 edition of the Southern Literary Messenger, it was later retitled as "Bridal Ballad" when it was printed in the Jedition of the Saturday Evening Post.
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