On 1 October 1849, the Lynchburg Virginian gave its poetry corner over to a piece that was, by then, one of his best-known poems: "The Raven," by Edgar A. Poe. It ran in full, all 18 stanzas, across two columns of page four.
Six days later, Poe was dead in Baltimore.
Nobody reading this paper over breakfast could have known that. To them, "The Raven" was simply a sensation worth reprinting, more than four years after it first appeared. Newspapers of the time freely reprinted popular poems, and this is how a poem "went viral" in 1849.
A detail for close readers: in the second stanza this printing reads "vainly I had sought to borrow / From my books surcease of sorrow." Poe's 1845 version said "tried to borrow." The difference shows why it is useful to compare individual printings; this newspaper page alone does not establish who made the change.